So we have finally gotten settled enough in the new house for me to take the morning ‘off’ and paint the bike. Pretty straightforward, since I’ve done this a couple of times now. Pulled the front fender, scuffed it with some 320-grit sandpaper and hit it with a couple layers of flat enamel. Removed the tank and scuffed it with the 320-grit, then it got 3 good coats of spray-on bedliner. Not quite as bumpy as I’d wanted, but it appear it’s hard as rock, so I shouldn’t have any wear issues. The chin fairing got pulled, cleaned (it was nasty!), and then got a coat of bedliner followed by a coat of semi-gloss enamel, mostly because I was running low on bedliner.
Since I had the tank pulled I figured I’d take the opportunity to swap out the fuel-level sending unit underneath, as the one from the 98-model tank didn’t like talking to my 2002 gauges, and I still had the original ’02 fuel level sender in the VFR tank in the corner of the garage. Somehow managed to get the big O-ring misaligned, so when I tightened the nuts holding the unit to the tank… it gashed the O-ring. I of course did not find this out until I put the fuel back in the tank, which sparked a long string of expletives and other theatrics since I had already bolted the front of the tank down and reinstalled the steering damper, both of which had to be undone before I could remedy the leak. I decided to use a healthy helping of moly-grease to hold my spare O-ring in place on the tank the 2nd go around, which did the trick.
So enough with the blathering on, Pictures already!
The bedliner turned out a bit more shiny than I was expecting, but that’s okay. She’s approaching full-on rat-bike status at this point, so I’m not overly concerned.
Note the nastiness level of the chain… even with the dirt section of road only being a 1/4 mile or so, I think I’ll need to clean and lube it on a much more regular basis since I’m commuting 100+ miles a day (round trip) on it.
I think the chin fairing turned out pretty well. I may have to pull the pipes and put another couple of coats on them, but they’re working out okay for now.
Since I didn’t post one last time, here’s a shot of what the view in the mirrors looks like. Not quite as good for looking way behind me (I sit to the right and look over my left shoulder for ‘way back’ anyway), but they don’t vibrate nearly as much as the stock ones did, and have a good field of view.
And… speaking of evil lurking:
This concrete block sits next to the house, at the front of the side yard, inside the fence. Kaiser and Resa had the thing cornered but were luckily not stupid enough to get bitten. Looks like I’m going to be doing some research on Gemtech or Surefire suppressors for the xD and filling out more unnecessary ATF paperwork some time in the relatively near future…
like the bike but not your friend!!!