So the wife had her first slow speed tip over. A car was riding her ass pretty good because she's still learning so she was going a little slow, she went to pull off the road and the front tire got caught in some soft sand sending her for a little ride off to the side of the bike. It happens, I get it, especially when being overwhelmed with learning everything all at once. She's ok, had full gear on, I was surprised she got a skinned up knees with a pair of 160 dollar riding pants on though, seemed to have instantly chewed through them. Definitely got me re-thinking my gear!
Pretty much everything on the left side of the bike was bent or road rashed, except for my freshly rebuilt and powder coated swing arm and front forks, thank God. Bars were bent pretty good, speedo destroyed, headlight destroyed, list goes on. I wasn't too upset because I planning to change most of it anyway
Started the repairs by smoothing and coating the road rashed top triples.
Straightened and recoated the plate holder, and gauge holder, replaced headlight and bucket with a LED, and replaced bars with a Baja style, new grips and mirrors as well.
Replaced speedo, slapped green lights in them. Took the opportunity to rebuild and paint the ignition switch, that was an adventure
. Went with a mikes one piece handlebar clamp, blasted and coated to match.
Somehow, when the bike went down the sand actually managed to force its way through the starter seal, so if the starter had to come out for seal replacement why not take the opportunity to work it over!
Now to the fun stuff, cleaned up and coated the road rashed side cover, also coated the foot peg mounts and went with some cheap MX style foot pegs, replaced the bent shift lever. Also coated and rebuilt the side stand and front engine mount, just cause
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Naturally if you make one side black, you must make the other! I also had to sand down, de-badge and repaint the plastic air filter covers as well.
I realized the tappet covers need to be black now to "tie" it all together visually. I'll get around to that soon, but I just needed my daily knock around bike back on the road! All in all, it wasn't too bad to whip her back into shape! I did have some new clutch cable woes to sort out, as well as the dredded "no ground reference after painted bar install" for the start button, this forum helped greatly with a quick resolution of that problem!! All seems to be sorted now!
She didn't want to take chance of hurting my classic again, so she purchased herself a pretty cool little Kawasaki Z400! We are going to powder coat and throw some crash bars on that in case this happens again during the learning process. She has experienced a minor crash now, has gotten over it, and is ready to progress! Proud of her! I'll be following along on ol XS trying get her more comfortable soon!
