2005 Venom 600 ER

journeyman

journeyman

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2005 Venom 600 ER poor mileage

Not sure if this is the correct place for this but I thought I would post it here because it has the baby 6 redhead motor.

My work buddy invited me up to his cabin this past Thursday for the weekend. I hadn't been there (Winter,Wisc) for a couple years. The problem is my old high mileage Viper is layed up right now. Blown reed valve and a bad bearing on the speedo side of drive shaft. I haven't had time to fix it. Anyways he said I could ride his wife's 2005 Venom ER with the redhead 600 so I took the invite.

First off this is a nice little sled. The thing is like new and it only had 1900 miles on it. I thought it rode great with the non rebuildable gas cell shocks. As good as my Viper ever rode in fact. He clutched it with heavier rivets and a different YXR primary spring to get the "R's" in check being he said it used to over rev. It pulls really strong in the midrange and darn perfect in the trails. I put 270 miles on in 2 days of great snow conditions for mid March.

Here's the question.

Do all of these redhead 600's get this lousy of mileage? 9 miles to the gallon all weekend. His own SRX600 was getting 15 mpg and another rider with a Ski-Doo Rev 500ss with the carbed 600 twin was getting 16 Mpg. We were all riding at a semi-fast pace but the other two sleds as mentioned got good mileage. Keep in mind everything has been checked mechanically on this machine. He is a machinists and all his stuff is dialed and mint more than the average Joe.

Like I said it's his wife's sled so he hardly ever rides it but one thing we noticed...... Being this is a Viper chassis, where the hood seals around the airbox all the vents into it are plugged from the factory.Unlike a Viper which has the cold air inducted into the airbox. There is literally no way for air to get into the top of the airbox. Like it's choked off. This doesn't seem right. I know the SX600R style has an opening towards the rider to let air into the airbox. Could this be why this thing drinks fuel?

any thoughts???
 
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I seen your post but dont have any experience with the venom myself. The red-head 600's (2 in other chassis) I am familar with didnt get all that good MPG, 8-10 at best. Searched venom and theres a few guys with them but there was only 1 other post in regaurds to bad mileage and he had an issue with fuel in airbox. Maybe search venom and send a PM/E-mail to other owners would get better responce.
 
Devilin AblueDress! said:
I seen your post but dont have any experience with the venom myself. The red-head 600's (2 in other chassis) I am familar with didnt get all that good MPG, 8-10 at best. Searched venom and theres a few guys with them but there was only 1 other post in regaurds to bad mileage and he had an issue with fuel in airbox. Maybe search venom and send a PM/E-mail to other owners would get better responce.
Click to expand...

Thanks, this is really puzzling. Before my Viper I had the redhead 700 in the SXR chassis. It got much better mileage than this. I talked with my co-worker than owns it just hours ago at work and he is miffed. His uncle was a longtime Yamaha mechanic, tech for Haydays and runs a Yamaha parts biz out of his garage. He is puzzled too. His uncle said his kids SX600R did pretty good on mileage but as said that airbox has cold air induction. He said he might drill some intake holes in it where snow will not ingest. He is also going to check the jetting etc. in the carbs just to make sure being he got is used with 1300 miles on it.

I guess not much different than my Viper. I used to get good mileage when it was new. Now days I get 7-8 mpg. I was talking with some guys in the UP of Mich. this year. They said they have noticed Vipers and redhead triples start getting lousy mileage when they get older. No one seems to have an answer why.
 
On another note about the Venom models.

Does anyone know if the 600/700SX pipes fit in the Venom chassis? I checked and SLP says no go for the ER models all together. How about Bender's pipes? I think they will fit the ER models but not sure about the redhead in a Venom chassis.
 
I have a 600 triple VMax E/R with 2,600mi. and it gets 10 mpg... My older 700 SX does 14-15 FWIW.
 
Here is another tid bit I found interesting.

As I mentioned the poor mileage and the closed off air induction.....(the hood seems to be the same as a mountain Viper) I recently informed my friend that owns it about the muffler mod that is on the tech pages here. I never did it to my 2001 SX700R being I only owned it a year. My dad had a '98 XTC 700 121" powder special but always ran a Bender can on it. Brother in law owns that now. Anyways I printed the muffler mod for my friend so he did it about a week ago. His wife rides this machine and after he performed the mod she was babbling the first day that her sled felt like it had more power. He thought she was full of it so he actually tested it out against another sled he had tested before against and sure enough it had gained several sled lengths over that machine when it was dead even before. I asked if the mileage got better and he said NOPE. He was planning on drilling air induction holes but said he will do that next. One thing at a time.
 
My cousin has one of these sleds and was getting poor mileage too. We did a few things and he's to about 13 mpg now. Changed to a bigger lug track 1.5 as it was spinning the track all the time .also changed the top gear in the chain case up one tooth . Both seemed to help out a great deal.
 
I wonder what main jets this sled has in it. My 700 has 142.5 mains and the needles are lowered half position and this helped mileage a lot. I get 12-13 mpg on average and it used to be even better, but I think this e-10 fuel has knocked down mileage for sure. My aggressive clutching to load the engine hard knocked down mileage some also.....
 
I'm actually not surprised the 600 is getting poor milage compared to more powerful engines. Typically a the bigger (triples anyway, not so much with twins) with more power have more torque across the RPM range. So as you reach a cruising speed, the clutches shift into a higher ratio (compared to the smaller engine) and there is enough torque for the engine to run at a lower RPM and to maitain the higher shift ratio at a given speed. Basically, the 700's, and especially the triple/triples, can run at say for example 40mph in "third gear" (at a lower RPM/lower throttle opening) where the 600 would need to be in "second gear" (at a higher engine speed/greater throttle opening = more gas) to maintain the same speed. This is why back in the triple haydays, the sleds that often got the best gas milage were the ZRT800's, XCR700/800's, ect.
 
I know he's going to check jetting being the sled was used with 1300 miles on it. Adding air intake holes may help, I cannot see why they would just plug all intake down unless they had a bunch of Mnt Viper hoods leftover and just slapped them on these Venoms. The fuel he runs has no ethanol in it. As for adding a deeper lug track normally that hurts mileage. Seen that on my Viper with the Cobra track. I think winter has finally left so I don't see this resolved for another season.
 
Venom 10 MPG Wet airbox.

Hi Journeyman , I have the same issues with my 2004 Venom since new. 10 MPG and gas in the airbox. Was hoping a solution may have been found.
 
My son always had some fuel in the air box prior to putting fresh CARBONTECH reeds and replacing all plug caps. I don't know which one took care of the problem as we did both at the same time.
 
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