when giving it the beans going into second it will skid for a second before freeing up?
Sadly, you probably have an incipient 2nd gear issue, and it's only gonna be worse. Fortunately, you are in KS, home of Sean Morley's
Sanitarium for Ailing VMaxes. He's in Derby. If you have the $, I'd just get-over the expenditure, and have him go through the bike, to fix the gearbox (if that's what it is), and also to flush your cooling system.
It's possible that you have a slipping clutch instead of a gearbox issue. Usually what happens with the VMax gearbox, is the 2nd gear engagement dogs and the oval holes in the corresponding gear into which it mates, become rounded, and they no-longer stay engaged, and the bike jumps-out of gear.
A slipping clutch will act and sound like an automatic transmission, or a CVT, if you've ever ridden in a vehicle having one of those. The revs of the engine climb, but there is a noticeable lack of corresponding acceleration. The typical fix here is new clutch friction plates and scuffing up the 'steelies' which are the solid steel spacers between each pair of friction discs.
The innermost friction disc in the clutch pack is a half-width one, where the friction disc actually allows a bit of slip, designed into the system, to allow the rear end to stay in contact with the road if someone doesn't do a good job of downshifting, for instance. A shaft-drive bike can experience 'hop' from a poorly-executed downshift, where the rear end momentarily loses contact with the pavement due to the difference in the speeds of the clutch/final drive system.
The VMax uses a diaphragm clutch spring. Many bikes use a multi-spring (coil springs) clutch pressure plate, and Lockhart is a popular replacement for the OEM diaphragm spring, it uses a multi-spring pressure plate. Rarely does the OEM diaphragm spring lose its tension to a point where it needs to be replaced. Some guys use
two stacked on-top of each other to provide additional driveline tension (called the
double-disc or DD modification, another potential search term, upper-right of the webpage). The clutch pull from using two diaphragm springs is much-more than a single diaphragm spring. Some guys say, "oh, it's not so-bad," but if you don't crush frozen OJ cans for exercise, just replace the OEM diaphragm spring. That, or buy a heavy-duty diaphragm spring (Sean Morley sells 'em, and PCW in NYS does, too) or the Lockhart multi-coil spring aftermarket replacement pressure plate/springs set.
You can
look on here in the search function for directions on replacing that innermost in the stack half-width friction disc, with another full-width friction disc. It's simple, there is a spring-steel wire band in the clutch pack you remove if you add that full-width friction disc.
