I'm new here but I've lurked the forums for a while before signing up. I always enjoy reading any kind of automotive project logs so why not start one.

A little back story, I got this bike probably close to 3 years ago when I lived in the bay area since I didnt have a car and a bike was great in the city and super cheap to own. I bought her at 18,297, for just shy of 2800. It wasnt in the prettiest of shape, but I didnt care since I had to store it outdoors, and it was my first bike anyways so she went through a couple drops, in a sort of chronological order : fell off kickstand, fell off kickstand again, someone tried to steal it and knocked her over on the clutch side (i ran out in my boxers at 3am to see my bike knocked over and a truck speeding away), tipped over while sitting on it at the beach, the rear end let loose on some cold asphalt leaving a parking spot in the middle of the night and landed me on the side, bending my exhaust. I also hit a gnarly pothole coming off the freeway and dented both of my rims, really really bad, luckily I didnt fall off the bike and was only 1/4 mile from home, limped it and waited on ebay rims to come in. Rims came in, only changed the front one since my old place didnt have a garage and everything was on a hill (****ing san francisco)

Heres a picture of the dented front wheel, minutes after coming home



Here in the middle of the sidewalk at the flattest part being helped by my buddy replacing the front wheel




Then I moved, and have a garage now. So what did I do? I tore this thing down. The last month I've lived in the garage tearing it apart, meticulously cleaning everything I took down, painting things that were silver...black.

Withered her down to basically nothing



Also painted the new set of rims gold.



Heres a list of what I've done, in no important order.

Cleaned/painted both new rims bronze. Rear wheel has new brake disc/sprocket
Removed whole subframe to paint black
Completely took apart and painted rearsets / passenger pegs
Complete new rear brake system since I neglected the old one and caliper was shot to hell
New brakes all around with fresh fluid
Scrubbed, sanded, and painted the calipers with black caliper paint
New spark plugs, like 11 bucks a pop even on amazon, wtf!
New KN air filter, because it was the cheapest filter I could find online, only 30 bucks from amazon
New Cool-Aide coolant (basically like water wetter I guess)
Mobil 1 oil change (waiting on CCT)
Manual Cam Chain Tensioner (waiting for it to come in)
New projectors fitted to headlights, more on this later.
New carbon fiber exhaust
Bike will be painted a flat red

I got it mostly back together and here it is so far



This isnt the most up to date since the gas tank is back off and sitting primed on the garage floor waiting for me to paint it.

I bought some ebay projectors. These were drop-ins to my H7 housings, and seeing as how the bike came with a cheap set of HID bulbs in the stock reflectors (the PO also put in the wrong style bulbs and I wondered for a while why motorcycle headlights were so dim) so this is an upgrade. The projectors came the other day, and since I ordere them without bulbs thinking that the H7 HID bulbs I already have would work, well they didnt, and I had to spend more money on getting the right bulbs because they use some stupid "pencil" style bulb that the ebay seller never mentioned would be IMPOSSIBLE to find not bundled with a kit, so I had to go back and pay the difference to get the bulbs as well. The projectors actually aren't half bad, I slapped in the bulbs and turned them on, this is what it was,



(Miata! it's my roommates, we have a clutch sitting waiting to be put in and a bunch of turbo parts coming in, so that'll be another project coming up soon, love having a big garage!)

As you can see the glare above the cutoff is very present, but the cutoff is pretty acceptable (excuse the crappy phone pictures) So i cracked them open and completely removed everything, down to removing the cut off shield solenoid, removing the lens, removing the cfl angel eyes, I mean everything, and I painted every part except for the reflector with flat black high temp spray paint and reassembled. The glare was completely gone, so that made me a lot happier. I turned on the angel eyes, and tested the high beam solenoids.

Happy Owl


Here's the cutoff now.



as you can see it's much much better after coating everything inside with flat black high temp paint, really cuts down on unwanted reflections.

