Tag: Repairs

There are few things more heart-sinking than being sat on your motorbike miles from home to find it no longer starts up. At first, you’re in denial and keep jabbing at the starter button, but it just generates more clicks as the starter motor refuses to kick in. You then have to consign yourself to the fact, you’re not going anywhere in a hurry.

This happened to me a few weeks ago on a cold ride up to Dunkeld. It was one of those beautiful winter days where it was bright and sunny, but cold with frost and snow surrounding the main roads. I had just stopped by the roadside to take some snaps of an ice-covered loch but found myself stuck on a bike that wouldn’t start. Thankfully, my daughter was with me pillion and was able to bump start the bike to get us moving again.

A few miles down the road I got an engine management light on the dash and a code 46. This indicated a low battery/charging system issue. After another bump start, we continued homeward bound. Close to home, the battery went completely flat, I lost the dash and lights, but the bike kept going so we persisted. But, eventually, it died as we came to a halt at a junction, though thankfully only a couple of miles from home and not too much hassle to get family out with some jump leads, charge the bike and get me home. Then began the multi-meter fun diagnosing the faults.

In my recent crash I smashed up the headlight cluster of the Fazer. Unfortunately this item alone is £250 brand new,  however I did find a much cheaper used one from a breaker, albeit missing one mounting lug. But I had the foresight to gather up many pieces from the crash, including some of the bust off lugs from my smashed lights. So my plan was to the weld a bust lug to my newly acquired lights, to get back up and running for not too much money.

Plastic welding is nowhere near as difficult as you may think and doesn’t need any expensive materials. You just need a good soldering iron, some cable ties and staples. The technique I followed was the outlined below in this video by Delboy’s Garage, do watch his howto and subscribe to his channel, he’s got some sound advice.

Following my recent track day mishap, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks patching up the Fazer. It was tough to decide what the best plan, whether to repair back to stock, go naked/streetfighter or just flog it for spares. Especially tough when it’s only worth around £1.5k and will need to be traded in shortly due to the upcoming London ULEZ in one and half years time.

The damage, although cosmetic was extensive, the fairing plastic had disintegrated, the fairing bracket was about to snap, every mounting lug on the light cluster had snapped off, the clocks had lost a lug and the fuel gauge no longer worked. Those parts alone cost close on £1100 brand new… Even the street fighter option was less than straight forward, needing a new headlight, brackets, some different indicators, mirrors and some fabrication to mount the clocks.

In my last update your will have seen I made quite a mess of the Fazer in a little off in the wet. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had a steady stream of parcels from Fowlers and ebay, containing numerous parts to fix up the bike.

Pictured is one of the last fixes to be done, putting the forks back in alignment. There’s countless methods to do this, but here I’ve opted for the two sticks approach, where their length exaggerates any ill alignment, making it easy to correct by eye alone.  The basic  approach is to slacken off all the bolts South of the top fork clamp yoke, realign the forks, then tighten it all up again.