Terry

I couldn't agree more on the voltmeter. It was this that alerted me to the degradation of the 3-pin alternator connector when I noticed my charging voltage was dropping over time, from memory it dipped to 13.3V. The wires around the connector were also feeling pretty warm at that stage. At that point I cut out the connector and soldered in new wires plus heat shrink. After that I got a pretty steady 14.2V at normal running rpm.

Looks to me like the primary failure is just as Mello suggests, the connector. If you get some water in there you will start to see corrosion, the corrosion gets in between the connectors and increases the electrical resistance, at which point you start to generate excess heat which ultimately melts the plastic in the connector and possibly the wire insulation. I assume once the bare conductors touch you potentially cause damage to either the RR or alternator or both.

There a bit involved but nothing beyond basic hand tools. Support the front end off the ground, pull off the fender, wheel and forks, undo the steering head nuts and the stem will slide out of the steering head. Next up is removal of the bearing cups in the frame, which requires some careful tapping out with a hammer and pry bar or similar. Reinstallation is the reverse, the new cups can be chilled in your freezer first but the key is carefully and squarely tapping these back in making absolutely sure not to damage the bearing face. Removal of the lower race on the steering stem can be awkward, heat can help as does cutting the bearing through with a dremel (but don' touch that stem!). You can use the old extracted bearings as surfaces to drive the new, if you put a sawcut through them first. Obviously there are proper bearing driver tools that can be used too (I'm too cheap to own these). Setting the bearing tension is best done by feel and the tapered rollers need very little nut torque, too much and the steering become sticky and feels terrible, but I believe they have more tolerance for being a bit loose than a ball bearing without dire consequences.

My theory is that an object lying flat on the road gets flicked up by the front tyre and can then embed in the rear. I got more punctures on rear bicycle tyres than fronts even though they are the same size.

When the radiator fan comes on, this will cause a noticeable drop in battery charging voltage. It's quite normal.

I've used the sticky rope plugs twice recently and not had one fail in subsequent use. For my last puncture (tyre 1000km old) I took it back to the shop and got them to fit an internal mushroom patch, I feel better about the integrity of those over the long term but don't have any evidence to say the sticky rope would fail. I think Buzzner is quite right that they won't fail catastrophically in any case.

According to my Honda manual, the left coil (generator side) goes to the rear cylinders, the right coil (clutch side) goes to the front. The blue low tension wire goes to coil 2-4 and the yellow to 1-3. Black/white goes to both.

Not a problem I've ever had, but critters do like to make winter nest in the VFR airbox; you can pivot up the front of the tank and unscrew the airbox lid for a look. No sure whether that would explain any low-end weakness but won't hurt to check.

Ah-hah, a rhetorical question! Might have owned one of these...

I'd suggest asking some local tyre vendors for advice, but my 2 cents would be to run higher pressures as that will limit the flex that would otherwise cause more temperature in the tyres.

Certainly am Mello; I have "culled the herd" and bought an 09 ST1300, and sold my 1990 ST1100 and the VFR800, but I kept my VTR. But I am sort of missing the 800 now...

They are both 41mm diameter forks so that is easy, what might not be is if there is a locating dowel on the bar underside that locates on the triple clamp to orient the bar. But you can cut/grind those off and rely on the bar clamp to stop the bar moving on the fork tube. You will also have locating dowels in the switchgear that mate with holes drilled in the bar tube, so you might need to drill those on the "new" bars to get them to locate nicely. Last but not least, 4" risers may move the controls too far for the hoses/cables to reach, might be trial and error, and you may be able to re-route things so they fit.

This may be of some help: https://vfrworld.com/threads/5th-gen-clock-pcb-repair-w-pics.53437/

Hope you got an A+, I really like those. Good choice on the logo/font.

Duc, did you also notice in that little blue valve that there is another of those teeny tiny compensation ports built in? Fluid pressure from the foot brake pushes the ball valve open to fill the SMC but any pressure coming back from the piston has to pass through both the compensation port in the metal of the SMC and the port in the plastic cartridge. I'd suggest you had some crud caught in there.