86 seat cowl (tail section)

Does anyone know if these are available from honda anymore? I saw one on ebay last night.

 

im switchen mine to a rc30 tail section what are you interested in the tail section ,seat and seat cowl ? make me a offer ?

 

Tailpiece or cowl?

Hello:

I'm not EXACTLY certain what you are inquiring about. Are you asking about the tailpiece (the rear fairing, which includes the tail light)? Or, are you inquiring about the rear seat cowl (which is installed atop the tailpiece)?

If you are asking about the tailpiece, the mold that made the ABS plastic part for the tailpiece is exactly the same for the VFRs ranging from the '86 700 through, and including, the '89 750. In other words, physically, they are EXACTLY the same. However, the part numbers differ due to the paint/decal schemes.

Yes, you can get a new tailpiece from Europe, but you gotta pay Euros for it, and the paint/decals will not match any of the U.S. paint schemes.

77230-ML7-920ZA is the Pearl Crescent White
77230-ML7-920ZB is the Italian Red
77230-ML7-920ZC is the Granite Blue Metallic

Here, for example, is the Pearl White "ZA":
cowl s nh 139p honda
at a cool 181 Euros ($288).

Gray Market

 

Iam intrested in the solo seat cowl, what conditon is it and price?

 

Glad you asked, RWB.

OEM parts houses are quoting rediculous prices for rear cowls.

I have researched many OEM outlets from MRcycles.com which is referenced in the sticky thread on body parts for 1st and 2nd gen in this forum. MR cycles was advertizing up to this week an OEM Rear Cowl for $ 137. and change.

'
"Beaverdamhonda.com had an advertized price for the same part (712A1-ml7-671ZA) of $130.48 up to this week. I have looked at 20 different OEM parts houses and quoted OEM price varied from the low of $130.48 to a high of $300. A very common quoted price for the OEM rear cowl was $197.70. Almost a third of the OEM houses quoted this price in their Fiche.

When I submitted orders including the aforesaid rear cowl to low cost oem parts dealers I would get email replys that the part was no longer available. would I still like to fill the rest of the order. This was the case for every order I made, notwithstanding the fact that not one OEM parts house listed the part as obsolete or unavailable. The OEM dealer I eventually bought from was the only honest dealer, offering the part at $300. They must buy it from europe and ship it as a delayed order to willing customers. Every other dealer was blowing hot air at me. I ordered from each house from cheapest to next most expensive until it was obvious that they were all just blowing air in my face. I did not want to pay $197.70 or $300 to be sure, at that time and did not call those houses with that quoted price.

Instead I went to the after market manufacturers to see what I could find.

Answer: Nothing or next to nothing.

Other than Cobalt racing AKA VFRCHUCK, no other after market manufacturer claims to produce the rear cowl. These are the manufacturers listed by chimeraone" in the sticky thread on body work in this Forum.
1.AIR TECH
2 Maier
3.SPEC II

Cobalt is rather difficult to pin down. If you read the thread by Volksmech asking for VFRChuck's phone number in this Forum, because he thinks he might be getting stiffed, you will see that Chuck claims to produce both an OEM style rear cowl and his famous elongated combination rear cowl and side covers into one piece rear fairing. But I talked to him just yesterday and he offered only the elongated combo type rear cowl for $235.00 + shipping ($40.00) that's 275 for an unpainted part. Might as well get one from europe thats in the original color if your bike is still stock in color.
What pisses me off is that he tells me yesterday that I have to take the $235.00 piece because he is the only person in hte world still manufacturing the tail cowl. Then today he, Chuck has a quote in the Volksmech thread that says he makes an OEM style rear cowl. Grey Market says you can buy OEM in Europe with factory paint for the same price if you include Chuck's shipping charge.

Even stranger is the fact that I was searching Craigslist last night and I hit a guy selling parts for a 86-7 VFR 700/750which were Cobalt fairings and he wanted $750 for the set. That was supposed to be a good deal! I got Chuck to quote me $235 (rear)/$90 (left lower)/$90 right lower) and $120 (top cowl) for all four pieces yesterday (plus shipping). That's $215 for shipping.

I got an e mail from derstuka about a guy who was trying to organize the production of a bunch of windshields for 2nd gens that went nowhere. I spoke to a guy around here earlier in the week who would make a mold for $1000 and pop out oem style rear cowls for 86 VFR's at $20 to $30 a pop for as long as you wanted them made. He implied that he already does the same for other fairing applications (read "other motorcycle replacement fairings"). I've got two more plastics molding co. around me who want a chance at it too. I'd take on the task if you wanted me to.

