VFR 750 Exploration

I bought a Honda VFR 750 in November of this year (2011). For some time I had been wondering about the VFR. A practical bike, a sporty bike, a comfortable bike, a technically advanced bike, a bike you could work on, a bike to get to know. It seemed to have it all. After travelling the motorway to Dublin to see Cork City beat Shelbourne to win the Airtricity League First Divison title and thus promotion I decided it was time to stop dreaming and start getting. My Bandit 600, as much as I love it, has no fairing and nowhere to hide from fast air and the rain that often makes an appearance on this island of ours. A VFR was needed.

And a VFR was found. A 1997 model in green in Tipperary with almost 55,000 miles on the clock. For a VFR that means the engine is barely broken in. With the scheduled maintenance adhered to it'll continue to run forever. I've read of one in London running to 200,000 miles or so before the engine was swapped out for a newer secondhand one. A friend of mine has a CBR 1000 with 150,000 miles on it (or more) and it's insides are perfect. In fact if you look at the odometer you'll see that it won't reset to zero until it hits one million miles. Upon seeing that on the ride home I knew I'd bought the right bike.

So what is the plan for it and what has been done so far?

Due to their being no service history for it I have put it out the back yard and have taken all of the plastics off of it to see what is underneath. And the news is relatively good! Everything is in order and everything is pretty clean. Autosol has taken some of the tarnishing from the stainless exhaust downpipes. The rear subframe and the frame itself are perfect and clean with next to no rust on the steel subframe (main frame is aluminium of course). The engine is clean but could do with a wipe of a cloth...I can be a bit of a perfectionist at times.

Seeing as I don't know the service history I want to change the engine oil, change the brake fluid, clutch fluid, spark plugs and coolant and go through all other service items like carb balancing, valve clearances etc. As well as this all bearings need to be checked too. As far as is possible I want to ensure that the bike is almost like new before it hits the road once again.

The first task on this road was to take all of the fairing off of the bike and give it a thorough clean because if that is not done now then it may never be done. Once fairing is on it rarely comes off unnecessarily.