New "project" fell into my garage

An old co-worker of mine was going to take his old (and in rough condition) '86 VFR700fII to the boneyard. It's now in my garage. It probably even runs, once I fill the battery back up with water and sit it on the charger for a while. It was known to run fairly recently, and then the keys were left on, and a battery-tender didn't fix it (but appears to have boiled the battery pretty badly).

anyway, it's a salvage title, and pretty beaten, but it's mechanically stock (engine/carbs/emissions/exhaust). The body... well, it's had a rough life.

But, it has a couple parts that I need (center stand, left fairing insert panel), and then I'll probably put it up for sale if it's sound. Otherwise, see if anyone wants a parts bike.

It won't be allowed to take up space in the garage for too long (ie, less than a year).

For a bit, I had visions of a "vintage restored" VFR and a heavily modified "racer" VFR, but this is too beaten up for either of those roles. Well, it's too beaten for the former, and I don't have the patience to turn it into the latter, but I'd be surprised if someone around here didn't.

Anyway, if you think you're interested in it, lemme know.

What I *WON'T* be doing is parting it out past mechanically operable myself. It's registered, titled, etc, and I plan on keeping it that way. Although from sneaking a peek at eBay, it's worth more as parts than whole (but then, apparently so is my other bike, which is in great condition aside from some fairing repainting that's needed).

 

You have been a member long enough to know that

 

yeah, yeah yeah., hold on.




Not a pretty bike, but a functional one.

 

Yeah, she's pretty rough. Nice grab with the centerstand.

Don't want to make the bike into a Track only Weekend racer?

 

I was thinking about that, but honestly, if I was going to do a weekend racer, I'd end up doing so much upgrade work on it.... might as well start with a later-model bike that already has that done to it. Although I've been tempted to tear down my "nice" vfr, blueprint the engine (by myself as a fun project, but leaving the machining to someone else). And then going exceedingly modern everywhere I can (forks, shocks, FI, etc), but that would clearly be a "money-sink" type of project with no hope of an ROI, just done for the fun of it. But I'm not sure the 2nd-gen VFR is a good choice for that. It has the character (vs. say a non-hurricane CBR), but it's so oddsize in places (those LONG forks), and then it's a relatively heavy bike for what it is (vs. a CBR1000). So, I really dunno.

But with a baby girl around, my free time is suddenly much, much less, so this is probably all pipe dreams anyway.

 

Its all there. It would be a shame to chop it up.

 

Yeah, I think I'm going to swap some parts around, and then see if I can find someone that wants it as a running bike. I hate destroying running things. It has a salvage title, but for a bike this old, it's not like it was going to be insured for anything other than liability anyway.

 

Sell it cheap to ToeCutter. He needs more projects.

 

sell it to me. I"ll give you $75 cash. well ok, I'd need more than that wouldnt I? its a sweet bike though, no doubt.

 

Hey Woody77,

I got a complete set of plastics I collected for my project I wouldn't mind selling now. And if you want to part with those little hollow bolts on the side of the seat for mounting the cowl I would love to buy them.

 

mvxwinn: I'm not looking to part it out, yet... this weekend I think I'll swap some stuff to my bike, but for now I'm going to keep it in rideable (and sellable) condition. Old bikes are pretty popular around here for starter bikes. This one might be too rough for that, though. Or, if someone wanted to take it on as a project, I'd probably pass it along. I just didn't want to see a boneyard take it apart until I'd had a good look at it.

 

I understand. My wife thinks I run a shelter for wayward and lost motorcycles. It pains me to see a bike get parted out. I always want to save them. And that is how I got this 700. It kinda looked like yours maybe worse but I got it running really well so then started the cosmetic make over and upgrades. Way more into it than it is worth!!

 

dude that bike isnt nearly as "rough" as you make it sound. just a little bit of luvin and that old girl will be purring like a kitten in the garage and screamin like a banshee on the freeways. do that bike some justice and fix her up to where she deserves to be!

 

After filling up the battery with distilled water (it was nearly bone dry) and about a day of love from my favorite battery charger (Schumacher's SC-1200A), I was able to get the bike to start. It took a LOT of turning over the engine before it caught, but it finally caught, and it does purr rather nicely. There's an oil leak at the rear of the engine (without taking it apart, I'm guess rear valve cover), but otherwise, this bike looks completely sound mechanically.

I'm going to finish up the DMV paperwork, and then take it out for a ride and see how it fares (expired tags at the moment).

Then I'm going to swap a couple parts to my bike that I want, and then I think I'm going to put it up for sale.

It's a salvage, and the bodywork is in really rough condition, but it's a great base for someone to build a track bike from, if they wanted a 25yo V4 track bike). Given the popularity in the area that the older bikes are having (mainly due to being cheap, I think), I know I can find someone locally that would want it. But I'd rather see someone pick it up that's going to be able to do good stuff with it. I'd love to tear into the engine and blueprint it, swap in some 750cc components from another wrecked bike, see if I could pick up higher compression pistons, throw a race engine controller on it, and see how much I could get out of the engine on 91 (vs 87), but I just don't have the time for that right now. Work and a 4mo daughter are kicking my behind.

 

Man if you were closer to me, my step son would love to have that thing. Battered fairings wouldn't matter to him.

Nice save, BTW.

 

That's kinda my thought. The 700 has great torque, but isn't so likely to get you into trouble as the race-replica 600s are. It's not "docile", as it's pretty fantastic fun, but it doesn't want to really get away from you, either. But then I started on mine at roughly age 30.

And this bike? you wouldn't cry at all if you dropped it on it's side...

But TN is a bit of a haul...