the VIRAGO
YAMAHA VIRAGO 1981-1999

YAMAHA XV500 VIRAGO

█ When the Virago
500 began its trip
down the drawing
boards Yamaha's
designers must have
figured the task was
more like play, a
working vacation
perhaps. The orig-
nal Virago was a750, an air-cooled V-Twin with shaft drive and full cruiser treatment, as in stepped seat, small tank and high bars. The model hit the target market right on center and the Virago 750 was Yamaha's sales hit of the year.
Traditional looks, traditional engine configuration, so It made perfect sense to take another old-time favorite, the 500 Twin, and scale down the Virago theme

to fit the smaller engine. Lower seat, lower price, proven looks and engineering, it's bound to work.
And so it does, but with some reservations.
They have little to do with the mechanical package.  The 500, like the 750 and 920 Vees, is air cooled, but the angle of the Vee is 70° for the small engine vs 75° for the larger ones.
Good reasons here. Hi* best balanced vees are 90°, and the closer together you go from there, the less good the balance gets while the package itself becomes smaller and more easily packaged. Because the Virago 500 is small, the tighter angle allows a shorter wheelbase with room for suspension travel, etc.
The same applies to the Yamaha's other two 70° Vees, the Vision 550 twin

and the Venture 1200 four. Except that those two engines produce more power and thus need water-cooling and coun-terbalancer shafts.
the Virago 500 Is not as highly tuned or stressed, So like the other air-cooled Vees it neither has not needs water jack-ets or counterbalancers. The 500 shares concept with the 750 and 920 but no parts. The two Valves per cylinder (37mm intake, 32mm exhaust) are opened via aluminum rockers by a single camshaft running in the cylinder head casting. Intake Valve lift is 7.2mm, exhaust Valve lift 7.7mm, and valve lash is adjusted with screw tappets. The cams are driven by link-plate chain off each end of the plain-bearing crankshaft.
Cast-iron sleeves are pressed into the
aluminum cylinder castings. The cast

 

JUNE 1983
 

virago xv500 1 / 4
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