Ugh, dropped it - Need fairing repair or replacement advice

Howdy

I'm new to this site, and i had hoped to join for other reasons...

Today i dropped my brother-in-law's bike, a black '02 Sprint RS, and messed up the right hand side fairing pretty good. It's got some major scratches, and the piece directly around one of the screws cracked and separated. So i owe him a repair or replacement now of course.

Neither of us is experienced with this kind of stuff at all, so i'm looking for advice and pointers on what to do and where to go. I'm thinking i can either see if some body shop can repair it, or try to find a replacement part. I have no idea which would be better, less expensive etc. What would you recommend? Where should i go? (I'm in Atlanta GA.) What kind of $$$ should i expect?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[ooobaby]

Bummer dude! Get your smelling salts ready, because plastic for these things is just stupid expensive from Triumph (or any company for that matter)! If it were my bike I'd expect you to replace it with the correct part(s) with the work done by a dealer, unless you or your brother in law know how to do the work yourselves. I'd also want the bike checked out to make sure no other damage was done. If you know what parts you need you can try and find them on eBay, but most of the plastic on eBay is either already damaged or the wrong color (Murphy's Law). Then you have to figure in the cost of decals/graphics, paint and labor. Any way you cut it, when it comes to plastic, it's going to cost one of you a chunk of change. At least the RS doesn't have as much plastic on it as the ST. :cry:

Hope you weren't injured when you went down!

[ This message was edited by: ooobaby on 2006-01-29 01:30 ]

[welshrob]

I`d consider talking to your Bro in law and trying to convince him that the "streetfighter" look is in and plastic is out. Alternatively you could check out e-bay for one that got binned on the left side. Good luck either way!

[morecarl]

In Atlanta, take it up to Moto Britalia and have them check it out and give you an estimate. That way you'll know what needs replacement, and how much oem parts/labor would be.

I think that they are located on Windward Parkway.

[SR1]

And after all that, suggest to him that he buy a set of frame sliders so that future oopses don't cost so much. (That's what I did with mine)

[yerguy]

Got a coupla' ideas for you guys,

Whitehorse Press has published a book for motorycycle bodywork repair including f/glass and abs plastic which is what most of the new m/c bodies are made of now days. including the Triumph.

The best way to repair this stuff is NOT patches of f/glass, or epoxy (too brittle) but to weld it. There are 2 ways to do this. Either solvent weld them (kinda like model glue) or hot air welder.

Remove any of the paint, dirt, etc from the damaged areas and follow the instructions.

For what it's worth, Harbor Freight has an inexpensive plastic welder. What it consists of is a hot air blower, kind of a miniaturized super hot blow dryer that you connect to an air source. The included nozzle directs a concentrated very hot air stream and you just bring the plastic up to a mallable condition and slowly add filler plastic just like you do when TIG or gas welding. This is how the body shops repair the plastic on automobiles.

Just be sure the filler is compatible with the base material.

If your gonna have all this plastic off the bike, might as well have the body walnut shell blasted to remove the clear coat, bondo the rewlded areas and repaint the whole bike, something sexy???

Hope this helps....

Dan'l
So. Calif.

[garry]

I think that fairing piece is $465. Going on memory as a friend broke the left hand side in a crash last summer.

Thanks for the feedback.

I don't think i'm adventurous enough to try to do the thing yerguy is suggesting, with the hot air and all. I think it could work for sure, but i just don't have any experience with that sort of stuff, nor do i have the tools etc, so i bet i'd just mess it up more

I may have a lead on some replacement parts thanks to this forum. I'll also check around with a few local body shops to see if they can fix it and how much that'd be.

I also emailed a dozen places i found on the internet, but none of them have these parts. I guess it's not that common I'll keep an eye on eBay as well. I saw a blue fairing there... I guess i could get that and get it repainted, but i have no idea yet how much a body shop would charge for that.

I'll contact Moto Britalia and see what they say about this.

As for the frame sliders - When he first had his eye on this bike we had talked about getting them "first thing" once he'd get the bike. He bought this bike used, and i was riding it back to our house where he'd park it for a while, since he doesn't have his license yet etc. So since the place where he bought it was just 10 mins from our house, we decided i'd just ride it home. So i get to our subdivision, begin to turn in, and there's a car coming out, so i brake a little more, and WHAM, the front wheel decides to give out on me. I have no idea what happened. I ride to and from work on my own RS every day, rain or shine, and never really had any problems there. And his bike seemed more "smooth" than mine with the brakes and throttle and clutch and everything, so compared to my bike it shouldn't brake as hard. Fortunately i wasn't going very fast. Just slid for maybe 8 feet top. But that's enough to mess up the fairing of course

Anyway.. the "funny" part is that he only owned the bike for like an hour tops maybe, and we had talked about putting those sliders on a while back even before he knew for sure he was going to get it, and here i go crashing it to the ground for him before we get the bike back home. We joked about it at least, saying that i got that part out of the way for him. Still feel bad about it of course. But i'm confident we can get it fixed one way or another. The good thing is that it's parked here at our house and all he does this far is practice in our very quiet neighborhood and in the parking lot of the high school around the corner. So it's not like i killed his daily ride or anything like that, thank goodness.

[ooobaby]

This time of year you probably hit some sand. Some of it is so fine you can't even see it, but it's slick as snot on a brass doorknob!