Okay, as of this past Tuesday I became the designated mechanic for/proud owner of a 91 VFR750 in road rash red that has been badly neglected for the past 5+ years. As far as I can tell someone laid the bike down in a fairly impressive way then took it home, threw some stabil in the tank and left it sit ever since. I paid $420 for it. As expected, it has some fairly significant issues. In order of precedence they are: frozen throttle body carb gaskets "electrical gremlins" all the fairings were held on by zip ties and most of em were cracked For item one: I noticed immediately that the throttle would not turn at all. As part of the initial evaluation I planned to do a carb cleaning; after wrestling the beast off I was unable to rotate the butterfly valves. One can of carb cleaner later, I can now rotate the valves through the expedient of a wrench applied to the linkage but they stay in whatever position they are turned to. Where should I start? Total tear-down? Item two: again, as part of the initial evaluation and carb cleaning I realized I need to get a set of carb gaskets. I'd really not like to pay $40 a pop for a thin strip of rubber. Do I have any alternatives? Item three: previous owner indicated symptoms consistent with the R/R problem endemic to this series of bikes. I ordered the VFRness and an aftermarket R/R and Stator from wiremybike.com but I have yet to tear into that since I got sidetracked by issue one. Items four and five: as someone else said elsewhere on the forum, fairings for this generation are as easy to find as rabbit antlers. I have no experience doing plastic bodywork at all. A complete set of aftermarket fairings (unfinished) runs about $1000 - far more than I'm willing to spend at this point and for the foreseeable future. TL/DR Given all that, what should I budget to get my bike into decent shape? Is it worth this much to get it working?
Active copy of thread located in mechanics discussion: http://vfrworld.com/forums/mechanics-garage/30305-new-me-91-need-serious-help.html - please post there.