My $150 1992 VFR750!

I picked this thing up a few weeks ago and I've been working diligently to turn it naked.

  I found it on craigslist, the guy was trying to trade for a foxbody Mustang or $1200, so I said what the hell, I'll give him a call..  On the phone he said it had never been dropped or anything, and that it wasn't charging.  His mechanic said the stator was bad and that's why it wasn't charging.. Some mechanic he must have been lol.  I wasn't even in the market for a VFR and I knew immediately that his R/R was bad.  After I talked to him about the bike for a bit, I asked him what he would take for it, he said "I don't know, maybe like 7 or 800 bucks", so I knew I had to have a look at it....  Boy was I in for a surprise!  I arrived at his house, hopped out of the truck, looked at the bike for about 10 seconds, and almost immediately hopped back in the truck to head home... it was THAT bad.  

My father and I looked it over for a good hour, picking out every flaw we could find, and all the while all I could see were dollar signs floating around in my head...   Fork seals blown, plastics wrecked and seemingly repaired by a blind 6 year old, seat cover was torn to shreds, chain had a few rollers missing, sprockets were worn due to incorrect chain, wheels were repainted mismatching colors, front tire was either at the track or was simply a race take-off, yellow overspray on the frame, and engine covers, etc.  BUT, it ran, albeit for 2 or 3 minutes before the battery could no longer give enough juice to the engine to keep it running.  I managed to take it for a quick 2 or 3 minute ride, to make sure all the gears were there, and there were no major problems.  Biggest thing I found wrong was warped front rotors, and sloppy head bearings... again, more $$$ and my time.  

Soooo, after the ride, I said "To be honest, I'd struggle to reach in my pocket and hand you a hundred dollars for it", he said something about his bottom dollar being $500, at which time I figured there was no way I was gonna buy it.  But, I wasn't done yet!  I said, "Maybe I could come up to $150" and he said "Yeah I could do that".  At that moment my stomach dropped for a second and I thought oh man what have I got myself into lol.  

So without further adieu, I present to you, my $150 VFR750.  

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As I said earlier, I plan to turn it into a naked bike.  On the lookout for an SV650 headlight, and maybe a Trailtech Vapor, but I may cheap out and go with a bicycle computer especially since this thing will be living on a university college campus.  Trying to order some fork seals for it, but I can't figure out what forks are on it, can anybody tell me?  They are 41mm OD, stock triples and everything, but the front fender is like no VFR fender I have ever seen.  The forks have oil drains on each leg, and the cap is a 17mm allen head.  The front fender has 4 mount bolts, 2 near the top like a regular VFR and 2 in the middle of the fork.  Any ideas?

Here's a pic of my Dad sitting on it, should give you a good look at the front forks.

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Sorry for the long intro!

Welcome aboard.  Whew...have you got your work cut out for you but for $150 it's a nice start.   :fing02:

Make sure you take lots of pics as you go about your project.  We loves to see them pics!

Thank you for rescuing that poor thing.   :bliss:


I cannot for the life of me, figure out how the PO (and the many PO's before him) allowed that bike to deteriorate into the condition you found it in.   :mad:

I mean, how hard is it to fix the first crack of one mirror? And replace the first bent clutch lever? Keep the bike in decent shape?   :beatdeadhorse:

At what point do you just give up and say "F it"? (not you, them)

I mean, other than auguring into the ditch, or the bike being in a house fire, or stolen and vandalized by a horde of pirates, how hard it is to keep up with basic maintenance and repairs???   :excl:



Once upon a time, this was a shiny new bike, and someone's pride and joy!   :cheerleader:


I hope it'll shine again real soon. Good luck, and thanks for posting.   :fing02:

Well, that's another fine mess you've gotten me into Stanley. Welcome to the forum. You do have some work ahead of you. I would recommend taking that bike to the bare frame and see what else needs to be repaired or replaced.  Nice winter project. :mellow:

Welcome
I'll say that's a great deal, considering you can sell the rear wheel alone for 250 (given its straight).  Now grab a good set of wrenches and go to town.
The front fender looks a lot like a 90 CBR1000, but the wheel has too many spokes for the CBR, maybe only the forks and fender are from a different bike
Good luck

Congrats!  If you want to make a quick $50 profit give me a call!   :goofy:

Need some better pics of the forks to tell what they are.   :blush:

BR

PS  Welcome to VFRD!!!!!!!!!   :cheerleader:

Oh, how the mighty have fallen!  The 3rd gen VFR is one of my all time favorite examples of bike-as-art, sad that this one had such a rough life - except that if it hadn't, you wouldn't have it now as a project.  I paid considerably more for my '94 in not much better shape.