 

Hello:

Just to be clear, the part numbers I provided are for the tail-piece (which houses the tail light). I wasn't quite sure what part we were talking about at the time.

The part number for the single seat cowl is 77225-ML7-690, with the extensions "ZA" for Pearl white, "ZD" for Granite Blue Metallic, and "ZE" for Italian Red. They are available out of Europe for a whopping 309.50 Euros, or $490.65!!!!

The best thing to do is camp-out on eBay UK. They show up there with some regularity. eBay Germany is a good source too.

Gray Market

 

Thanks for clearing up the european source. I'd be satisfied with a plain vanilla replacement rear cowl at a reasonable price. I am including the VFRCHUCK quote from Volksmech below:

Quote:
​

This is Chuck Crites of COBALT RACING

​

Someone said it is hard to get ahold of me .

​

My # 7404749256

​

Ok Parts I have been making them for the VFR for more

​

then 20 years now.

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I make Carbon Fiber windscreens that fit like OEM.

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UPPERS that have the heat light hole cut to specs and

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stand offs to bolt the light in like oem factoty upper.

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My lowers come predrilled with rivitts for eom hardwear.

​

I make 2 tail sections one a oem one piece and a solo tail

​

section.

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I make the inner panels .

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I make a Fiberglass / Carbon gas tanks that takes a oem

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gas cap.

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I make wheel spacers for the 91- 95 CBR wheels F-2 F-3.

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Alumimum rear sub frames , swing arm bracing.

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I will be making headers for the bike soon.

​

Chuck

​

1986 Honda VFR750F Body Parts Sources​

On the ninth line of the quote he says:

"I make 2 tail sections one a oem one piece and a solo tail section"

I have asked him to quote me a price for the OEM replacement rear cowl (lets agree that a "rear cowl" is the part that holds the tail light and a "seat cowl" is the cowl that covers the passenger seat). His answer to me was that he did not make it and that only the elongated rear cowl (his term for it is "solo tail section") was available at $235 +shipping.

I'm not saying that Chuck or Cobalt Racing is a scam or a scam artist. But plastic is a very cheap material and once you get a mold made its a matter of mixing up the material (jello) filling the mold and putting it in the fridge to harden. The rest, as they say, is magic. And by magic I mean a matter of pushing the price for a product up by limiting its availability and doing a "higher quality" dance with the gloves on while a pretty girl with the right curves, and little clothing on, stands beside the magician with a big toothy grin and nothing to say, is just their as a distraction. In this case the pretty girl is in our collective unconscious. It's the shiny cuvateous VFR we all immagineing well be riding on if we just get our hands on that piece of plastic that we lack. And the OEM pirates and their aftermarketeer compeditors are the magicians turning a cheap and easy to make product into something worth a weeks labor to pay for. Its the same old con. These sheets of formed plastic should be as cheap as we were all led to believe they were going to be when they showed them to us on tv as children. We ought to be able to replace all of the fairings with new ones on a yearly basis. The pancakes my mother made for me in the form of a bunny or a duck were harder to make because each one was made by hand. Fairing are made in a machine that was built to pop out the same form thousands of times. You need to hire and train someone to operate the machine and someone to mix the batter to the right consistency and let her rip.

"BUT NOOO!" (as Belluchi used to say to Jane on the early SNL) these VFR plastic wingbats are really volupuous women in our collective unconscious. We invest them with magical value, the guy making them isn't a mechanic but has been transformed into the plastic surgeon of street sport motorcycles. He does the magic of breast augmentation and penal implants into the real avatars in our immaginations, our motorcycles. We want a good nose job so bad that we can't see that all nose jobs are the same in the end.
A little silicone here, suction that waist down there and add a bump in the right place and we are all superman in our cape flying across landscape. For that we pay $400 for a piece of vacuum formed plastic that has about $2.50 worth of material in it and two hours of labor by the guy running the machine and the guy mixing the pancake batter. And if its "high quality" that you want then you hire a guy to run a CNC machine to cut the holes and finishoff the edges and add another hour of labor cost if that. I'm sure Henry Ford would have found a way to fire one laborer and do the job in half the time.