Here's a closeup of the cutoffs, not too shabby for ebay projectors. The only thing is that the high beam solenoids are sticking because I coated everything with high temp paint, so I'll have to take those apart and strip the little hinges of paint.



Also almost done installing electronic trunk release, just have to wire it in and hook up the manual release.

 

Daaaaaamn! NICE tune up! and good pictures too.

 

Thanks! Yeah the tune-up was long overdue, so I went as far with it as I felt comfortable, short of really digging into the inner workings of the motor. Once back together I basically never want to touch it again except for general maintenance and up-keep, so I'm doing everything I've always wanted to do with it now, all at once.

A quick peek at the color. A nice bright red. Should be spraying everything this weekend.

 

cant wait to see the final results! good luck!

 

Can`t wait to see the final product aswell!
looks good so far and im lovin those angel eyes where did you pick them up from?

 

The angel eyes are part of the projector. They look kind of blue in the picture but theyre white. Theyre also not that bright, its a solid white line illuminated around the lens. I like the look a lot.

basically this
G5 HID Bi Xenon Headlight Projector Lens Kit (No Ballast) | eBay

but I got it for about 90 shipped with only bulbs since I already had ballasts. They drop right through your stock housings so you only need to pop the headlight cover and bolt it in like a big light bulb. I used plastidip on the f4i headlight reflectors so I can easily remove them one day if need be.

 

Yay projects! Wish I had an excuse to tear mine down again, haha.

 

I don't think I ever want to tear this thing down like that again! I'm trying my best to do everything as cleanly and as nicely as I can. I even took apart the kickstand assembly to paint it!

Quick update though.

This is a sneak peak at the color, its like a nice ducati red



Got most of the wetsanding done, except for the front fairing which needed a bit more tlc with spot putty.

It's raining pretty hard outside, this made wetsanding pretty easy since I can just dump the sandy water into the driveway without much worry about it drying spots, but on the other hand I can't paint. It looks like the next nice day will be Monday.

I did start on the paintbooth.



Simple PVC, open front (this isnt going to be a show quality paint, and I'm not using a show quality paint gun or anything (just some harbor freight paint gun) and I'll stick a box fan behind that filter, and another one at the bottom of the garage door to just suck out overspray/most of the fumes outside and hopefully my respirator covers the rest. As long as I can decently lay down the paint I'll be happy with that. I also got a matte clear coat for the above paint which hopefully seals it nicely because I NEVER want to do this again. I sank probably 40 hours at least into bodywork on this crap, not counting my roommates help.

I also finally got my CCT, i found one on ebay from a guy that machines them, and got it in the mail today, very nice quality bit of metal. Hopefully it solves that damn bbs in a can sound I get around 3-4k rpms. I was waiting to change the fresh oil so that I check the timing cheat bolt vs just pulling it out and hoping for the best. I'm hoping it'll all be together by next weekend so I can ride! Also if anyone is in the San Diego area and can suggest some good spots, or even wants to go for a ride I'd be glad, I just moved here and the bike has litterally been all I've been doing since I got here.

 

One other thing I'm going to do is build a little dash addition.

something like this



Since I want the headlights to be controlled through the stock high beam switch, I need to make a new high beam switch. I also want to have the angel eyes be on their own circuit. Also adding an led voltmeter for the battery, since my R/R went out a few months back and it destroyed a few batteries for me (i just thought generic ebay batteries were crappy, even destroyed a quality yuasa battery), blew out my old hid kit, and generally caused me a few good headaches before I learned how to diagnose it with a multimeter, so this is like having one permanently, also the cool factor doesnt hurt either. The 2 led's are white and blue, white led will light up when white angel eyes are on, and the blue led will light when the new High-Beam switch is flipped. All this will be wired through some relays I have lying around so that I can draw the ignition wires as the signal without stressing the stock wiring and blowing fuses, and so once the key is out, everything is off and I dont have to worry about draining the battery. Also not yet incorporated into that little design is a gear indicator, which I bought mainly for looks, but I also find myself doing the 7th gear search once in a while.

 

**** looks siick so far bro.