Reconstruction of a 1996 Honda ST1100
Ever since I started shopping for a bike in the summer
of 2001, I noticed the Honda ST1100.
Friends described it as “a great bike” or “a mile
eater”.
As a novice rider, it was
just too much bike for what I needed, so I bought a Honda Pacific Coast. The
PC800 was perfect for me, until I started doing long trips. I was getting the
bike out of its element, which was the “perfect all-around urban commuter”.
Plenty of folks do lots of long trips on a PC, as I did….but I wanted more
flexibility and stronger long distance potential.
I saw the ad for this bike in
Cycletrader.com around November 2001. It was a salvage ST1100, only 150 miles
away. A quick trailer hitch install on my car, a couple of phone calls, one slow
trailer trip and the bike was mine.
Let’s see what’s wrong with this dude……..
The bike ran fine and appeared
to be OK mechanically, but needed TLC in many areas. The previous owner was
involved with a car that turned left in front of him, causing
the classic “T-Bone” accident. The front end of the bike
(and
the rider) bore most of the damage.
Don’t worry, the previous owner’s OK now!
In the above photo, you can see that the front fender
is mauled near the left fork, the left upper cowl is
beyond repair, the windscreen is missing, the left
maintenance cover is cracked, and the left crash protector is broken.
The above photo shows the
missing turn signal cover & mirror, the missing crash guard, and the gouges
in the
upper cowl that were repaired and repainted.
After the initial crash, the
bike must have flipped over on its back, as both grab bars were scuffed beyond
repair,
and the rear fender was scraped pretty badly. I didn’t
include them in these pictures, but the saddlebags were a mess as well.
Time to get moving! I stripped
all the Tupperware off, and you can see the front cowl where it took a lot of
the impact.
The cowl stay is all bent up, and the
instrument cluster is cracked. You can’t see it, but I found later that the
left front
fork was bent. I ended up replacing the front forks, using
new front seals and fork fluid.
Here’s a shot showing the
front forks off the bike, supported by the floor jack underneath.
With all the plastic off, it’s
really easy to do standard maintenance! As you can see, we have a lot of other
vehicles
to maintain in our family.
Drum Roll, please!
Here’s what she looks like now, from the rear. Notice
the “shiny” bottom grey on the saddlebags. This area was scratched so badly
that I had to sand out the grey pebble-grain, and they looked pretty crummy. A
local body shop was able to spray this plastic bumper covering on them, and it
doesn’t look out of place at all as you can see. I think they also did a really
nice job of matching the paint, which is said to be really difficult with this
color of red.
And here’s a shot of her from the front. Notice that the
front fender is whole again. The upper left cowl came from a 1996 ABS in