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Hi Skids. If the element looks good, no torn pleats, holes or obvious damage to the element it should be fine. As far as I'm aware the viscous oil within the element does not go off over time! Try it out, if your fuel economy and/or performance is not good then go get a new one. I've been doing a naughty thing since 2005 on my 6gens and current 8gen! (6 and 8gen filters are the same) I have one spare OEM airfilter which I swap over every second service, so my bike sees a clean airfilter at a maximum of 16,000kms. The one I remove I wash down with soluble degreaser, back flow rinse with water hose, and a blow with compressed air, dry it out, then set it aside in a plastic bag. Before fitting it I give it a light spray with K&N Air Filter Oil. The thing I'm getting at is these two filters have maintained there good integrity for many years. Would imagine an OEM 5gen airfilter should be no different, especially one having done less than 100 miles. As always YMMV. Cheers.

You have the option of changing the color of the illumination also - although you are limited to blues and greens basically due to the colored filter/foil in the guages. Things like red don't come through bright enough (I tried). I changed mine to blue - NOTE - The neutral light in this photo is with the replacement led installed - very BRIGHT Here it is in a darker setting - and contains a great example of the false/always lit issue using leds in the 'dummy' lights AND - I had sent this to another member years ago, here's the bulb list and source I used: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LEDs - I ordered from superbrightleds.com, here's my order (I replaced everything, indicator lights as well) ---> Skip the '74' series bulbs = dummy lights, Ambers are indicators if you want them ( I like that they are bright now, easier to notice in the daytime) 2 194-A4-90: Amber Wide $1.59 2 74-NWHP: Natural White $1.95 1 74-GHP: Green $1.95 1 74-BHP: Blue $1.95 5 194-B-120: Blue 120 Degree $0.99

I often ride with that feeling but usually put it down to last night's curry. 😁 Seriously, glad Yr both OK and hope you can get the bike fixed quickly.

Went for a ride the other night and noticed one of the dash lights had burned out. Great time to upgrade to LEDs! I read some forum posts on the topic and found some suitable LEDs on Amazon. They were priced well and are slightly lower wattage than the stockers: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08229N2Y5?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details The package of 10 gives enough to do the main lights on the VFR and 5 for use on my 1992 Mustang which I'll install soon. Here's the LED compared to the stock bulb: Everything came off easily, just take your time and keep track of the fasteners. I learned as well that you don't have to remove the blinkers, nor do you have to disconnect the blinker plugs or the headlight plugs. I just placed a microfiber on the front fender and let the nose fairing rest on that. From there I removed the 3 10mm nuts securing the gauge cluster. It is then easily pushed forward to access the dash bulbs. The LEDs fit just fine and had no issue with polarity. Everything went without a hitch. With the LEDs installed I turned the key to verify all looked good before reassembly. Took a few minutes to clean things up a bit and put it all back together. I was pleased not to have any left over fasteners, bonus! And now for the before and after: For just a little time and even less money I am very pleased with the result. Still need to go for a night ride to see how they look in the wild. Cheers, Justin

I'm almost embarrassed to post that my only foray into the single cylinder world was the venerable Honda SS50 4-speed. Owned from 16 - 17 yo ('77 - '78). Sadly no photos of my beast but this is from the David Silver Spares museum.

If I were doing it again...... gauges either green or blue LED's. I got green to match the voltmeter and shift indicator because green shows up in daylight better than blue or red in those two. Amber signal indicators, keeps me from forgetting to cancel my signals. For the other lights, I'd leave incandescent except perhaps Neutral light and oil pressure, I don't mind those bright, but certainly OK as is. High beam indicator and FI definitely incandescent. I got all mine from SuperbrightLED's they are the brightest I've found, 7443 amber turn signals, etc.

Prepped the VF for a ride to Luxemburg tomorrow, back on Monday. Prep as in: put fuel in Picked up a NOS seat for the Cagiva and painted the rack and exhaust. Yeah, that looks much better.... Add 2 horsepowerrrrrr

Thanks, pic attached. Last time we moved my wife said I would never use those weights again so I was happy to prove her wrong. OP Sorry for the hijack.

Skip the dummy lights - I swapped everything but the FI light. They are too bright, IMO. The high beam indicator is annoying and I am swapping it back to incandescent shortly.

Mine with FI changed to LED..... constantly lit, so not recommended for that one. I'll be swapping the FI bulb back to incandescent.

This is interesting and going to follow. If it continues to work without issues I might just have to do this to my 98’. I don’t care for the lack of good illumination and this just might be my answer.

