Greetings from Michigan

Hello everyone!

I recently purchased a 1987 VFR700F2. The previous owner had it sitting in his garage for two years, and the owner before that came from Japan, bought the bike, spray painted the fairings all black (ewwww), rode it once and laid it down cracking the fairings (tail fairing is missing), and then let it sit for a few years before selling it when leaving to go back to Japan. The bike has around 20k miles and has some crunchy dried out tires, but still fires up and revs after sitting for so long.

The carbs leak like a faucet and I was planning on rebuilding them figuring it was the either the floats or the seals. However I'm not sure if that is necessary at this point, I started removing them and noticed that I could wiggle and spin all 8 of the carb boot clamps with my fingers, and they're at maximum tightness! These definitely need to be replaced. I have 5 out of 8 of them loosened, but the last 3 (right side) I can't seem to get an angle on because the coolant hose is in the way. Is there any trick to getting around this hose or do I need to drain my coolant and remove the hose? I'm still going to remove them to check all the hoses and connector tubes.

Anyway, even though the fairings are ruined, the bike seems in great condition for its age. Can't wait to get her road worthy again

 

Welcome to the best forum on the net!
In what general vacancy of Michigan are you ? I'm in the western lower peninsula area.

On my '98, in order to remove the throttle bodies from the intake boots, I needed to use an extra long Phillips screwdriver (18") to reach some of the boot clamps. I've no idea exactly what you need to remove your remaining carborators, some of the first and second gen owners will hopefully be able to give you a clue soon.

 

For the fairings I am:
1. Going to strip them down and assess the damage, see if I can fix them somehow (probably not) if theyre fiberglass, I could patch them easily, not sure what they're made of at the moment.
2. http://www.airtech-streamlining.com/ - seems to make an abundance of fairings for older bikes, including mine. A bit pricey but anything is better than black and cracked, right?

Im located in Metro-Detroit area. I tried using a long driver but the last 3 screws will not let go, im going to keep soaking them and see if they eventually come loose. It's literally 8 screw bands (4 if you want to remove it from the engine, 4 more to remove the boots from the carbs) and the last 3, 2 of which are holding the carb manifolds to the engine, will not budge and are stripping because of none JIS screwdrivers... damn philips

I bought some tiny locking pliers, going to see if I can clamp them on and give it the initial twist to break the threads free, not worried about marring or stripping them since I definitely have to replace the bands.