On the plus side, with the condition of the bike, you can justify modifying it any way you like.  If you wanted a nice stock example, you'd probably save money and aggravation by buying one.  Then again, you probably already have one.  So your budget VFR can become whatever you're willing to build it into.  No matter what your bike ends up like, that V4 growl will still be there!  Remember to take pics!

Scott in Penfield NY

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone!  

Some other background info I forgot to add..  The PO said that within the past few months it had a new set of clutch plates installed, and there is a new gasket on the clutch cover which can help confirm this.  He also said he had a mechanic do an oil change, a new hiflofiltro filter confirms this.  There is also a Pilot Power on the back with 95% tread left.  Had thoughts of selling it in favor of some pilot road 2ct's, but I probably can't get much enough $ outta the PP for it to be worth the hassle.  So imagine how much a new set of plates, an oil change, and a new tire cost, ALL performed by a mechanic, I'd say at least $400... this guy sure wasn't the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.

mrmatt, I did a quick look on google for a CBR100F, and sure enough those are the forks I have got!  I even went to the Honda parts fiche just to confirm.  I had ordered some fork seals from all balls racing for a 1992 VFR750... but those won't work now, but that's alright because I found out they are terrible seals anyway.  From what I read its best to stick with OEM Honda seals and nothing else, right?  

I tried to find the spring rate for those forks but I didn't have much luck..  I'll probably ride it a little while and eventually put in some 0.95 kg/cm springs from racetech, I can't stand a soft wallowy front end, but we'll see how this thing handles before I dump more money into it.

I've already done a few things to the bike..  I scored a R/R from a 2008 ZX14 for only $25 shipped, got it mounted and wired and I'm getting about 13 volts at idle and 13.6 volts max (which is at 2K RPM).  I thought the new mosfet R/R's were the bees knees?  I even bypassed the stock wiring harness for the stator, and went straight from stator to the R/R, and still only getting 13.6 max.  I tested the stator output and was getting about 60-63 volts off all 3 connections, so I'm confident that I'm good in that department, guess I'll chalk it up to old wiring?

Out of curiosity I pulled the airbox apart to find a UNI filter, ah relief at last, less money I have to spend!  UNTILL, I find that it was installed UPSIDE DOWN, that's right, the oiled side was facing downward   :ohmy:    So I pull that out, clean it and re-oil it, no biggy..  Then I get to the inside of the airbox and man-oh-man is it filthy..  God only knows how long that filter has been installed bass-ackwards.  Keep looking around and see some tool marks on the #4 velocity stack, I go to touch it and it came right out of the carb mouth.  It was mangled beyond repair, so now I have to get a new one of those, thankfully they are only $18-25 via parts fiche.  Luckily I found no signs that the carbs had been off, guess whoever tried to get them off got as far as the velocity stack and lost their will to go onward.  THANK GOD!  If they had trouble getting the stack off, who knows what they could have destroyed in the carbs lol.  The bike has a Yoshi slip-on, and whenever it was running I could tell it was a bit lean(reluctant to rev freely in neutral), but thats alright, cuz I NEED MPG's!  I jetted my old SV650 and it lost about 10-12MPG, but damn it sure did run good afterwards.  ANYWHO, I also found out my front wheel bearings are garbage, all balls replacement, or OEM only?  And for the rotors, I am gonna try and straighten them the best I can; can't stomach buying a used set only to find they are warped as well.  OR I could find a set gauranteed to be straight, but then the seller will want an arm-anna-leg for them.  

