Hello All! New to the spyder thing, but have been around motorcycles for about 20 years or so. Thought i'd share my newly purchased poor condition 2008 spyder that I bought for $750 not running. She's originally a silver and black painted spyder, which was spray bombed black. Unless she really is a phantom that has silver paint beneath the flat black painted areas? Can anyone confirm? The spyder currently has about 30,000 miles of which 17,000 miles were put on by the previous owner. The bike was parked about 7 months ago because it started to run really rough and "dumping fuel" from what the previous owner told me. She also mentioned that the parking brake doesn't work, the master cylinder reservoir leaks (i'll get back to this one), and the fuel pump was broken. Well, I purchased it with the intent of restoring her to better than new. Here is what she looks like after I brought her home.
I started to slowly diagnose what the problem was with the bike. First step was to purchase a new battery since it was completely dead. Installed the battery and tried to start her up, no dice. Did some fuel and spark testing and found that the spark was really weak. Read the resistance on the plug wires and found that it was extremely high and sometimes wasn't continuous. Took out the spark plugs and those looked good. Bought new wires and plugs from that Baja Ron guy and installed those. Started her up and Bam! She's running pretty good. I let her warm up and went for a quick ride. She runs really well, but the brakes suck. Bought it back from the test run and started to dig into the brakes. Remember that I said the master cylinder reservoir was leaking, well there was no brake fluid in the reservoir closest to the tail light. Seems to be a crack somewhere dumping it all out. I purchased a new one and am waiting for it to arrive in Hawaii. In the mean time, took the torn seat to get it locally reupholstered. I also started to disassemble the entire body to prep it for some paint. BTW, I have experience painting cars and bikes. With the body off, I found out where all the leaking brake fluid was going. The entire rear portion of the frame, battery cage, and swing arm coating was all wrinkled and peeling off. Looks like this leak was happening for some time and the previous owner was just topping it off. Oh well, looks like i'll be taking apart the whole bike to recoat the frame and swing arm! With the body off, I decided to pressure wash the entire trike since there seemed to be a massive oil leak from the valve covers? Oil covered the entire engine and the lower pan area. This is where I currently am on the build. I just purchased a service manual to help guide me in this journey.
Sorry I didn't grab much pictures, but from now on I will take more. I'll periodically post on here to log my trials and tribulations with this trike. Hopefully there will be a lot of success too. If there isn't much interest in this post, i'll prolly just lay off on posting more.
I started to slowly diagnose what the problem was with the bike. First step was to purchase a new battery since it was completely dead. Installed the battery and tried to start her up, no dice. Did some fuel and spark testing and found that the spark was really weak. Read the resistance on the plug wires and found that it was extremely high and sometimes wasn't continuous. Took out the spark plugs and those looked good. Bought new wires and plugs from that Baja Ron guy and installed those. Started her up and Bam! She's running pretty good. I let her warm up and went for a quick ride. She runs really well, but the brakes suck. Bought it back from the test run and started to dig into the brakes. Remember that I said the master cylinder reservoir was leaking, well there was no brake fluid in the reservoir closest to the tail light. Seems to be a crack somewhere dumping it all out. I purchased a new one and am waiting for it to arrive in Hawaii. In the mean time, took the torn seat to get it locally reupholstered. I also started to disassemble the entire body to prep it for some paint. BTW, I have experience painting cars and bikes. With the body off, I found out where all the leaking brake fluid was going. The entire rear portion of the frame, battery cage, and swing arm coating was all wrinkled and peeling off. Looks like this leak was happening for some time and the previous owner was just topping it off. Oh well, looks like i'll be taking apart the whole bike to recoat the frame and swing arm! With the body off, I decided to pressure wash the entire trike since there seemed to be a massive oil leak from the valve covers? Oil covered the entire engine and the lower pan area. This is where I currently am on the build. I just purchased a service manual to help guide me in this journey.
Sorry I didn't grab much pictures, but from now on I will take more. I'll periodically post on here to log my trials and tribulations with this trike. Hopefully there will be a lot of success too. If there isn't much interest in this post, i'll prolly just lay off on posting more.
