So, since I got my motorcycle around October last fall, I didn't have much time to ride before winter hit Minnesota.  It's already been a long winter, but I've been keeping myself busy with some winter projects.  One of my first projects was to fix the various cracks and warps in the fairings.  To do so, I used the ABS cement trick described in the Ninja 250 FAQ.  I picked up a cheap soldering iron from Radio Shack and I had some ABS cement on hand.

The process is simple:

1. Find the crack
2. Sand down the rough edges
3. Use the soldering iron along the crack to melt the fairing back together
4. After it cools, sand down the crack again
5. Add ABS cement to fill in the gaps
6. Sand the outside face until smooth
7. Repeath steps 5 and 6 as needed

You can just solder the inside face, which would make it hard to notice from the outside.  That also has the advantage that you might not have to repaint, which you would if you sanded both sides.  I knew I was going to repaint, so I did sand both sides.  Here are some pictures of my fixes.

This is a crack in lower fairing	The outside is sanded
The inside is cleaned and sanded	The crack is soldered from the inside
ABS cement is added to strengthen the joint	Here's the result from the outside.

I had two cases that took a lot more than one pass to completely fix.  The first was on the upper fairing, which you can see from an earlier post, a pink streak by the front-left turn signal.  That was a large crack that a previous owner filled in with Bondo.  Bondo is great for filling in dents or other divots, but I don't think it's the right tool for joining cracks.  I sanded that down until the original crack was exposed, and then soldered it together.  It took several (probably 8 - 10) cycles with adding the cement and sanding down until it was smooth and there were no bumps.  The rear fairing had a crack that made a small ripple.  That one also was a matter of sanding off the hills and filling in the valleys.

The upper fairing's Bondo streak

The rear fairing a few cycles into the process

It took a while, but they're smooth now.  I'm now in the process of painting, and that's very satisfying.