what should i be aware of? i owned a 83 and 84 but the 86 seems totally different, any helpful hints?
No cam issues w/ the 86' 1 st year gear driven cams, nothing really inhertantly problematic w/ this model year. Just check over the things that would indicate lack of maintenance & care that you would w/ anything else you would buy. There are things you may want to upgrade in the future like installing CBR600F2 wheels & front suspension( good post on here somewhere for doing so), rear suspension upgrades, member JamieDaugherty was working on something a while back for the second gen. haven't touched base w/ him recently about it though. (there was also a brand new NOS rear shock for 86/87 on ebay not sure if it is still on though). Good luck, & as far as milage I've got over 40K & she is still going strong w/ care it will go over 100k Regulator/Rectifier failure is the only problem that has continually plagued the VFR line.
after honda realized there were some top end oiling issues with the V4's in the bikes leading up to (and including) the 85 model, they decided to take action to fix it. i dont know what they did to handle the problem (ie extra oil passages, etc), but im told theres a night and day difference between the 85 and 86 motors, including how well they run and espically their lonvevity. if the 85 is what you're used to in a vfr, the 86 is going to be fantastic in your eyes. as tbones86 said, Regulator/Rectifier failure is the only problem that has continually plagued the VFR line. the yahoo list has discussed this one at length, and there has actually been a fix found for it. the reason that the R/R's keep failing is due to heating up and basically frying themselves, and this has been attributed to the fact that the stock R/R on the vfr's is internally grounded. the fix for this has been to find an externally grounded R/R off of a cbr or something, drill one little hole in teh subframe, and fasten the external ground wire to that. This is the way my 87 is currently set up, and it hasnt given me any problems yet. its a hell of a fun bike, still with surprisingly many mods and aftermaket toys out there if you know where to find them. good luck dude!