Broken cowls

[GoldWingrGreg]

These cowls are broken for the following reason.

- incorrect fasteners used (bolts with no shoulder, bolts with too long of shoulder, or the bolts with shoulders that are to long)

- added stress at the nut plate area (air deflectors, or accessory wiring, or electrical accessories under pocket)

[GoldWingrGreg]

Hopefully, most who read this post will relies that there is only one way to correctly fix a broken cowl. It requires replacement and 1/2 a cowl is expensive. Here's a repair done at a dealer where they tried to duck-tape the nut plates back into place.

[Papa Zook]

Honda uses a variety of mounting bolts to mount their front fenders, cowling and body parts, many of which are very smilar in size but are only slightly different in length, shoulder diameter and length and thread size. If you don't pay close attention to EXACTLY which bolt came out of which hole, you will play hell getting your Goldwing back together without stripping a screw or hole or breaking a part. Also some bolts get dropped into the engine or cowling abbis, never to be seen again.

I see broken plastic parts, tabs, holes or missing screws on almost every Goldwing I work on. A good way to prevent mixing up bolts is to cut a piece of cardboard box for each section you disassemble and punch a hole for each bolt to track it's location. One for the right side fork/ fender bolts, left side fork/fender bolts, cowling, etc.