The day was going so well...and then...

This morning I went out to the garage with the intention of cleaning the carbs on my '87 VFR700. I recently acquired it....in decent shape, but had sat for a year or two. The bike started easily, but stumbled as you gave it throttle....making takeoffs rather interesting. Idle, then a sudden surge of power. I figured the carbs must be gunked up.

I've never taken a set of carbs apart, but was fairly certain I could do it. The guy gave me a Honda shop manual with the bike and I just followed the steps to get them apart and cleaned them with carb cleaner and compressed air.

A few hours later, the bike was back together and it ran great! Nice, smooth power as you give it gas. Problem solved.

Fast forward to this evening....

I was taking the bike down off of the swingarm stand when.....CRUNCH. The bike tipped over on its right side. Damn! Totally my fault for not taking my time and being careful. Why these bikes came without center stands, I'll never know.

The previous owner had dropped the bike (he said it blew over) on its right side a few years ago, so this is at least the second time its been down. Luckily, no plastic broke, although the right mirror mount/brace bent quite a bit, pushing the gauge cluster to the left, breaking all of the mounting bolts off the back. Also, the windshield got pretty scraped up since the bike fell against some metal shelving in the garage. Hoping I can just epoxy the mounts back onto the gauge cluster.

I've spent the last couple of hours straightening things out and putting things back together. Damn it....the day was going so well too.

Just had to vent.

 

Sorry to hear that. It always seems to be the easiest things, huh?

 

Maybe its trying to tell you to modify the side stand?

sorry to hear about it toppling over...

 

Thanks guys. Well, the epoxy job on the back of the gauge cluster seems to have worked o.k. and most everything is straightened out. Not sure if i'd call it a blessing in disguise, but straightening things up made me realize that the front end may have been a bit crooked to begin with. I had thought that there was a fork alignment issue going on, but now it appears that it may be that the front fairing/gauge cluster was a little off, making me think that the steering was off center. We'll see tomorrow I suppose. Just got back from a midnight run to Walmart to get a 3M headlight polishing kit to try and get the scratches off of the windshield.