Category: Maintenance

The new fairing for my Fazer 600 arrived the other day. I have opted for a pattern part, GRP version from CWC (Cars Wants Change) in Poland. As you can see the fairing arrived unpainted with just the white gel coat finish. So my daughter offered to paint it for me. Not 100% it’ll be a good colour match mind… It was far more cost-effective than a genuine Yamaha part and first impressions are good, nice smooth finish in the main. Just a couple of edges that will need a bit of sanding prior to spraying.

Over the next week or so, I’ll get it painted up properly at a local spray shop and then fitted. I don’t think I’ll be able to do a particularly good job with rattle cans at home. Finally, once I’ve stuck on some decals and the Yamaha badge, it should look indistinguishable from a genuine Yamaha fairing. Of course, at a fraction of the price; £125 compared to £500. At that price, it won’t be such a tragedy if I drop the bike again!

CWC make all kinds of pattern fairing, rear huggers and other body parts for all manner of bikes (and cars). Do check them out

Update: Since writing this it seems CWC are longer trading on eBay. Also, Yamaha reduced the price of their genuine fairings, with a fully painted and colour-matched cowling coming in at around £200. Order directly from your local Yamaha dealer, or Fowlers Parts.

Busy morning sorting out the airbox on Mary’s ZZR400. It had a bad seal where the underside marries up to the top of the throttle bodies, a gaping space along the rear edge. This has been causing running issues at high speed, where the ram air setup needs to be pressurised to ensure the floats let the right mix of fuel and air into the engine. Without the necessary pressure the fuel mix has been far too rich.

I picked up a new airbox on the off chance the current one was slightly warped. I also got a new duct seal, as the old seal was very squashed and not doing its job. Swapping the box over was mostly straight forward, with only removing/replacing the tank and getting the ram air ducts at the front lined up into the box being particularly tricky. All went well until a fuel line split – doh! Just at end near the clamp onto the reserve valve, so I was able to shorten it and make good. Phew!

At the weekend I started my first attempt at spray painting. Mary’s ZZR400 was missing a small piece of the tail fairing. We managed to source this off ebay cheap, however the part was the wrong colour. So how hard can it be to spray paint it the right colour?

I started by giving the item a really good sand down with some 800 grit wet/dry paper, washed and dried it. I then sprayed it with primer (pictured). Slowly building it up coat after coat, with about 10-15 minutes between them. After leaving 24 hours, I then sanded it gently with some 1200 grit wet/dry paper, washed dried it, then set it up for spraying the top coat. Working in a similar fashion, building up the coats. Things were progressing well until the piece fell off my cardboard stand and got a pile of newspaper stuck to it! Doh!

Start again. Will let it totally dry and sand it down and have another go…

Today I attempted to make good the damaged fairing from last weekends off. The damage isn’t too bad, just a big crack and scuff on the right hand side. However the fairing brackets are bent and thus the headlights, clocks and fairing all point to the left somewhat. 🙁

Enlisting some help from the decent chaps on the FOC forum, we spent the morning removing the fairing and bending everything back. In the end there was four of us Fazer owners, all with blue bikes and having a good fettling session. It turned out rather straight forward to remove the fairing, but bending the brackets and gauging when it was true again was not. After a lot of errming, arring and lots of judgement by eye everything sits pretty much straight again now.