Also, since my seat-cover is wrecked, I went to an upholstery shop today and they quoted me $70 to re-cover the seat, sounds a bit high to me, yeah?  

I'll try and get some more pics as I go, the bike is strapped into a bike-swing right now.

Great buy and WELCOME   !!!

Hey, good job on the find.  Just to let you know there is another member that is parting out his 91.  His handle is vtwin650.  Here is a link to his thread: Parting Out 1991 Hopefully this helps with the restoration.  Good luck and keep us posted.

It's amazing how many people will abuse machinery.

Welcome, and great find on the $150 8-spoke rear wheel !!!

bring her back, she's worth it!


what are the covers on the bars from?  Never seen them before??

[image: View Post]SVHadder, on 18 July 2011 - 06:48 PM, said:

I've already done a few things to the bike..  I scored a R/R from a 2008 ZX14 for only $25 shipped, got it mounted and wired and I'm getting about 13 volts at idle and 13.6 volts max (which is at 2K RPM).  I thought the new mosfet R/R's were the bees knees?  I even bypassed the stock wiring harness for the stator, and went straight from stator to the R/R, and still only getting 13.6 max.  I tested the stator output and was getting about 60-63 volts off all 3 connections, so I'm confident that I'm good in that department, guess I'll chalk it up to old wiring?

Your voltage reading is probably caused by the battery not being in a good state of charge.  All voltage readings at battery can only be considered accurate if the battery is fully charged.

However, you can cheat!  Check the voltage across the regulator positive and negative pins, and that will tell you the voltage it's regulating at.  For example, I had a dud battery which was reading a charging voltage of 13.3 volts, but at the regulator it was reading 14.7.  That was just before I dropped a Shorai LFX into it.   :biggrin:

[image: View Post]kaldek, on 18 July 2011 - 11:42 PM, said:

[image: View Post]SVHadder, on 18 July 2011 - 06:48 PM, said:

I've already done a few things to the bike..  I scored a R/R from a 2008 ZX14 for only $25 shipped, got it mounted and wired and I'm getting about 13 volts at idle and 13.6 volts max (which is at 2K RPM).  I thought the new mosfet R/R's were the bees knees?  I even bypassed the stock wiring harness for the stator, and went straight from stator to the R/R, and still only getting 13.6 max.  I tested the stator output and was getting about 60-63 volts off all 3 connections, so I'm confident that I'm good in that department, guess I'll chalk it up to old wiring?

Your voltage reading is probably caused by the battery not being in a good state of charge.  All voltage readings at battery can only be considered accurate if the battery is fully charged.

However, you can cheat!  Check the voltage across the regulator positive and negative pins, and that will tell you the voltage it's regulating at.  For example, I had a dud battery which was reading a charging voltage of 13.3 volts, but at the regulator it was reading 14.7.  That was just before I dropped a Shorai LFX into it.   :biggrin:

That is a reasonable explanation as well!  Whenever I had the stator hooked to the R/R, I put my volt meter on the outputs to check for positive vs negative, and I was reading about 15.3 volts, so once I get this thing on the road again, I will look into getting a new battery for it.  Thanks for the advice!

[image: View Post]afpierce489, on 18 July 2011 - 08:47 PM, said:

Hey, good job on the find.  Just to let you know there is another member that is parting out his 91.  His handle is vtwin650.  Here is a link to his thread: Parting Out 1991 Hopefully this helps with the restoration.  Good luck and keep us posted.

Sadly he has already got all the parts on ebay already, and they are all auction style.  I'm more of a buy-it-now kinda guy   :blush:

[image: View Post]nosaint, on 18 July 2011 - 09:26 PM, said:

bring her back, she's worth it!


what are the covers on the bars from?  Never seen them before??

Not quite sure what you are referring to?

[image: View Post]SVHadder, on 19 July 2011 - 01:51 AM, said:

That is a reasonable explanation as well!  Whenever I had the stator hooked to the R/R, I put my volt meter on the outputs to check for positive vs negative, and I was reading about 15.3 volts, so once I get this thing on the road again, I will look into getting a new battery for it.  Thanks for the advice!

