Inside rear fender

[Husker-Wolf]

As I'm riding home from Tulsa this weekend on the '03 chopper, I start to notice two parallel gouges in the rear tire. Come to find out, someone has replaced the inside rear fender splash guard (not sure what that's really called) with a piece of heavy duty 1/4" plastic. Looks pretty good actually, but it's mounted with a fender washer, regular washer, and a hex head bolt in four places. They obviously stick out too far and are hitting the tire on big bumps. What typically goes there? Isn't that normally a metal piece? Maybe someone could look at their's and let me know the preferred monting method. Looks like something counter sunk would do the trick, but may not work with the plastic piece. Thanks!

 

[TimNY]

Jeff
The plastic is stock.
It might be mounted wrong . Is the splsh guard on the inside or outside the mounting tabs ?
You can replace with stainless- I've seen them out there.
the swingarm should bottom out on the rubber bumpers on the frame behind the battery .
Maybe the shocks need rebuilding or replaced. But the tire sahould be no where close tosplash guard mounting hardware .
are you shure the gouges arent from the taillight mount bolts .

 

[Husker-Wolf]

Thanks for the info Tim! Now that I know that was the stock setup, I took a closer look around. The gouges didn't measure the same width as the splash guard bolts. It looks like it is hitting two other bolts in the top of the fender where the Thunderheart ignition is mounted under the seat. I can shorten those bolts. Thanks man.

 

[TimNY]

Jeff
Great ! If possible send the bolts threw the fender the other way.Put some silicone on the bolt heads and nut them on the Thunderheart modual side. You'll have better clearance and if you need to change anything later the nuts are easyer to get to.
Hope you didn't do too much damage to your tire.

 

[Husker-Wolf]

Good idea! I'll probably be putting a new TH in soon anyway to replace the factory one. Tire damage wasn't too bad overall; worse is some areas though. The bike has the original tires on it and I was going to put new rubber on it anyway, but didn't want to tear up the new tire. This is a new bike for me and the previous owner had not ridden it much in 8 years.