Well, after riding 86 miles around the Loudon track without any faults it seemed the worst has happened. While tightening one of the straps around the fork on my bike in the trailer, the strap on the opposite side gave way and the bike fell over in a blaze of glory. Not knowing what to do, I called my dad over and we lifted the bike back up to her rightful position. All seemed well surprisingly but alas the front nose fairing and bracket had been cracked on the left side of the bike along with the lever. What a travesty I thought, how could this happen to my bike, my prized possession?
After getting home I immediately went to my dealer to assess the damage of the bike and what it would take to fix it. Careful inspection proved that I would need to order a new nose fairing, a new under fairing bracket, and a new set of levers. I would have just bought one replacement lever from Ducati but I figured why not splurge and get some nice sporty levers while I’m at it. All in all, it came down to about $900 dollars for everything including shipping and handling, which wasn’t that bad in actuality. A few days go by and my parts arrive at Koup’s, so I go and pick them up and bring everything home. Realizing that fixing all of this was not going to be a walk in the park, I waited till I had a full day to dedicate to this task so I don’t have to split it up and risk losing things in the process.
Finally, the day comes to undergo the process of restoring my bikes previous beauty. Its easy going at first, all there is to do is pull off the left and right side fairing to access the front fairing. Next it’s off with the mirrors and now things start to get a little harder. The nose fairing had quite a few hidden bolts and screws that gave me a little bit of trouble but after a little bit of searching I managed to muscle off the nose fairing to reveal the under fairing bracket. The under fairing bracket was a mess to take off because everything is so well designed on this bike that everything seems to be hidden or out of reach. A nice surprise was that all the bolts on the under fairing bracket seemed to have lock-tight on them which made it that much more difficult to remove them. Also to my surprise I had to unplug all of the wiring and remove the dashboard to be able to take the under fairing bracket off. After taking everything off, putting everything back one was ten times easier because I already knew where everything was supposed to go. Once everything was back together and as it should be, a feeling of triumph came over me. My bike was restored to its original beauty and my back account was $900 poorer.
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