Hello there!!

New to the board. I just made a deal on a 1987 VFR700F2. It's been in my neighbor's garage for about 12 years under a cover. It belongs to his son-in-law. I checked it out last week and it looks super clean except for some surface dust. Offered $400, he accepted. Such a deal.
My plans are:

Roll it across the street tonight...:congratulatory:

Fuel system
Drain and inspect tank and petcock
verify all lines are drained
pull carb(s) and check
Check air filter
Check plugs
If it fires up, continue on with the maintenance

Brakes
Disassemble both calipers, check for sludge and lube all sliding parts
Bleed all brake lines,
Check master cylinders for wear/sludge
Clutch
Replace fluid
Check for wear/sludge on reservoir/cylinder
Change oil/filter
Check tires (assuming they need to be replaced)
New Battery (will use one from DRZ to get it fired up)
Check all lights
Drain radiators, flush system, refill (any recommendations for coolant?)
Check all hoses
Clean/lube/adjust chain
Check fork seals for leaking (probably won't be any leaks until I start riding it)


Anything you veterans can think I'm missing from this list to get started?

Thanks in advance,


THRASHED

 

:welcome: to the MADNESS THRASHED :wave:
That is a steal :thumb:
When you have a chance post up some picture of this Barn find

 

Oh, believe me, I totally subscribe to the Pic Theory. I'll start with where it sits and start my build report from there.. :mechanic:

 

Welcome! you will find a lot of great info here.
2 quickies: be careful with the carbs it very easy to break the lines.
if you pull the clutch slave cylinder be very careful when retightening
the screws they strip easily and I believe 1 of the bolts is slightly different
so be sure to put it back in the right spot. Now I would probably just put
some fresh gas in it, check the oil and see if it starts. ENJOY

 

That's first on the agenda

 

Wow! Welcome...great deal for $400. I hope it needs very little and gives you much enjoyment!

 

Fresh gas and seafoam should do the bike good.

 

Thanks for the seafoam reminder. I've heard good things about it. So, here's what I see so far and it's still in the neighbor's garage:

Needs rear brake rotor (are these turnable?)
Needs fork seals
Last registration date...wait for it....1996. Does this count as a barn find??

 

That was a great deal! Sweet 1st gen. I always liked the blue/silver paint scheme on these bikes, and yours seem to be in excellent shape. Take care of the plastic, it's rare and expensive to replace...

Otherwise there's nothing really exotic about these bikes. You might want to check the charging voltage, the early VFR had a weak regulator. Just do the usual stuff...replace all fluids, including the fork oil. Lube the chain if it's not stretched & check the sprockets for wear. Tires that old are OK for short rides when you're getting it sorted out, but should be replaced before you do 'real' riding.

Given how long it was stored, you'll likely need to get the carbs cleaned. I'd avoid using any carb cleaner, it can damage the vacuum diaphragms. If you find a good local bike shop with an ultrasonic tank, you can have the whole rack dipped & cleaned up cheaply. I know that squirrelman here on the board will clean up carbs too, if you run into trouble. I think Billy Carr can set you up with a complete carb overhaul kit in several flavors, including new seals, o-rings, washers & spring pins.

 

Managed to get it to my garage...with the front forks locked thanks to my awesome 13-year-old son's help. Started stripping it down, found a few expansion nut tubes broken (Q-Bond on the way) and decided to clean a piece up. Not too bad. Will never be show room but that's not what I'm after, especially with the footlong crack on the right faring where it was dropped (Plastex maybe?)

 

Trying to order front fork seals. Partzilla shows two different numbers: 51490-ML7-305 and 51490-KAZ-003. Though they show both right and left exploded views, it doesn't say R, or L on the description for the different numbers and they both list (2) as quantity. Any suggestions?

 

Hey desktopdave, how would I contact Billy carr? Just pulled my first bowl. The bowl gasket is FLAT and with all off the black varnish, I'm assuming o-rings and seals will need to be replaced.

 

I can go through your carbs, inspect, clean, replace any faulty parts, assemble, adjust, synch and leak-test your carbs or simply supply the float bowl O-rings you need (shipping is free). PM me with your needs.:loyal:

 

Hey Thrashed. Take Squirrel up on his offer. He is our resident dinosaur...old shit....senior citizen. Or what ever. Regardless, he is known for his carb experience.

SQ. You da man. If I ever make that epic trip, meeting you for a gut bomb at your local choke and puke and a pint or two is guaranteed. Maybe you know someone with some product?

 

PM Sent about carbs

 

An update and a couple of pictures. So, by now I'm just about done with the carbs. It's that that I'm super slow (well, not entirely) but with two teenagers in the house, and a full-time job, I don't have abundant spare time. The biggest stumbling blocks so far were the Start up jets (finding where they routed so I could clear both ends) and the idle mix screws. Three of the four mix screw tips twisted off inside the glue-like old gasoline. Luckily one didn't, so I noticed the difference. It took hours of soaking with carb cleaner and blowing air to get them out but they are finally done. Also due to the sticky gas, I twisted the tip off of a choke rod. Luckily for me a member here was parting out their 87 700 and I bought the water-damaged carb assembly. Apparently the water isn't nearly as sticky as old fuel :eek-new: The assembly is back together and I'm just waiting for my float valves/seats from Parzilla to finish the rebuild.
The gas tank doesn't look too bad. Dropped a gallon of lacquer thinner in there yesterday and it seems to be doing the trick. I rebuild the clutch assembly and bought new rubbers but it is still not disengaging the gears. I've had this happen on my DRZ so I'm not going to panic until I get the bike running and see if it frees up. Hopefully going to get the brakes rebuilt this weekend.

These are a couple of pics of the small bits:



the strange thing ws that they looked polished on the broken end. That should have set off alarms because NOTHING looked polished anywhere else in the carbs LOL:



And the choke rod:

 

Glad my bottom of the sea carbs were able to help you out!

If you need clutch parts I have the entire clutch assembly in a box so let me know.

 

I will. Just the idle mix screws and choke rod saved my bacon. thanks again for the smokin' deal.

 

IT LIVES!!! Got the carbs back on and it fired right up (used a battery charger/jumper to prime the carbs). It sounds very smooth but I do have an issue. When I first primed the carbs I had fuel running out of the carbon canister (CA bike). I'm assuming it was the constant running of the pump. Once I shut that down and ran it with the fuel pump everything was fine but now the idle is high. I put a good amount of Sea Foam in the tank to clean up anything I may have missed and have started the bike several times and let it run up to operating temps, then let it cool down and repeated the cycle. This definitely helped as the idle has dropped a little (yes I adjusted the #2 idle screw, but there's a threshold where it wants to drop too far). I think I remember hearing about getting fuel in the carbon canister and issues with running after that. Any thoughts on this? My DRZ400 had one of these and I removed it as soon as I bought the bike because of similar problems other owners had.

Next step may be to try to vacuum sync the carbs myself. I've got a buddy that has a mercury syncing tool and I'm pretty sure I could get it done, but if I can find a local shop that won't charge me an arm and a leg, I may leave it to the pros.

Now that I know it runs, I can start working on the other fun stuff:

Rebuild brakes
Rebuild (again, but this time replace upper plunger) clutch master cylinder
fork seals (not sure they are needed, will clean them up and run less air and see what happens)
Battery
Tires

Not tooooo bad.

 

Awesome stuff man! Glad to hear it is running!