This is one of these quetions that will always come as a loaded question. With fairing on a sports bike often costing more then most of the bike and normally the cost of repairing being the desicion as to whether a bike is repaired after damage or it is written off we thought we would try out one of these sets to see how it works out. Those of us that live on ebay have seen fairing sets on the site and wondered whether they were good or not and so know was the time

In our scenario a bike had hit the floor at 5 miles an hour in a car park and managed to hit a pole with the petrol tank. Fortunately the bike as we have mentionned before was fitted with crash bungs on and so the engine was safe and what could have been a worse situation was avoided, that said there was enough damage to get going with.

The main areas of damage were a petrol tank with a large dent in the and the nose and right hand side fairing being well damaged, the right indicator and need to replace the front screen. There was also some damage to the front forks due to the handlebars whipping round as they hit the floor and so that required a change of forks also. For what is really a minor accident it was a fairly good amount of work required to get it back to how it once was!!

Looking for fairings it was clear that to replace the 2 broken ones was going to cost an easy £300 – £400 and so my mind started thinking about being able to change the bike to look a bit cooler. I started looking on ebay and found a set for £360 (including postage) for a set that would fit my bike and I though looked pretty cool. My bikes was Kawasaki green and so since the set was black this would mean needing to repainting the petrol tank (that was alright as it needed replacing anyway) and also the wheels which would be an unnecesary cost, BUT, I could then sell my priginal kawasaki fairings that were not damaged and these were the seat cowel, front mudguard and left main panel.

I therefore ordered the set from China, and stripped off the damaged and undamaged fairings and got the undamaged ones on ebay, along with getting the forks replaced.

The new fairings arrived within the 4 weeks they advertised which is acceptable and were well packaged in a LARGE cardboard box. I of course opened the box immediately (I am a child like that) to check out what they were liked. First think that came to mind was that they were thin!, By thin I mean you did feel you needed to support the side panel for example with 2 hands so it did not bend too much, you also notice around a few of the corners that the black was giving way to white (only literaly on the edge) where the colour had not set properly. I am told however that some people buy these sets to save weight on the bike and I am sure they do as they are thinner but I cannot imagine it would make much of a difference to be honest. If you are some with a mean sense attention to details you would see minor issues such as these edges or the thinness of the plastic as strange as it is not the same as what you had on the bike but as it is MUCH cheaper I think you have to accept that they are not the orginal and accept them.

When trying to fit them to the bike we had a couple of problems, the first was that there werre 2 holes in the front mudguard to allow it to be attached to the bike that did not line up, that said we were able to add new holes without any problem as the holes in the wrong place were covered by other sections. One 1 panel there was an attachment point totally missing (we had to improvise and make one). The biggest problem we encountered was fitting the nose section onto the frame and this was not a fault of the fairing but that the frame had been knocked out of shape. In the process of fitting this fairing we snapped off 1 mounting point and so had to re attach this but I am not sure this was the fault of the fairing.

With fitting any of the panels there is an element of kicking an swearing as there is not a lot of give in fitting the holes, when mounting the seat cowel there were no holes at all for the pillion handles to go through it and so these we had to make but this was not a major task. Once all was done the set was on the bike and looked like the photo below.

This then left the need to get a new black petrol tank with Kawasaki on it and have the wheels painted. Having bought a petrol tank for £30 from a breaker through ebay and getting a local pain guy to paint it and add the kawasaki decals off ebay (£8) I then took the wheels to a local painiting company that specialises in wheels more then anything. They painted both wheels for £120 and they looked fantastic and so finally with the addition of a new tank protector sticker indicator the bike was completed and back on the road.

Personally I think it look awesome and I am really happy. Did I save the money I wanted to save doing it this way – NOT REALLY as the extra money of the wheels and petrol tank as well as indicator and forks were not covered by selling the other parts on ebay. That said if I have spent the money to return the bike back to how it was I would feel dissapointed to do that much work to get it back to how it looked in the first place. Therefore i look at this as having paid a few hundred ttransform my bike into something a bit different from all the others.

I must thank my mate Phil who did a lot of work on this with me, he is a great mate and biker as well as working for beer, also thanks to my local bike shop who also helped me out with this. The job would have been a LOT more expensive if having to pay time to get the work done and so my thanks to you both.

Below is a picture of the finished article which I think looks much better then it just having the Kawasaki 636 in lime green appearance. Would I use one of these sets again???? Yes I think I would. If you are looking to do something like this then be warned to make sure it will fit your bikes make and model and be careful to check the feedback of the person you are buying from. Also accept that it Will Not fit perfectly everytime and there will need to be some “Adjustments” made.