New Project bike hits the stable - '90 VFR750

I'm very lucky I have several offers to trade good parts for good parts but not many offers for the plastics or motor that I really need.

 

UPDATE:

I thought I had a motor lined up but shipping costs made it pretty prohibitive. I started tearing down the old motor to get to the bottom of this bad bearing. VFR parts have now completely overtaken the garage. The heads are off and I almost have the case split so that the crank will come out HOWEVER, Honda was kind enough to use a special F'ing nut on the clutch basket. The tool is $40-$45 at the two local shops I called. There must be another sourse....

Part #17 is the one that's holding up the show: Service Honda's 1990 Honda Street Bike VFR750F VFR Parts List

Maybe a trip to sears to check their tooling selection is in order. I'll update later with photos of the progress - or distruction depending on how you look at it. I've had to shovel a lot of knowledge out the back of my brain like ballast in order to make room for the memories needed to reassemble this puppy. Not sure if I know how to tie my shoes any more or if that's one of the things tossed aside.

 

No luck looking at sears online for the tool. Think I have an idea to fabricate my own tool using a drill press, tap set, grinder, and welder.

 

Small cup gun showed up from UPS yesterday. Gift from the ol' man to help me restore this beast.

.....think of all the hell I can give Cundalini if I get this project running on the road with painted plastics before he finishes making a career out of his paint job....

 

I'd say that proposition is very doable given past performance...

 

well, he better get crackin.

I picked up the painting supplies, fiberglass, and plastic weld today along with a moisture seperator for the compressor. Time to start scraping and sanding.

The motor is in a holding pattern for a week. Might have a line on another used motor but trying to wear down a craigslister to a reasonable price. Otherwise I'll make the commitment to direct my minimal funds into rebuilding the old motor. I got an estimate from a local machinist to drill out a busted headbolt I broke last weekend.

BTW, here is the look I'm going for. This photo I found in the 4th gen album so this bike belonged to someone here. I picked up this color from Sherwin Williams today. The difference will be that my bike has white wheels and I'll have white vinyl.

 

Spoke with local dealer and got an estimate for parts on the engine rebuild. Around $750 includes gasket kit, rod/main bearings, rings, carb insulators, water pump.

That's about $300 over the budget I had for this thing and I haven't measured the clutch disks for wear yet. Dealer was kind enough to break loose the special nut on the clutch basket for me. Only cost me $5 tip to the mechanic.

 

Here are all the body panels that require repair and/or prime and paint.

 

The decals are scraped off. Wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Here are all the parts requiring paint:

Here are the parts that require no extra work. Only sanding, prime, and paint:


And here are all the parts that require plastic weld, fiber glass, dent removal, fab missing pieces....



Did some plastic welding of cracks and broken pieces. Still requires a LOT of fiberglass repair and fill.

 

I'm finding the tough part is that she's been crashed and patched before. So plastic welding to plastic that's been patched with fiberglass and other fillers is problematic.

 

Thanks for the kind words guys.

That's an amazing offer beta. Can't thank you enough and at that I almost feel stupid passing it up. However, I really want to give it a shot on my own first. The hope is that when it's done I can look at it with a bit more pride having done the work myself. I'll be accepting all the tips and advice that I can get! Youtube is priceless when it comes to "how-to"

I used a palm sander with 100 grit and made the first pass on all the parts. Next is a pass of hand sanding with a finer grit to smooth it over the last bit and get into spots the palm sander couldn't. That and I need to watch some fiberglass videos.

 

I have a dozen things I want to say to that ound: