2001 Ninja ZX9R Rebuild

Sometimes projects are not born out of inspiration, rather out of misfortune.  My motorcycle rebuild was certainly the latter, because sometimes life gives you guard-rails, and you don't have much choice but to take'm.

Emergency room, 2011

Luckily I had my rain gear on me so I had something to put on to keep me from going into shock, though I would have rather been less aware for loading my wrecked bike onto the tow truck - pushing that thing up the ramp with a subluxed shoulder sucked.  Though the rain-suit did keep me from bleeding on the interior of the tow truck, and the driver was kind enough to drop my bike at the shop and then me at the emergency room.
It was two years after the accident before the desire to ride again really took hold but in May 2013 it finally did and I had the time; and so the occupation of my parent's garage began.

The major damage was a bent front sub-frame, I got lucky and found a used one for on ebay from a salvage yard in Virginia.  The rest of the damaged/missing parts were more common bolt on parts like foot peg, stator housing, and levers.

I had to get creative to separate the swing arm from the front sub-frame.  I got the locking nut off with a tool I made out of a bit of appropriately sized pipe from the metal shop using an angle grinder, and the pin came out with a bolt with a 22mm head turned hex-wrench that the guy at the industrial hardware store was kind enough to give me -many thanks.

Then back together she went, I was very thankful for the shop manual I had purchased before hand, though I wish I had of bought my digital torque gauge earlier, my manual one just didn't have the range I needed.

My father was skeptical of the chain hoist at first but it has become his new favorite toy - his boat has spent more time in the air now than in the water:

Before I put the exhaust manifold back on I gave it a coat of ultra high temperature paint - Nova Scotia is murder by rust to bare metal parts like this.

Once it was all back together and the mechanic had given me a cursory approval of its road-worthiness, it was was on to aesthetics:  rebuilding the lower fairings with fiberglass, new paint, new LED signals and tail lights.

Now there was one little detail that I did not appreciate in the mechanic's assessment: my bike now has a new sub-frame, the sub-frame is where the VIN number is stamped, the VIN that is now on my bike belongs to a 'salvage' bike from the US...  Turns out the easy part was the rebuild.  Now I had to get the motorcycle inspected by a red-seal mechanic in order to get the 'salvage' title changed to a 'rebuild' - turns out there was only one mechanic in the city qualified and willing to assist, flatteringly enough he offered me a job when I brought it in, needless to say the bike passed.  Next I had to create a photo-documentary for the RCMP to show that the frame was in fact used to rebuild a Canadian motorcycle - as opposed to me being involved in some cross-border insurance fraud.  Once this document was submitted, then I got a visit from the regional police to inspect the vehicle.  After all this, I was able to register my new, old, rebuilt, salvaged motorcycle; though I now apparently have a motorcycle forever registered to my name - the old VIN, RIP.