Just failed an owner-transfer vehicle inspection. I was expecting trouble because the bike looks a bit of a nail, leaks on all 4 shocks, billows smoke from where the exhaust pipe doesn’t really mate with the cylinder exhaust port, etc, etc, but they didn’t apparently care about any of that.
What they DID care about was that it doesn’t look like its official database picture. NO FULL FAIRING.
I guess this might be a manifestation of the “crackdown on illegal modifications” discussed extensively in Redwagon’s sticky, (Mods may want to move this post there or elsewhere if it doesn’t merit its own thread) and so it might be a relatively new development.
Unlike ad hoc “field inspection” by the cops, this bureaucratic, computerised manifestation seems unlikely to simply go away because it becomes unfashionable, and is presumably likely to pop up at every vehicle inspection. Anybody else experienced similar (YET)?
The vehicle inspection guys (at least one of whom seemed to be a cop?) had apparently been on a course and taught to deliver the phrase “We cannot help you” with due gravitas, which was (putting aside the irritation for a moment) quite funny, since they were all smiles the rest of the time. For forms sake I explained that it was an old, cheap (er…ish) bike and it wouldn’t be worth it to get a fairing, and they agreed in a “That’s the essential zen beauty of it” kind of a way.
I dunno how easy it is to score a fairing, but I’ll do some sniffing around. I was starting to doubt if I have the resources (time, space, patience, language, money) for the required restoration anyway. If I have to retrofit clipons I may just set the whole thing against my stupidity supertax for this year, and there’ll be some more XRZR spares on the market.
I propose the term “XRZR” for RZR’s that have been “converted” (which will have various interpretations) to RZX’s, so they are no longer RZR’s, but apparently will never be RZX’s either.