plskthompson1
Well-known member
I couldn't resist guys, I had to share the story of my rebuild. Those of you from NGW have seen it already, but for those of you who haven't been there, here goes.
I bought my 1100I a year ago this past August, and she was horrible. The only reason I dropped the amount of money on her that I did was because I had driven so far to pick her up. This was a sight unseen purchase basically, and the PO said "I think it looks GREAT." Yeah right.
I was appalled when I got there. I had never seen such a hack job done on any bike. She had a cat eye tail light that you could barely see. Instead of the hard bags, he had attached a set of leather bags under the seat. And by attached, I mean he screwed them to the fender.
Where the original trunk should have been, he had "rigged" a 1200 trunk in for the turn signals. Instead of an extra break light, he done away with the original turn signals. Go figure.
She had the very stylish and custom duct tape seat. That was horrible in August, your pants always got sticky from the glue on hot days.
The biggest thing that bothered me about her, was the flame paint job. Don't get me wrong, done the right way, flames can look good on anything, but these looked like trash. On top of that there was a red vinyl cobra sticker on top of the faux tank.
Over the past year, I feel like I have done quite a bit, but not a lot either to restore the girl to her glory. I have since replaced the leather bags with the original hard bags, replaced the original trunk, added a brighter tail light, added in some LED turn signals, as well as found a pair of originals to put in place after the paint gets laid on. I have the trunk and side panels in primer as well as one of the lower fairings, and bag lids.
I just today started removing parts to get ready for paint and major work. I know, before you guys start flaming me for not doing it, I should have changed the timing belts, but I didn't and that is on the list to do before next spring. Here a few pics of some more recent work, including what has been done so far today. Just FYI, I recovered the seat my self.
My plan is to do a two step paint job, like on the faired 1200's, using O'Reilly shelf tan and burnt orange that was mixed to match a Dupont Hot Hues color sample. The story on the tan is, I went in to O'Reilly's knowing for sure that I wanted to use the burnt orange, but I wasn't sure what secondary color I wanted. The guy behind the counter had been adjusting some shelves that day when I asked him if he could go ahead and mix the orange while I searched through the books of paint chips. He said sure and laid a piece of the shelving over the color sample that I had chose. I closed the paint chip book and asked if he could match the color on that piece and he said he would try. He brought out this little eye gadget and went over to one of the clean shelves took what looked like three pics and went to the back room. When he came back, he had a quart of each color in his hand. I was amazed, and I personally think it's going to look great.
I'll keep you posted on how she turns out.
I bought my 1100I a year ago this past August, and she was horrible. The only reason I dropped the amount of money on her that I did was because I had driven so far to pick her up. This was a sight unseen purchase basically, and the PO said "I think it looks GREAT." Yeah right.
I was appalled when I got there. I had never seen such a hack job done on any bike. She had a cat eye tail light that you could barely see. Instead of the hard bags, he had attached a set of leather bags under the seat. And by attached, I mean he screwed them to the fender.
Where the original trunk should have been, he had "rigged" a 1200 trunk in for the turn signals. Instead of an extra break light, he done away with the original turn signals. Go figure.
She had the very stylish and custom duct tape seat. That was horrible in August, your pants always got sticky from the glue on hot days.
The biggest thing that bothered me about her, was the flame paint job. Don't get me wrong, done the right way, flames can look good on anything, but these looked like trash. On top of that there was a red vinyl cobra sticker on top of the faux tank.
Over the past year, I feel like I have done quite a bit, but not a lot either to restore the girl to her glory. I have since replaced the leather bags with the original hard bags, replaced the original trunk, added a brighter tail light, added in some LED turn signals, as well as found a pair of originals to put in place after the paint gets laid on. I have the trunk and side panels in primer as well as one of the lower fairings, and bag lids.
I just today started removing parts to get ready for paint and major work. I know, before you guys start flaming me for not doing it, I should have changed the timing belts, but I didn't and that is on the list to do before next spring. Here a few pics of some more recent work, including what has been done so far today. Just FYI, I recovered the seat my self.
My plan is to do a two step paint job, like on the faired 1200's, using O'Reilly shelf tan and burnt orange that was mixed to match a Dupont Hot Hues color sample. The story on the tan is, I went in to O'Reilly's knowing for sure that I wanted to use the burnt orange, but I wasn't sure what secondary color I wanted. The guy behind the counter had been adjusting some shelves that day when I asked him if he could go ahead and mix the orange while I searched through the books of paint chips. He said sure and laid a piece of the shelving over the color sample that I had chose. I closed the paint chip book and asked if he could match the color on that piece and he said he would try. He brought out this little eye gadget and went over to one of the clean shelves took what looked like three pics and went to the back room. When he came back, he had a quart of each color in his hand. I was amazed, and I personally think it's going to look great.
I'll keep you posted on how she turns out.
