Yami Restoration from Red to Purple Part 2/3

You can read part 1 of this blog here.

So I was finally getting the bike looking good again after 4 years of pure ugliness. I had found the right man for the job, (a passionate Irishman with a love for fine art and motorbike restoration) Ricky, Rusty Hills Repair and Restoration. As I still wanted to use the bike we decided to do it in stages. We had chosen the colour and the tank had already been complete. Thus giving a glimpse of what she would finally look like when complete.

The next stage was to book her in for a few days to get all the fairings and the rest of the bike repaired and resprayed (see part 1 for original damage).

With her well on the way to getting sorted I started to hunt around for a new tank pad and original Yamaha Fazer stickers etc. to go on for when she was complete. I had a good idea of what I wanted her to finally look like so created a mood board on my Pinterest account with all the different bits and bobs that would suit the look I was going for. The great thing about Pinterest is you can pin directly from websites if you see something you like and its a good way to see all your ideas in one place.

The tank pad was quite a straight forward ordering process using wemoto.com which I have personally used on several occasions and have found to be a good company to use. However finding original Yamaha Fazer stickers for the make and model of my bike was a tricky process. I eventually came across a European company which sold them Motor Stickers. Unfortunately at the time of ordering due to unforeseen circumstances I had to move house at the last minute Through Stormy Skies. Amongst the chaos of moving and due to hitch of the company trying to deliver to my old address somehow the stickers ended up being held in a depot near Heathrow for a couple of weeks and I was unable to get them redelivered. However after several communications with customer service (which I have to say were very helpful) they managed to redeliver to my new address some weeks later. Absolute nightmare! But on a whole I was very pleased with the service and quality of the stickers that arrived.

By this time Ricky had completed the respray and repaired the cracked fairings. The transformation was immense, I was absolutely stoked!

The stickers wouldn’t be able to go on for a few weeks yet as the paint needed to settle in 1st. But we were getting there, although still a little way to go yet. I was finally gonna get the bike looking smart again.

However my short lived excitement was soon shattered in the true ups and downs of ones life, just 1 week after the bike had been resprayed, I came out of work to see a group of girls walking away from the bikes (I can only assume but it looked like that had been sitting on them) to find two chips on the tank. Annoyed was an understatement! Yes only two chips you say, but this would be no easy fix as we would find out later on.

From here on in, in the true spirit of winter, less than a month after this incident, came the next batch of misfortune and woe…

The 1st of those was whilst I was parking my bike going down a steep slope when the inevitable happened, I dropped her. It wasn’t a straight forward drop either, she slid down the slope.

But it wasn’t just the scratched fairing that showed damage, the crankcase had also been badly scratched

The icing on the cake was the fairing which Ricky had so carefully repaired had also cracked…

Gutted wasn’t even anywhere close to how I was feeling. In less than a month of her new paint job she had been chipped, scratched and her fairing cracked again. I was beginning to feel I would never have her looking nice. To top if off, only a day after I had dropped her began more hassle, when one of the main wires going into the fuse box snapped off. I was starting to believe the bike dislikes winter as much as I do The Rising Fear of October

Will I ever get the bike sorted? Will this restoration ever be complete? Watch this space for part 3 where we will see if I manage to get her finished and how we get on with repairing the new damage plus hilarious shenanigans of me attempting to do my own spannering…