Bodywork Help, please.

I've been working on a refurbishment of a 91, and am very pleased to report that I've reached the reassembly stage.

I went to refit the upper fairing, and that's where the fun begins. I loosely put in the two upper mounting bolts at the front, to hold it in place, and then the two bolts at the lower rear, all good there too.
Then I went to fit the mirrors, and that's when the games began.

The holes in the plastic are out of alignment with the holes in the frame by about 3/4" laterally, and almost 1/2" vertically.
So I remove the bolts I have in loose, and concentrate on one mirror, getting both bolts started there, and onto the other where, so far, I have one bolt in there, and not having fun with the second. But even from where it is, I can tell there is no way I'll easily get the front bolts in.

So, does anyone have any hints, tips, hard won experience, or otherwise that could save me a bit of time while I'm struggling to get this section back on?

Thanks.

Put up some pictures so we can see the trouble. Off hand, I'd say your support structure under the fairing is bent out of shape. Was it okay when you disassembled things?

jfheath said:

Its been a long time, but i remember having similar issues the first few times. I cant be specific, unfortunately, but i found that it was counter productive to fasten anything up until it was all properly seated. Spotting the lugs on the fairing is half of the battle. Some of them are not easy to spot - like the ones at the front to keep the seam under each side of the lights in line.

But what i found invaluable was that tube which emerges near the mirror. Put a similar sized extension bar inside and hang the fairing off it. Without having to balance the weight, it made it much easier to manoeuvre everything into a position where screws and bolts can be loosely inserted.

Click to expand...

Thanks for this, it's what I suspected, but didn't want to face....I'll pull it all off and start again from scratch.

Mcreviver said:

Put up some pictures so we can see the trouble. Off hand, I'd say your support structure under the fairing is bent out of shape. Was it okay when you disassembled things?

Click to expand...

No issues with disassembly, nothing immediately "popped" and moved position when the fasteners were removed. No obvious bending or deviation from normal on the supports.

But when I get back to it (probably tomorrow I'll get some pics and post them.

Sounds like your fairing stay is bent. Happens fairly often if the bike has been crashed. That's the easiest way to tell if an ST1100 has been crashed - remove the mirrors and the holes don't line up, that's a pretty good indication. You might to see if you can find one on EBay or try to straighten the one you have.

Surely if the misalignment was due to deformation of the stay, then the existing would have been under stress, and popped out of alignment when the mirror was removed?
This didn't happen during dis-assembly. With the mirror removed, the holes lined up, and could have been easily refitted.

Does anyone have the dimensions & angles for what they should be when in spec, so that I can check them?
If they are out, I can get them re-aligned, I have access to a full workshop, just need to know to what.

But from what I see, I don't believe they are out.
While I do have another I can use as a template to compare against, having seen the issues I'm having getting this fairing aligned, I'm not exactly inclined to pull off another to use what's underneath as a comparison, if there's another way.

Uncle Phil said:

Sounds like your fairing stay is bent. Happens fairly often if the bike has been crashed....

Click to expand...

+1...

The ST1100 fairing parts have perfect fit... just slap them on and all holes align...
Unless that cowl stay subframe is bend...
Time to break out, tape-meter, crowbar and hammer... 1/2" off is a lot, hope the welding seams didn't crack...

Hopefully I'll have pics on here by tomorrow, and you guys can let me know definitively.

Thanks for all the input so far.

So the fairing is on!

Many thanks to John Heath, his advice was spot-on. I took everything off, and started again. With the help of a few centering pins, and some jiggling, I got things lined up, then bolted up.

It was just down my lack of experience once I lined the rubber pads at the front up first, it all came together.

So having said I'd post some pics of the fairing stay, so here we are.




And here's one from about 90 minutes later.


Seems as though I'm having an issue with uploading the images, and displaying them as URL's. So below is a link to where the files are on my Google Drive:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8vJYJgsjgh5fml4dDhyNlVFUnVwSkpvRWVqeGM2dHhIenhPMUYzU3hPZi11aGFBTmFCYTg&usp=sharing

Glad you got it sorted...

Picture posting is usually a size issue... I use 'paint' to resize (read the attachment rules for pixel/size requirements) before I can post...

Mark

Thanks for this guys. I now know the error of my ways.

The day is never wasted when you learn something.

When I first put ReSTored back together several years ago, I found it easiest to install the side panels first, using them to check the fit of the front fairing pieces. In that case, tho, we knew the sub frame was very bent used that intial alignment to bend various tabs back into place. It's still not perfect (several years later) but was good enuff at the time to get her back on the road. I've put ~110,000 miles on her since then and need to readdress the issue.