In short all of the truly broken stuff was plastics or brackets that hold onto plastics. The forks and frame appeared OK. The engine cases although scraped were not leaking oil. The engine started and ran, the brakes worked, the transmission worked.
Have I ever claimed to be a good mechanic? No. Even taking the fairings off to do an oil change has given me no end of trouble. Guess what, now I have to take ALL the fairings off to replace them. First things first, I ordered a set of unpainted ABS fairings from an eBay seller, a bolt kit, steel front brake lines, fairing stay, and a new windshield.
Things arrived and I started pulling fairings off.
First thing I noticed was that all these miscellaneous plastic connectors that I was taking off were shot, and the bolt kit didn't have them. Also that the rubber grommets were mostly shot, and weren't included in the fairing bolt kit.
The ABS fairings arrived and UPS failed to deliver them. Twice. Apparently signing the slip isn't good enough when your UPS driver doesn't want to carry a big friggen box to your doorstep. So I went over to the depot and picked it up, with my bum arm.
The new fairings looked good. The plastic had some seams here and there, but overall they looked like the originals. Over the next few weeks I sanded, primed, sanded, painted, sanded, painted the fairings. Each coat a different menagerie of bugs, ash from forest fires, and debris from yard work would waft down upon the drying surface and mess it up. After a while I said screw it, and didn't bother clearcoating.
I decided on going with black fender, belly, and tail, and white everything else.
The first item I put on was the front fender. This was by far the easiest component. While I had it all torn apart I installed the stainless steel brakelines.
While i had it all torn apart I decided to install a Power Commander. I found one on ebay and had it here in time to also lift the gas tank and connect it all up. I should note that I wouldn't be able to do any of this by myself and one of my moto friends rescued me on a few tasks.
With installing the fairing stay, lights, and other gear into the nose I started realizing where ABS fairings differed from the originals. The metal fittings that bolts screw into were utter crap, and the tolerances were off just enough that it took two people to get the fairing stay wedged into the nose.
Honda in all their infinite wisdom decided to put the tip over sensor in the nose. Add to that the rest of the wire harness that the bike needs just to start the engine is a spaghetti jumble of wires around the fairings and nose that all need to be connected just to prime the fuel pump.
With Q's help I got all that re-connected enough to prime the pump and hit the start switch...
... and it fired up! Oh boy did it sound angry and lethal with the Power Commander and no ram air system hooked up.
Next was a fairly simple matter of getting the tail, tank and other bits in place. There were still some brackets and connectors missing so I had to leave the mid fairings off, but I was able to take it for a few shakedown runs to see if anything would fall off.
Note luggage for carrying the maximum amount of burgers back with me. The run went well, I'll write a separate post about that.
Unfortunately I was going through a breakup about this time and had to find a new place to live instead of focusing on the rebuild Eventually I found a place with a garage and moved. During the move I had a first... I dropped the bike while unloading from a trailer.
As things stabilized in my new home the guilt of an unfinished project returned and I went out to the garage and tried to finish it. It took several hours of mocking stuff up and zip tying things before I got nearly there. I found that the fairings are built with such tight tolerances that the aftermarket fairings just won't fit together correctly at all. I did my best to get it all together and realized that... shocking... I was still missing a few rubber grommet connectors and one bracket that is bent that I hadn't noticed.
Still, looks pretty good for missing a few bits.
So this is pretty much "done". With the exception of a few extra bolts and brackets that are bypassed with zip ties... All things to get done during the winter.
The second to last weekend of October was the annual ABATE Albany Mall motorcycle show. Being the only sport rider in Albany ABATE I brought the CBR to the show.
For the third year in a row I won "Best Sportbike in Show". I'm still waiting for that trophy.
I'll end this post at this point. There will always be "just a few more things" to do to any motorcycle.
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