Bimota BB1 Repairs Underway

Finally, an update on my Bimota BB1: A couple of weeks after I posted about the accident, I was contacted by the driver's insurance company about the accident. As it turns out, she did have insurance, she just didn't give me the right information, and refused to respond to my phone messages. Long story short, the insurance folks agreed it was not my fault, and they are paying for the medical bills and the repairs to the bike.

Unlike repairs to a more current model actually sold in the US by dealerships, where you just drop the bike off at the dealership and let them do all the legwork, it was up to me to locate parts, decals, and a painter. The really difficult part was finding the original graphics decals. From the Bimota mail list that I'm on, I was able to find a company down in Australia that had made a decal set for a BB1 in the past. I got the decals in December and they're nearly perfect. One for the left side needs to be modified and remade, but I'm hoping someone local can do that for me. I was able to find a shift lever through through my friend Bob Steinbugler, a Bimota dealer/historian in Raleigh, NC. I discovered that the billet aluminum footpeg mount was slightly bent, so I will try to straighten that out by heating it and applying some mild force (i.e. carefully beating it with a hammer without denting the aluminum). The only non-stock cosmetic feature of the bike is that the original mirrors are gone and have been replaced with CRG bar-end mirrors (this was done before I owned the bike). I was able to find a replacement for the damaged left-side mirror online (CRG is down near Monterey).

A fellow customer at my local Aprilia/KTM/Bimota dealership (Scuderia West in San Francisco) referred me to a really reputable painter in Livermore, Frank Zucchi (FZ Restoration) and he's started the work. As of a couple of weeks ago, the bodywork had been stripped and prepped for priming. Now here's an example of excellent customer service: Frank emailed me a status update complete with photos of the work in process, totally of his own volition. How many places would bother to do that? Hopefully I'll get another update from him this week.

Here are a few pics of the prepped bodywork:

This is what the bike looks like without its bodywork. It's actually a really cool machine underneath the covers:

I'm hoping the bike will be ready to ride sometime in February. I'll post an update after the next stage of repairs.