1984 VF700F Project Bike

I'm in the works of starting my first road bike project, a 1984 VF700F. A little under 30000 miles on the odometer, and the bike was rode hard and put away wet...very wet, to say the least. I got the bike from a girl at school, after finding out about it in a completely random conversation.

The Good: well, it's a V4, so I guess that's good =P, other than that, not much
The Bad: nearly every electric thing on the bike is trash as far as I can tell, with a bad starter, solenoid and wire from the solenoid to the starter leading the way. No oil mod either, so I'm unsure about the status on the cams.
The Ugly: the headlight bracket is trash, the fairings were all trashed, and the tank was dented (after a ratchet strap broke in the truck, the tank got another dent on it :frown

With the lack of green in my wallet, and the current state of the bike, I plan to "customize" it, and in my current state of mind, that would include rewiring the entire bike, and redoing the suspension to something a little more sporty. I have seen people mention fork swaps, and I was curious about a couple things with suspension on these bikes.
1)When swapping forks, you need to swap triple trees from the other bike too, right?
2)I heard the rear strut wasn't the greatest in the 1st gen, upgrade options?

Since this is my first road bike, I really don't know what to expect with it. I have high aspirations for this, but for this winter, my main goals are to go through the engine, and get it rewired and painted. Any advice on any points I made would be greatly appreciated.

 

And here are some pictures.(I Hope)

 

Lol,looks WAY cleaner than I thought it would from your first description. Good starting point in my honest opinion.

 

Well, the worst spot on the body was on the right side of the tank, and the wiring was pretty well chopped, but hey, nothing a lot of free time can't fix.

I have a feeling the bike sat outside without a cover for a couple years before I got it.

Currently, the bike is chilling without the light/gauge cluster assembly, while I was trying to get it started. Can't even jump the starter with a battery charger. But the engine isn't locked up, she rolls with the plugs out in gear. Best part, the top bolt broke off in the starter when I went to take it out to test it out of bike...

 

If you don't have a lot of green my advice is sell this for parts and move on to a 2nd gen if you want a project bike.
Sell it before you start sinking too much money in.

 

What makes the 1st gen more costly to own than a 2nd gen?
The main mods I expected to do for this year would be rebuild the carbs, regasket the engine, do the oil mod, and check the cam lobes of course. If suspension pieces are bad, I would replace them, but I would only do the mods mentioned in the prior post if I fell in love with riding the bike. I figured $500-1000 for everything needed to be legal, and in good running condition.

Am I off base?

 

1st gen is not a great bike to have if it is your only bike and you don't have a lot of scratch. There were fundamental design flaws (chocolate cams) and loosey goosy cam chain tensioners that were corrected in the 2nd gen design. Plus, it is an old bike and will require more money to be dumped in at various intervals when things go bad.

 

Based on what you just said, unless I only planned to ride the bike for a short time,it really wouldn't make much sense to own a first gen, right? Is it an option to swap the 2nd gen engine in, or are the 2nd gens priced reasonably? My main deal is, regardless of condition, I prefer cafe racers and street fighters. I don't care if a bike is in poor cosmetic shape, because I would do my own thing with it anyways. At this point, I feel like I could break even with it, which is why I wanted to check with you all before I did anything else.

 

How is a 2nd gen newer? Its still a old bike with crap brake crap suspension so on and so forth, the bike looks like a great platform to start on id say keep it and bring her back to life.

 

Well, I don't have the money to throw $1500 at it by way of the oil mod, new lights, carb rebuild, gasket set, possibly cams, new wiring, electric components, etc. I think the bikes are cool, v4s are cool, but I honestly just want a running bike with a decent sized engine that I wouldn't grow bored with. I can get 91 zx6(no r) ninjas for 1200ish, along with similar honda, yamaha, and suzuki counterparts. I wouldn't mind putting between 500 to 1000 getting this bike going, but more than that wouldn't be smart when I'm in college.

I honestly don't know what I would have in it, or what I would need to do to get this running and safe. I know that you all don't know either, but how much does a typical rebuild cost, not including cosmetic bs.

