Chitownson

Some of the members know I crashed in November, screwing up the left side of my bike. One of the local residents who helped me off the pavement was kind enough to pick up all my busted plastic off the road and stick the pieces in my tank bag. After my shoulder started to heal, I went to my local motorcycle salvage yard. They wanted hundreds for plastics that were almost as busted up as mine was; so I went to Harbor Freight and bought a package of plastic welding rods for $5.00 and fixed my own busted plastics. (If you take the plastic panels off and look at the stampings on them, they will have the part #, an L or R for left or right and whether it's ABS plastic. You have to use ABS rods with ABS panels, etc.)

The ABS welding rods were pretty easy to work with (like solder) and can fill smaller holes, etc. I just used a soldering gun with a big flat tip, held the broken plastic panels together with C-clamps and fixed the broken pieces by using the ABS rods the same way you would use solder. I was actually able to create replacement mounting tabs using the rods for tabs that were broken off or damaged. I reused every single busted body panel (including some that were in multiple pieces) using this method and the results were better and stronger than I expected.Then it was on to fiberglass filler, 3M Acryl Green from an auto body supply store to fill in the minor scratches, etc. primed and painted.

I sprayed the bike a dark gunmetal gray with 4 coats of clear over Firestorm decals I ordered from the UK instead of Superhawk badges. (I deleted the Honda badges.) I spent a total of $300 to fix the bike including clutch basket, shifter and misc. parts and supplies.

Attached is the results.

Hawk9807