Another man's fairing repair

This is the report from one of our riders who followed the original ABS repair guide in the FAQ. This project tackles the various cracks and warps in his fairings. The owner says: "It took a while, but everything turned out smooth, and I am satisfied with the result."

The only images we have are pretty small, but every fairing bash is different, and you'll have to improvise somewhat as you go, anyway. This article should give you a good feel for what is involved.

Make sure that you have a well-ventilated area for the noxious fumes to escape from.

First, pick up a cheap soldering iron from Radio Shack or wherever and some ABS cement. It should available anywhere plumbers shop.

The process is simple:

1. Find the crack
2. Sand down the rough edges
3. Use the soldering iron along the crack to melt the fairing back together
4. After it cools, sand down the crack again
5. Add ABS cement to fill in the gaps
6. Sand the outside face until smooth
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 as needed

You can just solder the inside face, which would make it hard to notice from the outside. That also has the advantage that you might not have to repaint, which you would have to do if you sanded both sides. This one was going to be repainted anyway, so both the inside and outside were sanded.

This is a crack in the lower fairing.

The outside is sanded.

The inside is cleaned and sanded.

The crack is soldered from the inside.

ABS cement is added to strengthen the joint.

Here's the result from the outside.

There were two areas that took a lot more than one pass to completely fix. The first was on the upper fairing, which had a pink streak by the front-left turn signal. That was a large crack that a previous owner filled in with Bondo. Bondo is great for filling in dents or other divots, but it's not really the right tool for joining cracks. This part was sanded down until the original crack was exposed and then soldered together. It took several (probably 8 - 10) cycles of adding the cement and sanding down until it was smooth and there were no bumps.

The upper fairing's Bondo streak.

The rear fairing had a crack that made a small ripple. That one also was a matter of sanding off the hills and filling in the valleys. This is a few cycles into the process.

This is a job that can be done by anyone with a bit of patience. You'll have to decide for yourself how much effort to put into it and how 'perfect' it has to be.