 

If you are still in college and you are depending on it for transportation this bike is definitely not for you.
If you have money to blow then by all means blow away.
Take whatever figure you think it will cost and multiply that by 2 or more, once you start opening up the can of worms you will see more things that need addressing to get the bike roadworthy.
These older bikes are not for the faint of wallet, especially 1st gens. If you have a stable of bikes and have a want for a gen 1 then I could understand wanting to have this bike to wrench and restore.

 

Well, I guess I wasn't complete with my explanation. I grew up a car guy, my dad hated motorcycles. I had a few project cars, but with my parents divorcing, and both downsizing, there is no space to work on a car. After selling both my 1980 and 1997 z28s, I instantly had the itch to work on something else.

On the topic of opening cans of worms, I'm very famaliar with that. I threw over $2000 last summer at my 80, trying for 400+ hp, and was met with faulty parts, lack of resources for certain things, breaking ARP bolts due to a faulty torque wrench. After tearing down the engine 3 times, and needing to move, I didn't have much choice but to sell it, after reverting to stockish.

Due to a friend constantly pestering, I bought a dirt bike, to test out 2 wheels. After a rebuild, I tried it out, and really enjoyed it. This will be my first road bike. I understand how builds can go with throwing money at them, which makes me think I need a more simple bike, or something that already runs. These bikes are caught at the weird stage of overwiring, as these bikes have more wires than my friends 06 zx6r, without having the fuel injection of the kawi.

I really don't have any idea what these bikes cost to rebuild so I don't know where to start. I just know I have wiring issues to address to make sure she runs.

 

Definitely expect to throw some money into this and remember that you will likely NOT get out of it what you put into it. How much you put into it and what exactly you want to do with the bike is up to you. I am rebuilding an '85 VF700f and have put in ~$1000. Now, that includes a shock and fork rebuild, oil mod, paint, head gaskets, SS bolts, oil, tools, etc. etc. This is something I have always wanted to do and I am OK with all the money I have put into it. Do I wish I had started w/ a Gen 2? Yes, but I did not know what I knew now and have learned from it. I have also learned a tremendous amount about the Gen 1's and motorcycles in general so in my experience it has all been worth it.

Now you said the starter was bad. I can tell you that those are not as easy to find as you might think. I thought my starter was bad and searched all over Ebay and could not find a replacement below $50 that I wasn't 100% positive would fit my bike. Wiring harnesses are not always cheap either. You might want to take stock of what you THINK might need to be replaced and do some looking around to get a ballpark figure of what your up against. Also, if you decide to wrench on this bike, dig into the engine, etc. get a shop manual. I would recommend a factory manual and a Haynes/Clymer (I believe there is a PDF version of one of them on this forum). I have found it very helpful to have two sources to reference.

 

To be honest, I want the bike to be running, and rideable. I like projects, but honestly, I wish I woulda got either an older bike, or a newer bike. 1st gens seem to be more expensive to fix, and a lot of things go wrong with them so it seems. The main thing that scares me about the bike is the amount of sensors and "stuff to go wrong" on the bike. I plan on giving myself a budget, and if I don't think I can stay under, then halfassing it to just get a season out of it, or selling it, and waiting to get another vf.

 

CB750 1969-1976 is the way to go for a dependable bulletproof old bike to project on. Or a 550 from about the same years.

 

I noticed that they are very popular, I had saw a few on local Craigslists that were decently priced. How much money needs thrown at those bikes to get running well, reliably?

 

A few hundred to get them roadworthy depending on what the PO's did to them.
Way easier to get new and used parts for those bikes than your 1st gen VF, waaaaay more reliable too.

 

Definitely easier to work on but I wouldn't go so far as to say more reliable.

You are still talking about a vintage bike that will require a good deal of technical knowledge to keep running, i.e. simply setting the dwell on the Kettering system is a bit of a lost art.

 

Child's play with a dwell meter, points file, Hondaman ignition and manual. Or just go the lazy route and buy a Dyna solid state ignition.