Several people told me that my current front fender arrangement is pretty awkward-looking. Frankly, I can’t disagree. And that’s really saying something because this whole thing is pretty damn awkward all over. The curve of the fender was designed to fit a 19″ tire, and it simply isn’t going to match a 16-inch’er.
I considered mounting that Yamaha Maxim fender directly to the lower triple clamp (turned the right way around), dirt bike style. However,
a fender that size would be fairly ineffective when mounted up that high. Additionally,having the fork brace down low without a fender there still looked really odd. I’d like to keep the fork brace because I have no idea how this thing is going to handle and I want to take advantage of any theoretical improvement I can. (It won’t go to waste in any case, since it can also fit Bultakenstein.)
So, I looked for a fender designed:
- to fit a 16″ wheel
- to mount from the top rather than the sides, and,
- without sculpted “wings” that wrap around the fork legs.
After a bit of research, the fender from a Honda VF500F Interceptor seemed to fit the bill. So, I spent $54 on Ebay for another fender. I should point out that this totally opposed my original objectives of using up my spare parts, building things cheaply, and not caring about the resulting aesthetics.
Once it arrived, I bolted up both the dirt fender I had purchased initially and the Interceptor street fender. Decisions, decisions… Unfortunately, in this case, I’m not sure I like either option all that much.
That transformer-styled dirt fender is just atrocious. I honestly have no idea what possessed me to buy it. I can only say in my defense that it looked better in the Ebay ad. A plain, traditional, Preston-Petty-style knockoff would have been a much better choice. Okay, lesson learned—but I’m NOT buying any more fenders for this monstrosity.
The Interceptor 500 fender fit the tire diameter (as expected), but due to my trailing axle setup, the metal mounting bracket was positioned all wrong for this bike. I drilled out the rivets and moved the metal bracket forward, bolting the rear holes on the bracket through the original front holes in the fender.
It “kinda-sorta” works this way, but:
- the bracket would sit significantly lower than the fork brace (which can only be mounted in one spot, higher up, where the black fork scrapers are in this photo). As a result, I would have to fabricate some sort of gantry-like intermediate bracket or long spacer dowels between the fender and fork brace. Either would be hard to keep from looking awkward.
- The original location for the mounting bracket will be distractingly obvious. I likely have some plastic plugs that would fit the unused bolt holes, but I wouldn’t be able to hide that square-shouldered area.
I might revisit my original idea of mounting the 700 Maxim fender under the steering clamp, to see if that looks any better. In any case, I just need to pick something, finalize it, and move on. I want to focus on mounting the rear fender and seat next.
