Things That Go: June 2023

I have to be honest, even with four bikes in the garage I miss my old Honda Hawk GT. I'd done a ton of mods on it to make it just how I wanted (TBR fairing kit, Racetech fork springs, 900RR shock, braided brake lines, etc.) and it was a lightweight, stylish bike that always turned heads.

Of course, I thought that buying my Ducati 900SS/SP made the Hawk GT excess to requirements. After all, as I wrote at the time, the Ducati did pretty much everything the Hawk did but with 35 more horsepower. But it turns out, it didn't really. The Ducati is a lot more serious than the Hawk GT, it's bigger, heavier, and more powerful. The turning radius sucks, and it's less reliable. In fact the latest garage addition, the 2003 Buell Firebolt XB9R, is a lot closer to the Hawk in spirit. It's also a V-twin and is pretty light and nimble. But I digress.

Not great looking

but you can see the potential

Anyway, I was talking to an old buddy who had a Hawk GT himself and idly inquired after whether he might be parting with it. In fact he was interesting in doing so as it hadn't moved under its own power for over 20 years, and he could use the garage space. So he fired it up (it's a Honda after all), gave it a once-over, offered it to me at a price that was reasonable, and I bought it and rode it home.

But as my late wife Pam would have said, while it was mechanically sound, it was also somewhat sad. My buddy the PO is an amazing engineer and he'd done some work to make the bike more comfortable for him, but that wasn't to my own taste. For example, one of the attractions for me was that the bike already had a Two Brothers Racing fairing kit, just like my old Hawk. But buddy had fitted high Telefix bars to soothe his bad back, and that required cutting up the fairing, and that required eliminating the top fairing bracket, and that meant the fairing wobbled all over the place when riding, plus it looked... odd. So the first task was sorting that out.

Thirty Yankee dollars got me a set of Chinese clip-on bars off eBay, and I bought some Honda-style grips like on my old Hawk. I'd never fitted clip-ons to a bike before myself, but after obtaining a 30mm socket for the triple clamp nut, away we went. It actually went reasonably well; after drilling a hole in the right clip-on bar to accommodate the pin in the throttle housing it all went back together, with the new clip-ons mounted below the triple clamp. I refitted the fairing a bit lower down and the look was not perfect, but was much improved. But the fairing was still very wobbly without a top bracket.

The plan was to pick up a bracket or make one, and restore the fairing to its original shape. I bought a suitable windscreen off eBay and planned to fit it, make a template showing what fiberglass needed to be grafted on, get a boat shop to do the 'glass work, then fit it back up and design a bracket... that's lots of work and time, (and money).

However, looking at a Hawk GT Facebook group, I spotted a used Two Brothers Racing fairing, windscreen, mounting bracket, headlight unit, paperwork, clip-ons, and braided brake line for sale in Winston-Salem, South Carolina. The price had started at $800 but reduced over time to $400... I offered $300 plus shipping and a deal was made. Score! And after a brief scare where I thought the seller was backing out to sell the parts along with the Hawk GT they came with (the prospective bike buyer ended up flaking on him) the parts eventually landed in Pembina ND.

The following weekend I whipped down to Pembina and brought back a giant box. The next morning I set to work fitting it. Wow what a difference, so much better than even the repositioned chopped up fairing. The bike was really starting to look like the classic RC31 I love so much, and riding around the block confirmed that the new bracket had the fairing mounted rock-solidly on the Hawk frame.

Now I have a parti-coloured wonder... yellow upper fairing with white/red/blue tank and seat unit, and blue/black seat. However the next order of business will be to get the wheels refinished and new Dunlop Sportmax GPR-300 tires fitted. This will take some doing as the shop where the tires will get fitted and the powdercoater who will do the work are on opposite sides of the city. But never mind, we'll get it done. Bike-It F1 mirrors (same as on the old Hawk) have just arrived from the UK and will be fitted so I can ride the bike around a bit. Next thing after that will be to decide on a colour scheme and get the bike painted - this will likely happen over the winter if I'm honest. Too much going on in the summer!

In the meantime here are some potential colour schemes: