Nasty fairing damage(any suggestions?)

[Lagmo]

Well it finally happened, i lost the rearend in a turn today and lowsided my pride & joy

I got off with a scraped knee and bruised ego, but how about my precious?

Will i have to do a full fairing swap(yikes, expensive) or is it possible to do something creative with this?

[The CyberPoet]

eBay for a replacement, or a plastic welder and paint.

Cheers
=-= The CyberPoet

[Katgirl]

Definately ebay, that sucks!

[SUPA-FLY-KAT]

hey, as long as you r ok, they dont sell body parts on ebay...or not that i know of....lol. i have the left front blinker her 4 free if you want, dont know how much the shipping would be to denmark...

[xbubbax]

oh god lagmo, im glad your ok.

[Lagmo]

thank for the offer SUPA-fly but i think shipping it do DK would be too expensive to make sense. Really nice of you to offer though

Everyone else: thanks for the kind words, i'll be allright i just got to learn to take it easier heh

As for riding i've done a check-over together with my dad, the bikes running again and he even has a spare clutch grip & blinker set i can buy cheap. I also have a new Contiforce rear tire i'll be fitting as well.
So if everything goes according to plan, i should be running again within a week or so

But i still need to do something about the gaping hole i've managed to put in the side of the fairing. Was thinking of maybe filling it in with some aluminum plating, maybe just bolting it directly onto the fairing atleast untill i can get a new one from Ebay/classifieds etc.

Just not sure if it's possible to do this, so it looks even halfway decent.

In the meanwhile i'm still open to suggestions as well as quotes on fairing prices for a pre98 kat (assuming 750's will fit my 600?)

[BraadaJim]

Sorry to hear you put it down. It's just metal and plastic though so the important thing is that you are well enough to be able to come here and post about it.

That fairing is not as bad as you may think and is entirely fixable. A decent used one on ebay is going to set you back $125-$150. IMO that money could be much better spent repairing the one you have. It looks really really bad right now because....
1) your not used to seeing your baby that way
2) It's dirty from the getoff and the "uniform" decal and paint scheme are no longer uniform.
3) I'm assuming this is the first time you've been faced with something like this so your not 100% on what you need to do.


What you actually have there is what I would call 80 grit scratches and a 6 inch weld. Meaning grab some 80 grit paper and sand out all the scratches (most will probably not need filled), slap a little bondo in the gouges or fill with 2 part rigid repair kit (available at NAPA) and get a high watt variable temp soldering pen ($35 at local farm supply/hardware, wood burning kits work good too) and melt the crack back together.
From the pic it looks like most of the plastic is still there, just mangled, so a small piece of ABS scrap for free from the local bone yard to melt in would do the trick. Plastic sands like wood and welds like bubblegum. It's not hard, just a little time consuming and takes a little practice. The basics are to sand away the paint from the weld edge, clamp the two halves together and then work the plastic in an "X" pattern in the crack digging down into it with the welder. Work 1" at a time doing both sides front and back from top to bottom. Welder should be hot enough to melt but not so hot that it makes the plastic bubble or boil.
Join the halves, sand and finish with a little dough or more plastic now that you have the hang of melting it and prep it for paint....sand sand sand.

You can get paint from color-rite if your picky about an exact dead on match, or you can get "15 feet" colors sometimes at the auto parts store for touchups. Lou has a nice write-up on painting stickied to help with that.

The stripe decal is going to be tough to find but they are still out there. Very slim chance but I maybe, maybe, maybe (doubtful but not nonexistant) know where to get a replacement if you can find the OEM part number for it. Or you can do like most folks anyway and peel them puppies off for free.

Give it a shot. You'll learn a new skill that you will use again at some point, hopefully not from another get off but from age and stress cracks. You'll save a couple of bucks or at worst come out even with what you would have spent anyway, and you'll have the satisfaction and pride of knowing you fixed it.


Oh, and if you decide you'd rather just go the replacement route....I call dibs on your old fairing

[Yellow]

You could go this route if you want to make it easy... Not so pretty in my eyes though:

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7975732137&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1

[md86]

Looks ALOT like my fairing damage I've been riding around with for the last 2 years ... Maybe I'll get around to doing something about it someday . At least YOU ain't too damaged , so you can fix the bike !

[Lagmo]

Looks ALOT like my fairing damage I've been riding around with for the last 2 years ... Maybe I'll get around to doing something about it someday . At least YOU ain't too damaged , so you can fix the bike !

ya, just fixed the clutch grip today and took the bike out for a spin, everything seems to be in working order.
Still need to do something about the smashed up blinker though, the replacements i had where too short to fit through the side of the fairing.

I'll just have my dad put in an orderfor the extended versions instead.

so long as i can still ride everything is groovy, for now i'm just taking it easy looking for a new fairing part, dosn't seem to be any danger in running the bike 'as is'.
I'll keep the old fairing part to practise the plastic welding technique BraadaJim talked about, seems like it's a fairly handy skill to have

[2K5GSX600F]

I would also suggest fiberglass patching the hole. I just repaired a friend's R1 front fairing with fiberglass and you can't even tell there was ever a broken piece.

[WildKat]

wow, glad your ok.. the bike is fixable, alot moreso than you are. chin up !


if you were closer around here, I could name a place to do it for you if you were so inclined as to not do it urself.. but the shipping probalby wouldnt be worth it. Jim put up some great ideas to do it yourself and you can be proud of the work you did.

[ronniebaby]

Sorry to hear about your crash glad you are ok though.
When I was faced with the same problem I went out and bought sand paper and fiberglass filler. I then worked on my repair for one hour per day until eventually It was done!

[duff daddy]

i donno if someone said it but there is no way in hell yo ucan get that back to pre crash condition by plasti welding it, NO WAY just bite hte bullet go to ebay get some used ones or NOS and put em on, and plus now it gives you a good reason for a custom paint job

[md86]

But fixing it would be WAY cheaper than buying another fairing . Of course , duct tape is even cheaper !