That was the american way. But today, its robbing Peter to pay Paul. Everybody rode in a model T and if you hads to replace a fender it did not cost you your first born to get a replacement. Today a plastic equivalent of that T fender costs as much as model T cost new: $395.00. And something stinks in Denmark, if you get my meaning.

Its tantamont to selling software. Someone writes a program and makes a few million copies of it and sells it for the price of writing the first copy millions of times.​

 

What about the rear cowl??

It was not my intention to blow everyone out of the water with my research project on the rear cowl. For the record, I still don't have one, at least not one that is usable. But I have the rest of the bike that goes with it. I don't know if RWB bought up the one he saw on E Bay or if SPEED made a deal for his and replaced it with an RC30 rear cowl. But I would sincerely like to keep open any door(s) that might lead to my getting a replacement rear cowl at a decent price. What do I think a decent price would be? Around $80 for a good used one and $120 for a new OEM and no outrageous shipping charges. My bike was repainted before so color does not matter to me. I had an eyeful of shipping charges while looking at the OEM sellers and shippers I went through to price the rear cowl. I got some shippers charges based on amount of the order, and others who charged a flat rate for any order (my order was $240). Strange thing was that the OEM sellers who based shipping cost on size of order were more expensive regardless of the amount of the order.

What about making your own. I've been thinking about it. There is wonderful thing about a thing like this VFRWORLD group. A group of people gather around an electronic fireplace and tell each other stories. How I fixed my carburator, how I improved my suspension, how I found a great deal on a VFR and so forth. If you think about it for a few moments the group as a whole control a great deal of knowledge/buying power. So if we are not being served properly and there are enough of us pissed off about it, then why couldn't a scheme like the one that was started last year about getting a group of windshields made at a reduced price work ?

Herding cats I suppose. What if a group of us with similar complaints about service were to band together to solve that problem ourselves. Well the problem with doing that is illustrated by the attempt to organize a VFR group meet in Susanville less than a month from now. Everybody gets to go their own way, like a herd of cats.

When I joined I read some welcome statement about how I was joining a group of thousands of VFR owner/drivers. But out here in front of my own little fireplace, I can't see that I am any more than alone. So I'm pissed about the high price and lack of availability of the 86 rear cowl. I can't see how many other people are just as pissed off about it as I am. But if there are thousands of VFR owners out there, then there has to be a market for a decent quality low cost plastic widget called an 86-7 VFR 700/750 rear cowl.
How many 86-7 VFR 700/750's are sitting outside or in barns and garages because nobody sells a reasonably priced plastic widgit called a 86-7 VFR 700/750 rear cowl? How many 86-7 VFR 700/750 motorcycles were trashed because the owner or potential restorer could not find a reasonably priced 86-7 VFR 700/750 rear cowl? Nobody knows. Honda seems to think its time to s**t can the model. They won't make or supply any more 86-7 VFR 700/750 rear cowls. And so now we owners riders of these machines are faced with a monopoly. There is only one source for this part and that source controls availability and availability affects price.

This is America, and we don't deserve to be treated this way. It's a part of the social contract between the industries we support with our patronage and money. When I want a widget I d**m well expect it to be a shelf waiting for me to buy it. And when I buy it I d**n well expect that another one is on its way to fill up the space that was made when I took the last one away.

Did Honda make the VFR too well, too fun to ride, or maybe too durable? Well it smells like they have found the soft spot and its called a "86-7 VFR 700/750 rear cowl". Since they don't want to supply it, I say we take one of these widgets to one of our state side plastic molders and ask what it would cost to make a batch of 300, or a batch of 600 or a batch of 1000 and save the mold if we need more later, and figure out the per piece cost and sell them to ourselves as long as we and the second gen VFR lasts. There is a place on this site called the VFRWORLD Store. That store could keep them in stock for anyone who was a member and had a need. And with the proceeds we could underwrite an annual 1stand 2ndGen get together and show off our new tail feathers to each other.

I'm just making a suggestion here. And the reason for the suggestion is that I am pissed off. I don't know how it might work, or if VFRWORLD would even be able to have any involvement in it. But if several like minded 1st and 2nd gen types wanted to go in on making up the first batch I'm in for $250.00 or the cost of one of Cobalt rear cowl. If there are 5 more of you that would chip in the same I'd be out on the road this Monday to check out the molders I have already called about doing this. We five could split the first run among us, keep what we needed for our own projects and undersell the competition and still make a profit. If we sold out the first run we could take the mold back in for a second run for pure profit. As for Quality? What's it worth if the product isn't there for you feel and touch for yourself, if its just someone telling you "quality quality quality" instead of showing you quality. What's the deal with having to pay up front for something that has no competition to go against in the first place. For over a month now I've been hung out to dry just because I refused to pay what I consider to be an extorsionist price for a piece of plastic that is not more than a burp on an plastic extruding machines fabrication line.

