New member rebuilding a '10 in Houston

[iBang]

Figured that since I owned a 250 it was time to scout out some forums for gathering information for when I inevitably hit that question that I just can't google the answer to. A bit about me - I've been riding for a couple of years now. Started riding in Austin and have since moved to Houston Started out on a '98 Honda CBR 600 F3 which was a great old bike but I ultimately ended up selling it early last year to finance a Suzuki DR650 done out in full motard style. I ride with my fiancee and she had back surgery and the sport bikes were just not cutting it while she healed up (she was riding a 2005 R1 at that point). We mistakenly thought that having had our fast fun on the big bikes, we wouldn't want sport bikes any more... yeah, that lasted less than a year. I miss the speed and acceleration some (ok, a lot), but more I missed the stability at highway speeds.

Fast forward to last week. I was offered a smoking hot deal on a toy hauler that I've been trying to get a friend to sell me for a while now. Funds need to be generated so my suzuki went up for sale. Not having a motorcycle wasn't going to cut it but before I could even go looking for something cheap to ride, a friend offered me his damaged ninja 250. I'd been wanting a 250 for a track bike for a while so this was a good chance to get one and use it for all around use before converting it to a track bike later. The $900 price tag for a bike with 3k on it was a pretty good incentive as well!

As I mentioned, the bike was damaged. I say damaged instead of wrecked since the bent and broken bits (peg, stand, few other bits) had already been figured out and the bike was nice and ridable - albeit in naked form.

Here she is as I picked it up:


Today I started in on repairing the fairings. I'm short the unpainted plastic piece from the wrecked side as well as the tail fairing from that side. The rest of it was actually better than anticipated from the low side it went through.

Left full before:


Left damage:


Another big crack:


Right side damage from turn signal punching in the fairing:


I took some aluminum tape and use it to simulate the surface of the chunk that was missing. Then I put some painters plastic down to keep the glass from sticking to anything on the bike, flipped the fairing, and glassed on the back side. Once that was dry I pulled the piece away from the plastic and pulled the tape off the bike. Then I taped the piece back in place and glassed it in on the back side. This is what it looked like after I trimmed the front:


Here's the other fairing crack after I dremeled a trench on all the cracks and glassed the back side:


And here it is with the trenches filled with some resin mixed with filler:


Here's the pair after a coat of primer to find imperfections. I know it looks pretty good in the cell phone picture but there's an awful lot of pinholes that will need some spot putty and a lot of finish sanding to get it ready for gloss black paint:


Fortunately for me, Kawasaki was cheap as hell when they built this bike and the red on the front farings is actually a sticker, not actually painted on. I'm going to pull those off and just paint the entire upper section of the fairings where the damage is gloss black. The lower red I will leave to tie in with the rear fairings and tank. I shouldn't have to go even close to that to blend in the black.

All in all I'm extremely happy for my $900. I'll get it to a solid 5 footer, a 1 footer if I'm feeling ambitious. Honestly I'm not shooting for perfection - its a cheap bike and ultimately it will be a track bike which unfortunately means that these fairing may see ground time again. I certainly hope not, but it does happen.

I'm looking to take a trip to the dragon in late April/Early may when I go to TN to pick up my toy hauler, so I'll post up pictures from that when it happens.

Right now I've got the fairings back on the bike and I'm going to take it on a ride tomorrow up through the national forest near here with my fiancee and a friend. Should serve as a nice time to get to know the 250 a little better. I'll probably pull the fairings back off Sunday or some evening next week and get some pinhole filler and more sanding done. With any luck I'll be color sanding out some fresh black late next week.

[Alex]

iBang! Glad to have you aboard...

[Snake]

Hello and welcome.

[flynjay]

It is a sweet ride for sure. Good work on the fairing repair.

I'm kinda digging the naked rear. There is room under the seat for the tool kit, just put it in a ziplock bag. You just need to get the signals worked out.

And riding without mirrors is rough.

[KJohnson21]

[nickjpass]

[cuong-nutz]

Hi there, Ian! Awesome deal on the bike. It looks familiar too!