I want to improve my ride inside-out, can I get some advice?

Hey all, I finally got my bike running good, now I want to make it look good and improve performance. (1) To start I need some new tires, I was thinking about buying the Bridgestone Battlax BT-45's, what do you guys think/suggest? (2) After that I would like to paint my bike, is this hard to do by yourself? How much $$/How long would it take to do this? If I took it to a shop how much $$ am I looking at? (3) What else can I do to help improve either the looks of my bike or improve the performance? All I have done to my bike since I got it about a year and a half ago is change the oil and the oil filter. I just put a bottle of Seafoam in the gas tank, is there anything that I could put into the oil that would improve performance? (4) I have seen some posts about doing something with the fuse box, what is this? (5) I haven't cleaned my carbs since I got it, is this necessary? How do I know if my carbs are dirty? I am up to try anything that is not too difficult or expensive, I love my bike and want to see it purrrfect. Right now it is completely stock besides the 4-1 exhaust, it is in good condition but it is not in the condition I want it to be, I want it to stand out.

 

Re: I want to improve my ride inside-out, can I get some adv

Come on...no one has any advice or input??

 

the battlax's are a pretty good tire. my boss has them on his 750 nighthawk. i personally run the bridgestone spitfires but the battlax seems to be a more sport bike-ish tire so that may be better for your seca. the fuse box is because the holder's for the glass fuses become brittle and break off, usually at an in opertune time. Chacal has replacement boxes i just put in a couple inline fuse holders and tucked aside.

 

You can go nuts and spend $2000 to make it look perfect, or spruce it up with $150

It depends on many factors.
1) do you have the space to rip it apart?
2) how bad does it look now
3) how perfect do you want it to look after you are done
4) what is your skill set?

A body-shop paint job will probably cost you between $300 and $500 if you have everything off and do some of the prep work.

You could do a rattle can job for about $75 worth of materials, a lot of elbow grease and depending on your patience and skill it might look like a rattle can job. My X2 project was a rattle can job BTW, but materials cost more than $75 by the time I was done.

I am currently about half way through the restoration of X1.
It was in much worse shape...frame is at the powder coaters (probably cost me $175), painted the tins myself with a HVLP gun and auto paint. The paint cost me about $150 since they don't sell it in small enough containers. I have enough clear-coat left to do ten more bikes I'm sure.

Clean the carbs, sync, and tweak the mixture...and then sync and tweak some more.