5th gen a little too vibey

I got my 5th gen 2000 about two and a half years ago. It's a truly excellent bike.
But was surprised me then and now was that it's a bit more vibey than I expected. Now, I'd always heard VFRs were turbine-smooth and all that, but this one isn't.
Later, I was able to compare with the 6th gen 2003 I owned for a while as a "spare" and that bike was noticeably smoother-running at ordinary road speeds, say, 3500-6000rpm.
The contrast got worse this summer when I was able to get a CBR1100XX Blackbird and sort of put the 5th gen aside for a while with intentions to send it to Florida for winter use.
Of course, the Bird is very, very smooth-running, considerably moreso than any VFR I've experienced and that colored my impressions. Apart from the six-cylinder Wings I had, it's tied with my much-missed ZX1100E (GPZ) for the least-vibey bike I've ever ridden.
So the VFR came out of storage yesterday to get prepped for transit south and riding it around I still wonder that it couldn't be better in the vibes department. It's not terribly bad- I've done 500-miles days without injury- but it just seems short of the norm.
I understand that identical models can vary a lot from example to example. The two GL18s I had were pretty different in this regard, although by world-wide standards, the difference wasn't really much.
So, this 5th gen was acquired at 30K miles (18,600km) and now I have almost 47K on it (29Kkm).
The valves were checked this summer and are perfect. The plugs are newish. I balanced the starter valves just very recently. It's engine-speed-related, not road speed, so it's not a running gear thing.
I believe I checked motor mount torques a not long after I got it but I will be checking that again shortly.
Being as how winter weather is caving in here in the upper Midwest, test-riding won't be easy prior to the trailer trip southbound.
Open to any suggestions of what I've missed. Or, it's just a vibey example of the breed and I'll live with it.
Bill

 

So you haven't had a chance to actually compare it to another 5th Gen?

Trying to evaluate vibes comparing to a 1100XX is not very helpful, unless you are just saying I only like this type and amount of vibes. Everything else is too much and too different.

The 6th Gen is chain driven cams, the 5th is gear driven. I'm sure you know that, but that is another bad comparison in trying determine if something is "wrong".

90 degree V4s have perfect primary balance, but you will get some secondary vibrations that become more prominent at certain RPMs. I personally like the tactile feedback I get from my gear driven VFRs.

I think you did confirm this in another post, but the bike is stock? Handlebars and exhaust?

 

Heli Multi-Tour Sport bars in Moto-CNC mounts.
Stock exhaust.
I would agree the Helis are probably responsible for an increase at the grips, but the 6th gen was equipped identically.
Also, I rode the 5th gen for a while last summer with stock bars in concert with a track day. The vibes were a bit less there.
But the left footpeg is another shaker point; past 6000rpm it's getting to the annoying point.
The last time I rode a 5th gen was in 2001, about a hundred miles. It's tough to recall the level of vibes from that long ago.
I tend to think this is just a less-perfectly assembled and balanced example.
Incidentally, that Velo in the avatar, in top gear at any road speed above about 65mph, was not much different than this VFR at 50mph in fourth or fifth gear.
Now, that bike, my recollections are very clear.

 

The RC36-I has a weight bolted to the inside of the left rearset.



You might look into bonding some weight to the inside of the rearsets to do something similar, changing the frequency.

 

What is the age and state of your chain and sprockets? Chain tension can also have effects on vibration.
How often do you lube and check the chain tension? Err on the loose side of the tolerance, never the tight side.

 

In order:
The footpeg stuff is interesting. I'm going to have the bike up on the lift again tomorrow or Monday to do some more prep for the haul to the Sunshine State.
My bike has nice rubber footpegs which I thought all along were stock.
To the chain- it's a DID VX3 with about 13,000 miles (16Kkm), which is piffle. It has another 30,000 in it easily on such a low-powered bike with a "mature" rider. The sprockets still look virtually new.
The tension is exactly on spec and is checked every 1-2,000 miles but has never needed adjusting yet. I installed it after the halfway-decent chain that was on there showed a little bit of stretch, so I just went ahead with the DID. It's my favorite.
It gets lubed every 400 miles or so with PJ-1 Blue Label. Also my favorite for decades. I've never had a chain I owned from new go less than 40,000 miles using that stuff. The last DID on my ZX1100E was at 58,000 and still within stretch spec, and kinkless, when I sold the bike.
Yes, I'm a little bit of a chain fanatic, according to my rider friends, but I come from the days when chains (and tires and shocks and...) were truly awful; we learned to solder on new cable ends for the ones that broke off because sourcing new cables was a difficult thing.
Makes a guy kind of frugal and maintenance-oriented.

 

My latest 5th gen is a bit vibier than my previous; both 99 models. The current (yellow) bike gets a bit annoying around 8000, but is exceedingly nice either side of that. I put that down to a feature rather than a bug.

 

And I thought that we bought them because they let us know that they're there!