Alright, time to give this a good update as to all of the things I have been up to in the past week or so.
As is visible from the first pic in this thread, I had my first big maintenance day. Judging from the general abilities of the previous owner I figured it would be wise to change all of the fluids and reset all of the stock suspension components as per the service manual. It gave me a great chance to learn more about the bike as well as know what condition everything was in. Its also a great feeling to get something done yourself, even if at times you just want to throw the whole freaking machine in the trash can.
I decided to drain and flush the coolant because the bike seemed to have a overheating problem, even in the coolest of weather. I figured the culprit had to be somewhere on the right side where the bike was originally wrecked. Sure enough I found the little bastard responsible for all of my problems. A small tab on the radiator inlet was keeping the cap from sitting flush, this allowed the coolant to boil out at a much lower temperature. Once I fixed the tab and added Engine Ice, she keeps the heat down just fine.
Beyond the basic service, I was going to go ahead and throw on the parts that I had ordered. These parts included a new right side fairing, OEM grips, chain guard, various little bolts I needed, and some Woodcraft frame sliders.
Didn't care for the cheap after market grips that the previous owner had installed. This is a pic to illustrate the old versus new. The new is on the left and old crappy grip is on the right.
It was nice to get the new fairing on the right side, it was like making the bike new again. However I decided to ruin this pristine feeling by cutting a 2 inch hole into each side of the bike only 30 minutes later to install my sliders.
I was sort of lucky to have a crappy fairing to practice on. However, the right side is the easiest because it already has a hole in the fairing to access the engine mount bolt. The left side was truly nerve racking because you had to "find" the bolt as you drilled through it, and then try and cut the 2 inch hole. It was easy but damn if I wasn't nervous as hell.
Overall I think everything went really well. Learned a lot about the bike and I truly enjoyed the time spent in the driveway working with tools. It had been a year or two since I had gotten to wrench on anything. I forgot how fun it could be once the problem is solved.
This is her the morning before our first road trip. I thought she looked quite good with her new accessories.
