Free K8  Fender Eliminator

[Warchild]

This is a piece of cake, and takes just minutes to do.

First, remove those gay-ass red reflectors off the rear of your Busa. Take the reflector brackets themselves, and affix them to the two rearmost bolt holes (where your stock rear fender used to reside!)

Use the same phillips-head fasteners that were retaining the brackets in these bolts holes, not the shouldered hex-head bolts the fender was using.

Like this:

While it looks encouraging at first, it is quickly apparent that the existing holes aren't going to line up for the typical North American license plate.

No worries... just place your plate up there, and use a permanent marker to mark where you need to drill two holes, and drill away.

Volia! Instant fender eliminator license plate bracket!

All this for just a few minutes of drilling!

For those of you worrying about The Man hassling your for a license plate light.... you can score yourself some LED light license-plate bolts, and use the original 2-wire connector for the stock license plate light to power them.

 

[steveK8]

when you undo the bolts holding the plastic fender, do these have a nut inside the rear plastic body work. In other words do you have to remove anything inside the hump area so you can undo the fender ?

thanks

 

[THEPANTHER]

Thanks for the tip WarChild. Happy holidays

 

[BusaWizard]

 

[Warchild]

when you undo the bolts holding the plastic fender, do these have a nut inside the rear plastic body work.

The four nuts are welded in place, so they are not an issue when removing the four shouldered bolts that retain the rear fender.


<div class="iF-Passage"><div class="QUOTEHEAD">Quote:[/Quote]<div class="QUOTE clearfix"><span class="quoteBegin"> </span>
In other words do you have to remove anything inside the hump area so you can undo the fender ?[/quote]

There is a 2-wire connector on the left side of the hump, located in between the sub-frame rails, that power the stock license plate light. This needs to be disconnected. This wire harness can be a challenge to get to with the rear cowling in place. There is a zip-tie towards the very rear of the left sub-frame railing that you need to snip to provide enough slack to get reasonable access to the connector (and allow the harness to be removed with the fender). You can easily see (and snip) this zip-tie once the fender is removed.

Also note that you will want to bend the two brackets (that you are now using to retain the license plate) "outward" so that the license plate sits at an angle, vice perpendicular to the ground.

 

[steveK8]

Thanks Warchild !

 

[rubber2burn]

Nice Low Cost Mod

 

[[UNIT]]

do you have a pic with the arse back together and hump on?

 

[Warchild]

@ Dec. 18 2007, 1:13 PM]
do you have a pic with the arse back together and hump on?

Not quote... I am installing Spielger Stainless Steel clutch line, so I don't have all the bodywork quite back together yet....

 

[CAT3]

War, by chance, did you bother swapping the brackets side to side, so that the angle faces in, rather than out, to see if the bolt holes lined up that way? It looks as if it might, simply unbolt the bracket and put it on the other side, and vice versa. Nice work.

 

[Warchild]

War, by chance, did you bother swapping the brackets side to side, so that the angle faces in, rather than out, to see if the bolt holes lined up that way? It looks as if it might, simply unbolt the bracket and put it on the other side, and vice versa. Nice work.

I did indeed.

I tried every manner of swapping Left and Right sides, swapping single-hole side with the double-hole side, etc, etc. No joy on the line-ups.

 

[CAT3]

War, by chance, did you bother swapping the brackets side to side, so that the angle faces in, rather than out, to see if the bolt holes lined up that way? It looks as if it might, simply unbolt the bracket and put it on the other side, and vice versa. Nice work.

I did indeed.

I tried every manner of swapping Left and Right sides, swapping single-hole side with the double-hole side, etc, etc. No joy on the line-ups.

Well, at least you tried, no I won't waste time with it. Thanks War.

 

[Warchild]

Dec 21 UPDATE:

I am now compelled to report that this original orientation didn't work out quite like I was hoping it would.... once you re-installed the rear cowl bodywork, the top edge of the license plate strikes the rearmost portion of the cowl.

So... a slight adjustment is necessary....

Basically, all that is needed is to spin the brackets around 180 degrees, bend them up a little bit more, and drill two more small holes in the plate to accommodate the holes on the brackets.

The new placement looks fairly good directly from the side:

And also looks decent enough from the upper side and the rear of the bike... which is what most folks will ever see:

 

[motogp08]

Are you required by law to have the plate lit up?

Thanks!

Oh, and happy holidays from me as well.

 

[Seventhlore]

By law the license plate has be lit at least in in Kansas.

 

[Warchild]

From my original post in this thread:

<div class="iF-Passage"><div class="QUOTEHEAD">Quote:[/Quote]<div class="QUOTE clearfix"><span class="quoteBegin"> </span>
For those of you worrying about The Man hassling your for a license plate light.... you can score yourself some LED light license-plate bolts, and use the original 2-wire connector for the stock license plate light to power them.[/quote]

 

[8Daytona8]

Hey great

Now all I need is the K8

 

[Jza]

Hey great

Now all I need is the K8

That'll be an expensive free mod LOL

 

[pulk]

This was a big help!

One thing I did a little bit differently. Instead of drilling holes in the tag to accommodate the mount points, I just drilled holes in the original bracket and then mounted that to the (now) under-tail brackets (the ones pictured in Warchild's very first image). That way, I could still use the slider-type mount on the original bracket that allows you to align the tag with precision. The angle of the tag is also slightly less--I was a little concerned about the tag having a harsh angle that cops may try to exploit as a "concealed tag" or something. Also, there's two less holes in the tag

I would have been pretty clueless without War's and other's posts on how they did their home brew fender elims. Thanks for all the pics etc. and I'll have to post my results when I can get a good pic of my bike tomorrow!

 

[TA_GunSurgeon]

I did the samething, but used a different bracket I purchased for like $12.00 on E-Bay. For those worried about it being lit up at night. The bottom of the tail light is clear and it provides good enough light to read the tag at night.