I hear that there is a tendency for the lower fairing to melt or discolor due to exhaust heat. I'd like to hear how people have gone about solving this problem.

I'm leaning towards wrapping the entire pipe from headers to just below where it starts turning upward to the rear section (still behind the fairing though). I figure this will remove some heat from the engine bay area. Heat can be a problem where I come from. Allan from around here astutely mentioned that this may cause more heat to be radiated from the rear section of the pipe, which may adversely affect the rear shock (because the reservoir is very close) and possibly the tail section where the computer is. I may use those heat sticker temp indicators to figure this one out for sure.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

-- Andy Ruhl (quadreverb@yahoo.com), May 03, 2002

Answers

Hello. I have heard of someone who added an extra layer of wrapping on the lower part of the fairing nearest the header. I think that should do the trick.

The incident I was referring to was a young guy who added a layer (or was that several? :) ) of wrapping underneath the seat of his 748. This caused excessive heat to build up and cook his computer.

BTW, I took off my body paneling for the first time to do an oil change. Despite reaching temps of 218, the body works still looks pretty good. Although, I did have to totally destroy the oil filter to get it off!

Perhaps an extra layer of wrapping isn't necessary, unless you start to notice the stock wrapping started to blister and peel of. My old 2000 MV did that.

-- Allan Gibbs (Agibbs996@aol.com), May 03, 2002.

Chuck at Eastern Cycle turned me on to a simple fix for this. Attach an automotive hanger to the front bolt of the brake master cylinder. The hanger is a piece of 1" wide spring steel with a plastic covering. I have seen these used to hang a fuel pump in some cars. The effect is to push the fairing away from the right side of the bike just enough to allow air to get in between the pipe and fairing. The other advantage is that it pulls the left side of the fairing away from the side stand and reduced the tendency for it to rub on the fairing.

-- Scott Krane (a56healey@yahoo.com), September 17, 2002.