bike stolen, crashed, now what...

[John Soliday]

Believe it or not you might find some cheap fairings and headlight
assemblies in the JC Whitney cycle catalog.  They are online too, and I used
to buy fairings from them for our RZ350 racebikes, knowing they would be
crashed shortly.  I think they also sell a universal chin fairing too.  Of
course the turn signals are available you can get the little ones for like
$20 a pair if I recall.

John 

-----Original Message-----
From: James Keefover [mailto:jkeefover at swansonindustries.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 7:00 AM
To: gpzlist at micapeak.com
Subject: bike stolen, crashed, now what...

Last Saturday night some low life stole my motorcycle and crashed it a few
hours later.  It was found abandoned, on it's side in the middle of the
road, no perp.  I hope he's covered in road rash but I digress.  I have only
liability insurance so no help there.

The lower fairings are pretty much trash.  The upper fairing isn't too bad
but the signal lights were both punched through the plastics.  The metal
frame that the upper fairing mounts to is bent.  I believe the forks
survived.  The ignition cylinder is destroyed.

Last night I removed the lower and upper fairings and the look appeals to
me.  So I'm going to reconfigure the bike as a naked UJM kind of thing.  I
have no money in the budget for this at all.  So it has to be done all
pennytech-like.  It is also my only vehicle, I ride year round barring snow
and have no car of my own, so I have to get it going quickly.

Any suggestions on a cheap, easy to mount headlight?  Simple round light
would be fine, dual speed-triple-ish even better maybe.  I guess I'm going
to leave the frame that the instruments mount to and try to mount a light
below them.  I may try to modify it to remove all the unneeded sections.  Or
I might just attempt to fab my own bracket for the instruments.  I just
don't have time to fab anything right now.

I'll need to mount some cheap turn signal in the front.  Anyone have a part
number of something that will work?

Finally I will need mirrors.  I could go with bar end mirrors or I think the
stock controls are tapped for regular lollipop mirrors.  I believe I saw
some at Walmart that might fit.

If I could find an ELR type front fairing, I would scrap the instruments
just to be able to mount that.  I'd put on a simple round tach and bicycle
speedo, assuming I could find a tach that would work cheap.

To save cost I will probably replace ignition cylinder with hidden toggle
switch.  Anyone know what the wiring scheme would need to be?  I have a
service manual so should be able to figure it out I guess.

I will need to replace one handlebar as well, bent.  I've even considered
doing a tubular bar conversion.  What's the cheapest this can be done?

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

James