+1 on what slick said. Summer I wear leathers, winter textiles, always have more marks during the winter. Textiles do seem more abrasive.
Depends ... I ran up 40k miles on my R1 and it still looked superb with no evidence it had done that mileage. It comes down to how you look after them. It's easy for me as I'm a Detailer - just wondered if people had experienced scratching easily on the tanks. It seems common so reckon ceramic based sealant and ventureshield tank is best in this application.
Issue for me is I need my work trousers underneath for site work hence use waterproof textile trousers with a leather jacket.
Unfortunately black is one of the worst colours for showing up scratch marks particularly in sunshine. As others have said polish with care or eventually you could do more damage, or you could sell and buy a Repsol... Your R1 looked very nice.
My Pearl white side panels lasted well to about 35k - 40k then the leading edges got really pitted and put the China Rothmans on at about 50k The other panel to suffer is the undertray / joint unit below the battery tray With hindsight I should have venture shielded the thing from new but like ShineySide up says the good times / memories / miles lead to marks, bit like 'ah that was the trip where XYZ happened' but the miles I've done its just one of those things. I may put it back to original panels, perhaps send them up to you Mr OCD to renovate as much as you can if you are a detailer then get venture shield put over the top to seal the finish in maybe. Here is Trigger in its early years - I still think best colour scheme and while a pain to clean the white wheels look cool (in my eyes)
I feel your pain Mr OCD, I posted the exact same question just over a year ago and with the guys/girls help on here I came to the conclusion that its a case polishing it up and then re-polishing as and when when required. Even the most expensive of plastic covers will scratch up eventually, so just get yourself some decent resin based polish such as AutoGlym Super Resin like I did and do what the Karate Kid did - wax on, wax off! It appears we have the exact same bike/paint job and that non-existent clear laquer over the black paint on the tank is proper pants! I was gutted when I looked down and saw how scratched up it was, I thought maybe some grit got caught in my lap during an outing in the wet, but clearly it wasn't, it's just day to day contact with my leathers! I really do hope Honda has learnt from this!
This may sound really dumb, belt buckles cause a lot of paint issues around the tank, granted if your using a suit all the time its not the point but here in sunny climates I quite often go out with RST jeans on, the belt I was using was scratching the tank, I don't mind light scratching as it a bike and its to be ridden, but what I did to prevent the worse parts were to put my buckle to the left of the normal position i.e. one loop around, hey presto no belt buckle in the area and my jeans stay up, if definitely works and its cheap. Cheers Jimmy
All ready to be sorted. Removing the HRC tank pad and will then be machine polishing the tank before installing a large ventureshield tank pad. I will then install the HRC pad over the top of this... so will be marking the ventureshield as opposed to the tank paint.
