The RC46 story

I'm not a massive sticker fan as they tend to detract from the lines of the bike. This bike had quite a few Team Roberts LTD stickers all over her and although not terrible to look at, they didn't mean allot to me so had to go. I was worried that the old stickers might damage the paint work when I tried to remove them but was relieved to see them wrinkle up and slide off with a bit of pressure using a finger nail.  Not fancying tearing my nails off over this; I went about finding a soft scraper and settled on a paint rattle can lid. When held to make the bottom oval it becomes strong enough to chip away at the transfers without being so strong it scratched the paint work.  For the first couple I used WD40 to soften the adhesive but it didn't make allot of difference and seemed to make the scraper skip over the transfers so did the rest dry. After allot of scraping I used household polish to lift any residual glue by leaving it on there for 10 minutes then b...

A quick and dirty blog update. I wanted a Baglux/ Bagster cover. So I bought one. But being the cheap ass that I am of course it was second hand from ebay. The most interesting thing about this and the whole point in this blog update is that this is a VFR800 VTEC cover. As the VTEC model was built for longer, there are more covers for them in the second hand market and cheaper as a result. They fit the VFR800 FI just as well less the top back corners that are a touch to big where the VTEC's tank flares out more but you can't really notice. The main point is I got a colour matched £100 Baglux cover for £15 win! Also what you might have made out from the background of the image above is a seat cowl. Colour matched and picked up for a fiver. Always worth checking the auction section of ebay! Luckily for me the cowl was marked as scratched so I got it for the minimum bid. The scratch was no worse than I would have expected if nothing was mentioned at all. This ...

After that little rodent issue I was keen to have a good look around the VFR to see how everything was under there. Images of chewed wires and hoses were in my mind and as yet I hadn't found the culprit so was expecting to find a cooked mouse somewhere. All of the fasteners are hex driven stainless into steel captive nuts or rubberized plugs for the forward fairing. That means they were relatively corrosion free and came off easily bar one rubber plug that had become brittle and required replacing (always worth having a few of these in the draw as they regularly fail). As there was no hand rail the seat unit came off quickly with the light unit in place (just needs unplugging from the loom.The inner front fairing is held in by quarter turn plastic clips that you should remove first as they can be a pain if under strain. The top of this fairing clips into the nose fairing inner fairing so be careful not to snap this when removing it (it is pretty durable though). The fo...