If there are 5 people out there considering the reality of paying Cobalt for one cowl or getting 50 or 100 copies of an OEM rear cowl to sell or use as they see fit, there is a private message line next to this thread reply that goes straight to me, I'll be waiting to see if there are any takers. Or maybe I'll see you in Susanville dragging my tail light on a wire.

 

holy crud you can type, hey check your PM's

 

DKC'S VFR check with speed I did not buy it.

 

I know someone selling one

There is a gentleman named john rogers [rogersstock@yahoo.com] who emailed me about his. He said it is primed, ready to go, and has all the tabs. He says he paid $75 for it so I am assuming he will sell it for the same amount. He was selling an entire bike on craigslist

 

What mod's to fit RC30 rear cowl to a 2nd gen VFR?

You remarked that you were going to convert to an RC30 rear cowl/taillight/seat. What does it take to make it fit on an 86-7 VFR 700/750?
If you really do this will you want to sell your old VFR rear cowl? What would you want for it if you did?

When I look over the pictures of the RC30 it looks like the under cowl and line that meets the frame /tank edge on the 2nd gen VFR 700-50 is different than the RC30. The RC30 tank line is different. Close but no cigar. So you are going to modify the mating line on the RC30 to meet the 86-7 VFR line?

 

Not ABS Plastic ...

Hello, Everyone:

I purchased a single seat cowl from Chuck Crites years ago for sixty five bucks.

Just so you all will know, the reproductions he makes (or, used to make, I guess) are/were made out of fiberglass, NOT ABS plastic as are the OEM Honda products. The one I purchased from him was shipped without the "bum pad," and was shipped in white - not Pearl White, but white. So, I had to fabricate the "bum pad," and, well, it was a pain in the bum. It fits perfectly.

Oh, I had to get the mounting bolts from Honda.

Gray Market

 

After all is said and done, if anyone has a factory 86 750 solo seat cowl with the VFR decal in really good shape (it can be minus the pad and bolts), let me know. Chuck sent an email a few weeks ago and he was selling them for 89 bucks i think.

I missed one on Ebay for 76+ shipping, but the decal went the wrong direction. Mine goes left to right, read properly if standing from behind. The one on Ebay had decal going front to rear, read correctly if standing on the left side of the bike. Sorry, I'm a purest, only Honda parts for the resto.

 

I really liked reading this thread. Gotta tell you that that is how it goes in a free market system. Probably a small enough demand for the part in question, probably a very small demand for almost any of the bodywork and is sold sporadically over years that no one has taken up the call to produce more pieces on a regular basis or start a business. I have never met Chuck, or dealt with him in any way, but I am pretty sure he isn`t making a living selling bodywork for one model VFR. He has been around since the early days selling the bodywork though. I do know all the parts are made from fibreglass which takes some time and can be labor intensive, even with a mold.
Airtech is successful partly because they make many different parts for many different bikes, not just one.
I honestly hope you are pissed enough to actually start producing these parts but I would be surprised if you could sell 50.
I don`t own the bike in question, but I hesitate to have a bracket taken to my local machinist in the hope of reproducing a batch of 10 that others will purchase simply because there isn`t the demand. Time and money put out in earnest to produce a part a handful of people may buy doesn`t thrill me. I would be interested to see if you are getting any response and actual cash outlay to make this happen, really. I would like to see you succeed at this, but I don`t think you will get the support you need. Not criticising, just calling it like I see it.
Jaimie Daugherty is familiar with this kind of thing(producing parts to sell) but has stated that sometimes he will invest his time and money to make a run of parts only to have thousands of dollars in parts laying around for years, because there isn`t the demand.
Honda made a business decision after Soichiro died that they would not produce parts for every motorcycle forever as he had... probably a good business move, but I personally think it sucks.
In the end, I either make my own as a one-off, find good used or repairable, or pay the price to the guy who can supply it.

 

i still have them so your in riverside then make me a offer and come and get it