You might be searching a long time for those parts... Why is NOS important? I would think that short lengths of steel flared pipe and flare nuts would be nearly indestructible! I don't have any handy at the moment, but anyone who does a front end swap (or a full braided line upgrade) will have them left over (I have never got 'round to doing that swap on my UK 5th gen, but I will have them spare one day...). Ciao, JZH

Hi there. Nothing I've seen or heard says "starter clutch" to me. When that goes, the bike does not start at all, because the starter doesn't engage and spin the engine like it's supposed to. When diagnosing VFR charging issues, ALWAYS start with a known good battery. If it's a few years old and you don't have a battery load tester, just replace it. Batteries are also relatively cheap! FWIW, the video showed me that your battery is weak, but not extremely so. It should start the bike several times more than that--if it's good. But it still takes a charge and starts the bike at least three times, which should be fine unless you stall the engine a lot... (Btw, all non-US/Canadian VFRs of that era came with clocks and center stands--they were removed from the US-spec models for cost reasons, apparently.) Ciao, JZH

I actually didn't put LEDs in the dummy lights so I can't speak to the effect on the FI light. I just put 5 LEDs in the main board illumination slots. I figured the dummy lights get used so little they weren't as likely to burn out any time soon. Justin

Nice job Justin. Just wondering, how does your Fi Light perform with the LED insert? Others that have installed an LED to the Fi light have noticed it constantly dimly lit. ECM provides the ground side for the light electronically and may require the similar loading effect of an incandescent globe.

Great job Skids, lookin really nice. Glad you got the voltmeter wiring sorted to. She'll be the envious desire of every 5gen aficionado. Cheers

The hollow VFR rear axle presents a creative opportunity for keeping the front end off the ground for service; IIRC I had 35 lbs on each side. If the front end stays up comfortably with the bike complete it only gets more stable as you remove parts.

I suspect the dealer changed the outer seal but not inner. Some oil film gets past my new seals but not like old seals. See part 21: One other reason "why" is the original seals could have just aged out, and in addition to grit allowed water and other contaminants in. And whatever is still in there is still in there. It occurs to me the dealership could have (don't know why they would do this, but...) just replaced the seals or just upper and not oil and whatnot. Or, they could have replaced the oil but not cleaned out the bottom. FYSA, when I got my bike back in 2020 and serviced the forks, the last time they had been apart was in 2007 when I revalved them. I want to say the other two owners put about 10,000 beginner and commuting miles on it past whatever I did after that. The bottom was something like crude oil and the seals were not awesome. (Bike was clearly parked outside in the weather and the upper seals were cracking...so there is that.) I only know this because I completely disassembled the fork and looked at the damper and bottom of the lowers to clean them out. There are two dozen different versions of "servicing" forks for oil change or maybe outer seal swap that would not lead you to clean out the bottom of the fork. I think I've even done the oil change with a siphon method without removing the forks. Let alone a technician who's doing a bunch of things today and maybe isn't going to take the time you or I would to make sure it's clean and grit-free after removing the sludge. I guess it's possible that your bushings are bad enough to misalign your seals enough to let oil out and other things in. But even my bushings weren't that bad after pumping sludge, and I think you would notice other problems.

Spring 2022

This thread really shows how a decent low-mileage bike can still need a lot of work to make it "up to date" on maintenance. If you took it to a shop, all that work would have been well over $1,000 especially with a new set of tires! If I ever grab a 5th or 6th gen, I will keep that in mind

In December 2020 I managed to bin my bike and properly trash the plastics. Despite knowing it was going to be difficult to get things sorted, I decided I couldn't give up on my bike. After much fairing hunting, a full respray, new exhaust and screen and an 8 month wait, she was back and beautiful. However, after her lie down and prolonged lay up, she wasn't running right, and eventually left me sitting on the side of the road in November last year. It wasn't until March that I was able to get my mechanic to sort the carbs and get her running like as well as she looked, but by mid March she was ready for all the glorious days Spring and Summer had to offer. And then on a ride out with my partner last weekend she started conking out again. I pulled in to the side of the road and tried to restart. Luckily my partner hopped off, and told me I needed to get off real fast as smoke was pouring out from under the seat. Something had gone very wrong with the fuel pump... Half an hour, one fire engine and a lot of water later and I'm back to square one, except this time it's the rear of the bike that's screwed, not the front. I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. If anyone in the UK has a line on some rear fairing panels or a seat (no matter how scruffy as I'll need to get re-covered and reshaped anyway), please let me know!