I See My Red Bike and I Want it Painted Black

I see my red bike and I want it painted black. No colors anymore I want to turn my bike to black.

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes I want to wet them down, with my garden hose.

I see a line of bikes and they're all painted black and I picture my bike with a red stripe down it's back I see people turn their heads and quickly look away Like seeing my new black bike might some how ruin their day.

I look inside myself and see my bike is black. I see my red bike, I must have it painted black. Maybe since I dropped my bike I have had to face the facts. It's not easy facin' up when your right side fairing is full of ugly cracks.

Some people thought I should paint my red bike in a deeper blue. I could not foresee my bike painted in this hue. If I pour enough black paint in my Sata gun. My bike will be painted black before the mornin' comes.

  I see my red bike and I want it painted black. No colors anymore I want to turn my bike black.

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes. I want to wet them down, with my garden hose. I wanna see my bike, painted black, black as night, black as coal. I wanna see my paint gun coat my bike until the paint is dry. I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black Yeah!



After I dropped my Viffer in the garage and cracked the mid-upper fairing I knew finding a replacement would be a needle in a haystack affair. The slug said, no problem, you’ll be able to track down a replacement in no time. The Slug isn’t a sport bike guy, he is a Harley guy. Finding Harley parts is a no brainer, they are everywhere. By his reasoning, people buy perfectly good sport bikes and break them down to sell. I had to explain to him this simply is not the case. Sport bike breakers buy crashed bikes and sell off the good parts which do not include the broken fairing parts. Or you will see an ad for a “street fighter” on craigslist, this is what happens when sport bike fairings make contact of an unmovable object. When a VFR of my vintage ‘94-‘97 hits the ground, the first part to make contact is the part I’m needing. I told him because of this, finding a replacement would be an exercise in futility. He didn’t believe me


Well after searching for four months I finally tracked one down. A reproduction part for sale on eBay UK. David Silver Spares had a beautiful left side in red like my bike, but alas, wrong side. So I was just about to pull the trigger on the eBay find when I noticed He doesn’t ship to the U.S. I tried to contact the seller, but he had disabled anyone from the states contacting him through eBay. I was thinking I would never be able to pick up a replacement when I remembered I have friends across the Atlantic in the U.K. specifically one of my partners in the TX/XS500 Forum Crouchyuk. I had barely contacted him and he had already purchased the part and was making arrangements to have it arrive at my door in the shortest time possible. That is the best part about being member of the motorcycling community, we all go out of our way to help another rider out.

This brings us to me wanting to paint my bike black. I have a thing about black. Most of the cars I’ve owned including my current one have been black. Just about every bike I have owned, if it wasn’t already black, I usually wound up painting it black. With the exceptions of my ‘85 FJ1100, ‘92 GSXR750, ‘83 CB1100F they were too pretty to paint black. I really like the red paint on the VFR, but it cost a wad of cash just for a pint of it. And you need to get two pints, one base and one top. That equals $269.40 for paint and that doesn’t include clear coat. The fairing cost me just short of $200.00 US including shipping.
 
Being the cheap ass I'm known to be, I am not about to pay more for the paint than I did for the part. The only place that seems to carry the pearl red paint for my year Interceptor is ColorRite, so there is no comparison shopping. It’s a good thing that I love black bikes, because it only cost $53.73 for a quart of House of Kolor BC25 black base coat. That is more than enough to paint my whole bike, not just a 2'X2' part. And since I use a lot of HOK products, I already have inter coat clear, reducer and final clear coat on hand saving me even more money. So it looks like I have some sanding in my future.

Every Dark Cloud Has a Silver Lining

My dark cloud was when I dropped my bike while moving it around in my garage a couple months back. The silver lining is, to facilitate repairs to my damaged fairing I had to remove practically the whole shooting match. I’m really used to working on naked bikes, this is the first full faired bike I have owned since my 1992 GSXR750. And before the VFR, this has been the only bike that I have owned to be ensconced in ABS plastic. I know I am somewhat slow, but a picture is beginning to form as to the reason I normally ride naked bikes. Besides the fact, most naked bikes appeal to my sense of aesthetics. And as the word procrastination has a prominent spot on the tag line of this blog, you may have surmised by this point, I have a penchant to put things off. Removing all that bodywork is not what I consider a knee slapping good time. I gather putting it all back together is going to be just as fun.

That leads us to the silver lining part of this post’s title, with all the body work removed, my winter maintenance is going to be some what of a breeze. Today I am changing the coolant, basically because I’m not sure how long it has been in the bike. I’m looking at the thermometer and it is telling me it is fifty nine degrees out. Normally on a day such as this, I would be out riding and a enjoying a rare warm January day here in Michigan. But with my bike being in the state is currently resides in, I’m doing the next best thing, maintenance.

Today I am changing the coolant. I am using Peak Long Life 50/50 prediluted antifreeze and coolant. I know there are those types out there that will only use the product with the bikes manufacturer on the container. That’s fine with me, I am a cheap ass and will use other brands that don’t say Honda on them. The most important thing here being that I choose a name brand type 2 coolant to use in my all aluminum Honda motor. Type 2 coolants are silicate free (as opposed to Type 1 that are silicate-based). Why am I making this choice, aren’t silicates slightly abrasive and keep the innards of our coolant passages sparkling clean. Yes they do, and this may be the case with your brand of motorcycle. But in Honda motors this same cleaning agent is known to lead to water pump failures. I also recommend that you steer clear of that orange Dexcool as well. There are several cases out there where this stuff has turned into a jelly like substance and has also been linked to failed intake manifolds on the cars it is used in. Please check your bikes repair manual and any forums you may belong to so you can be sure of the correct product for you bike.

Seeing that I have already removed all my bikes clothes, all the way down to her bra and panties, changing the coolant is a pretty simple and strait forward affair. For the VFR, if all the body panels are removed, you only need a 10mm nut driver, 5mm nut driver, a pair of plyers and a flat tipped screw driver. If you are removing the body work you will also be needing a 5mm allen wrench to remove the fasteners holding on the body panels. And if you do need to remove them, it only takes about five minutes. I start by emptying the reservoir of all it’s contents, it is held in place by a couple protrusions on the bottom and a 10mm bolt . Next I replace the reservoir and I remove the radiator cap. We now turn our attention to the radiator hose leading to the water pump. It is held in place by a single hose clamp with a 5mm nut, at least on my VFR, you may find a different fastener on you application.

After draining all that nasty old coolant (mine looked pretty good, but better to be safe than sorry). Reattach the water pump hose and tighten your hose clamp. Be careful not to go over board here, we don’t want any leaks, but we don’t want to damage the hose either. Now it is time to refill our cooling systems boys and girls. I like to use a long narrow funnel and slowly add coolant until it is very near the top of the opening. The engine, radiator and hoses hold 0.61 gallons and the reserve holds 0.08. When your system is topped off, start your bike and let it get to operating temp. This will allow you to top off the system. When warm, the coolant will circulate and draw from the reserve to top itself off and all you have to do is add a smidge to the reserve and there you have it. Our bikes are now ready to face the elements, hot or cold. If your bike is air cooled, please disregard this entire post.

Complete and Utter Lunasee

I installed the Lunasee kit on my bike, review to come soon. I can't believe how good this system works.