FYI, when you have a good battery in there, note that 15.3 volts is upper end of the scale before being considered too high.  Also, a charging voltage higher than 14.8 would kill a LiFePO4 battery, just so you know (not that you'd be thinking of splurging on one of those though!).

Geez...I thought I had the best bargain at $800 from a guy being shotgun wedding.  Most of the body fairings were badly scratch due to minor drops.  I figured its going to be a great winter restoration project.  Just enjoy the summer riding it as the engine was awesome at 17000miles.  Unfortunately one mishap / one day/ my wife was following me too close with her SUV and slammed beside me.  Luckily, I baled off in time to save my left leg.  With the damage, I have to wait it out at least the rest of the season before my first north american VFR can be fixed (no frame damage).   Gawd can't wait for that and so lucky enough, I found another one...some one in a hurry to move out of province and sold it a little higher than the first one I got.  I LUV MY VFR!!!   I have two now! LOL

Little update here..

Spent the past week or so figuring out what parts I'm gonna need, and then spent a few days finding the best prices... uhh it sucks being a cheap b*****d.  With everything I've bought (including the bike of course), I am a little past $1000.  All of this stuff adds up SOOO quickly.  Here's a copy of my excel document, (yeah a cheap guy that keeps an excel document of his spending, go figure   :biggrin: )  

$150.00 Initial purchase
$91.00 Transfer of title
$31.00 06 ZX14 R/R
$37.00 Head bearings
$36.00 Fork seals
$55.00 New triple trees (Mangled the threads into an S shape when getting the upper triple off....)
$20.00 2 Ignition keys made
$50.00 Gold O-Ring drive chain
$75.00 Reupholster Seat
$27.00 Rear sprocket
$70.00 Front rotors (comes attached to a 1996 CBR1000F front wheel lol)
$17.00 Front wheel bearings
$16.00 Gel grips
$33.00 Heated Grips (I ride year-round so these are a must)
$15.00 Front turn signals
$172.00 OEM Honda parts (Proper OEM fork seals, intake velocity stack, misc fasteners, chain adjuster tool, OEM front sprocket, etc)
$90.00 SV650 Headlight & Mounts
$6.00 Yoshimura Foil Decals (Bought 10 of them from Bangkok, sure it takes 2-3 weeks but maybe I can sell a few locally lol)
$15.00 Fork Oil

That's the tally for now, I pray it doesn't get much bigger.  I hate going past that point where you KNOW you have more money into the bike than what you can sell it for.  My guess is that she'll be worth about $1500, but who knows.  I don't intend to fix it and sell it, but I just like knowing I can turn at least a little profit, rather than losing my a** like I have seen many people do lol.  I know I have seen some ugly rat fighters going for upwards of $1200-1300, so maybe I'll be alright, PLUS mine's a veeeee four, that's gotta be worth something!

Anywho, onto the repairs!  I plan to have a friend sand blast the fork lowers so I can paint them silver to match my silver frame, duhhh.  I wanna get the wheels blasted and paint them, but I haven't much time before I go back to college, so they may have to wait for winter, not sure yet.  I wanna do black wheels with a polished lip, as I love the contrast the polished lip gives, BUT, whenever you sandblast the wheel it will no longer have the polished finish hiding beneath the paint, and I don't think my paint job would stick good unless the wheel was blasted.  So that leaves me with doing it all in silver, possibly....   The bike will be finished in rattle can flat black, so I'd really like to have the black wheels with polished lip, I think that would be the best choice.  

I'm finishing up my summer college classes this week so there will be no VFR time, just waiting on the parts to come in.  I did get my new tapered roller bearings installed, so that's one good thing.  Next will be to finish the forks, then mount the SV650 headlight and somehow hide the excess wiring in the shell or in the frame near the airbox.  I think after the front end is finished it will be smooth sailing.  Just install the new chain and sprocket set and tidy up some lose ends here and there.

Heres a few pics in the garage, my shop has never been this dirty UNTIL this bike came along, so much stuff strewn about.
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Did someone take out their frustration on that poor velocity stack?   :beatdeadhorse:

[image: View Post]Veefer800Canuck, on 26 July 2011 - 01:46 AM, said:

Did someone take out their frustration on that poor velocity stack?   :beatdeadhorse:


Hillbilly airflow tuning??????     :laughing6-hehe:

I'm back with a little update!  We have wheels on the ground, my friends!

