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With my recent decision to keep the VFR, it's about time I tackled some of the little issues it has. One of those is the plastics -- I broke the front fender at NHMS, and replaced it with a used one from eBay. It has a bit of rash on the front:
I would ASSume that I can sand that down, add the correct filler and clean it up easily enough.
Next up is the right main fairing. The bike has been repainted at least once, but badly. I'm not sure what this repair was attempting to address:
Again, I think I should be able to sand that down, fill it and clean it up.
One problem I introduced was this. It's the inside of the mount for the rear of the tail fairing; it happened as I was trying to melt a stuck fastener and obviously got things too hot. Here's how it looks now:
And here's how the other side looks:
Not 100% sure what to do about this one. All I need to do is make it structurally sound, as this plastic is hidden by the large fairing fasteners.
A more curious problem is this grey spot right in the center of the photo. It looks like a chip, but I think the paint has actually delaminated in this area. And yes, the tank is an obviously different shade of yellow to the rest of the bike:
Again, probably just sand and fill.
- - - Updated - - -
The next photos seem like more difficult repairs. The first is the rear edge of the front fairing where the windshield attaches. This piece cracked off when I low-sided at the track, and I never found the missing piece:
It's not as big as the photo suggests; the missing plastic is probably about the size of a quarter. I'm honestly not sure how to address this. JB Weld? Plastic weld?
This piece also cracked off from the same low-side. It's the top of the back of the main fairing, you can see the radiator reservoir in the shot. I do have the piece of plastic that came off, so if I can attach it back I might be in luck:
Last but not least, the rest of that fairing. Pretty obvious where this damage happened! As far as I can tell, no cracks or anything serious -- just lots of road rash:
I'd love to give these repairs a shot, if only for the practice before I take on the El Camino. That appeals to me for a few reasons. The bike already has 35k miles so it's never going to be worth having painted professionally. I probably can't go through insurance either. And the paint colors differ from panel to panel too. New OEM fairings are expensive, while used genuine panels are getting harder to find as it took a decent amount of searching for me to find the replacement front fender. Chinese fairings are available pretty inexpensively, but I imagine the quality is lacking.
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