The only problem with having a beautiful bike is that you’re always on the lookout for ways to make it even better! VFR owners definitely fall into this category. Well, most of them do. Red MkIII was no oil painting and, apart from the occasional wash, I really didn’t treat her well at all. I rattle-canned the damage from the parking lot drop at Heathcote about 3 years ago and never did get around to getting the damage repaired properly.
All that changed, however, with the purchase of Rhonnda a year ago this month. Here was a bike that had been beautifully looked after (thanks, Anthony) and which I felt I had an obligation to continue to pamper, and I have tried to do so.
But one thing has continued to bug me and that has been the passenger grab handles at the rear of the seat. Yes, they do look like they belong and, yes, they do have a practical purpose but, for me, they are just annoying. For one I do not carry pillion passengers nor do I ever intend to do so so they could easily go. I don’t use them to maneuver the bike around so they’re not needed for that too. And, removing them would make the back of the bike look much smoother as well.
However, taking them off is not that easy. Technically it, is, just undo two Allen bolts.
But…removing the handles leaves an ugly gap that looks worse than having the handles there.
There has to be a solution; surely I’m not the first owner who wanted to “tidy up” the back end of the bike?
Making some enquiries with the VFR gurus on the net yielded the information that Honda actually do make some ABS blanking-off plates that can be inserted into the space where the handles were to achieve that “smooth” look that I was seeking. So, with high hopes, I headed off to my local Honda dealer whose parts man, very obligingly and after a fair bit of flaffing around in the Honda catalogue, confirmed that this was so. And, not only was it so, but, the items required were in stock at Honda Australia AND they were only $13 each, unheard of reasonable pricing from the usually extortionate Honda parts pricing.
Allowing for the break over Christmas, the parts arrived very rapidly and I hightailed it into town to pick them up. Immediately it looked like I might have a problem. As you can see from the photos above, the roughly rectangular-shaped plates did not like they were going to match the VERY irregular-shaped gap that they were supposed to fill. And so it proved to be. Plainly these were the wrong parts.
So, back onto the net and my further enquiries with the gurus yielded the answer I was not wanting to receive. Yes, they were Honda bits and, yes, they were the right paint code, but, No, they were not for my bike but rather for the 6th Gen VFR (2002-2014). Further enquiries confirmed my worst fears; Honda did NOT make the blanking-off plates for my model. So, what was the solution? Well, I have three choices; the first was to leave the grab handles in place and live with it. The problem here is that, now the size and proportion of the holes have been highlighted, I like that idea even less than I did before.
The second solutions revealed why Honda did not make the plates for my bike to start with. Honda provided a rear seat cowl that fits over the pillion part of the seat and fully covers the hole where the pillion grab handles usually live, as per below.’
Effectively it makes the bike into a solo bike and does look pretty “swishy” The price that is paid for the swishiness is that the cowl needs to be removed by undoing two bolts every time you want to take the seat off and gain access to the tool kit or anything else stored under the seat. Having seen several red VFR’s with the cowl in place it just doesn’t quite “grab” me so removing the handles and fitting the cowl isn’t a path that I want to go down at this stage (yes, I do actually have one, in fact, I have TWO, but neither of them are red and will require painting if I choose to go down this path.
The third option is just to remove the handles and live with the holes. Sorry, I just cant do that, either.
HOWEVER, there IS a fourth option; get someone who is good with ABS plastics to MAKE some custom plates to fill in the holes…now that is definitely worth pursuing.
So, anyone know someone who fits the bill?