Decided on some brand new pilot road 2ct's as I've had them on my past SV650's and they were great wearing tires.  I had the wheels sandblasted and then I painted them with dupli-color wheel paint, and a light coat of clear.  The clear coat didn't go so well as it was the first time I had ever used it, and I was in a bit of a hurry to get them painted.  I also had the fork tube lowers sandblasted and then I painted them with some Dupli-color ceramic silver caliper paint, looks like factory paint!   The clear coat worked a bit better on the fork tubes.

In other news, I was inspecting the rear end a few weeks ago and noticed about 6 hairline cracks in the rear rotor, so I had to buy a used replacement, crack-free of course.  Of course to swap the rear rotor you have to disassemble the rear axle assembly, so while I was in there I cleaned and lubed the bearings and most everything else I could get to.  The bearings didn't look to be in bad shape considering the general condition of the rest of the bike.  

I got all the harness and switchgear wiring stuffed in front of the airbox, and I'm on my way to hooking up my Delkevic SV650 headlight.  I've also got a set of tiny bikemaster blinkers that will be mounting to the headlight fork mounts.  And just last week I scored a complete Trailtech Vapor Stealth kit for $70 off of craigslist, so I have to somehow hook that up... Anybody got any tips as far as mounting the speedometer pick-up and the magnet?  That will be my biggest problem.

In trying to make it legal enough to take for a quick zip, I discovered that I am missing a body piece for the tail section that holds the tail light and signal pods to the rest of the tail plastics... Didn't have much luck finding a used one, but Honda parts fiche shows it for only $33, which is more than I'd like to pay, but like I said... there's not much in the way of good used plastics for these 3rd gens.

I'd also like to remount the oil cooler, probably in a vertical position on the left side of the bike.  Thinking of chopping the steel hardlines and putting some good rubber hose over them and clamping them down real good.  Bad idea?

I DID manage to take the bike for a quick zip through my neighborhood and it seemed to pull pretttyyyy damn good   :biggrin:

OH, and one other thing.... I discovered the front wheel is from a 1992 CBR600F2(it was written on the inside of the wheel lol)  I mostly discovered this when installing the new wheel bearings.  The F2 had a speedo drive on the left side of the wheel, and so my bearing seals didn't exactly fit, so I was like WTF?  Then I did some googling and found out I don't have a VFR front wheel...  I hope there are no more surprises! :ohmy:

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Good work so far. What headlight do you plan to use?

You'll probably need a different wheel spacer for the F2 wheel?

[image: View Post]SEBSPEED, on 25 August 2011 - 05:34 AM, said:

Good work so far. What headlight do you plan to use?

You'll probably need a different wheel spacer for the F2 wheel?

Going to be using an SV650 knock-off from Delkevic, it was $70 brand new including shipping.  I've had 2 SV650's and I always loved the light output, especially after installing a relay.  This Delkevic version seems a bit cheap... but I hope it works just as good.

I had the same concern about the spacers!  When I was putting the front wheel on I noticed there was more rotor clearance on the left rotor than the right rotor, and I started flipping out.  Turns out I hadn't stuffed the axle in as far as it needed to go.  I guess whoever swapped the front wheel at least managed to get the right spacers in there, which was sort of surprising..  

Can't wait to get this thing finished and get it on the street!  For now I am riding a $300 93 GS500 and I'm slowly starting to grow fond of it..  I bought the GS500 to be my college runabout (100 mile roundtrip ride home every-other weekend), but when this VFR popped up I couldn't resist.  I need to sell the GS before I grow TOO close to it, it really is a great college bike, but I can't sell the GS until the VFR is roadworthy....

Heading home this weekend, so hopefully I can make some progress.  If all goes well, I'd like to get the headlight and front blinkers mounted, and possibly my heated grips(NC winter's aren't very warm lol)

Nice job. Keep going. Extra points for the correct colour choice by the way!