rborder
New member
I've had my R18 for a little over a month. I've been chasing a rattle in the rear end, which has been getting progressively worse., Thought I fixed it once, when I found loose rear fender bolts; but the fix was very short lived. A couple days ago, I found the root cause, thought I'd share, along with the fix. My bike has a bobber kit on it. I have no idea where the rear fender is from, but it was the source of the problem. I'd show you a picture of what I found, where I found it, but it was almost impossible to see; under the shock. It was obvious the rear fender was going to need to come off for repair.
Removing the exhaust (to pull the rear axle) was pretty easy. But when I rolled my jack under the bike, I was left stumped on where/.how to lift it. After a little searching on line, I realized that the lift points were in the motor up front, and the exhaust hangers on the back. So, I had a significant, unexpected, detour on the project:
With my new R18 lifting jig welded up and bolted to the bike, I could get the back of the bike up and remove the rear wheel and fender.
And, here it is: the mid support for my fender had cracked / broken:
Judging by the rust, I'm guessing this has been developing for a while.
Here's the break, from the inner side. When hitting bumps, the fender was dropping so far that it was actually hitting the tire:
At least I already had all the welding gear out from making the lifting jig. And thankfully, this mount is really hidden, so I didn't need to worry about making it pretty:
I was more concerned about making sure I had a good surface on the inside:
The design of this fender leaves a little bit to be desired. There is quite a bit of force on that mount, especially since the fender is mounted to the unsprung swingarm.. Also, the orientation of the struts, turns downward force (hitting a bump) into additional rearward tension on that mount. To try and prevent this from happening again, I added a large re-enforcing plate, contour matched to the inner fender surface:
That's a high strength bolt securing it, and I ran it far enough through the swingarm that I could add an additional nut on the back for support. Also, there's a layer of rubber between this plate and the fender. The plate is pretty stout; I'm not worried about it failing. My hope is that this will distribute the load onto the fender over a much bigger surface, and keep this from happening again. The back side of the plate got a coat of truck bed liner (that's what's on the inner fender surface) which also does double duty as the adhesive for the rubber. This side got sprayed after mounting (right after I took this pic).
All done - now if it would just stop snowing here, I could go test it-
Removing the exhaust (to pull the rear axle) was pretty easy. But when I rolled my jack under the bike, I was left stumped on where/.how to lift it. After a little searching on line, I realized that the lift points were in the motor up front, and the exhaust hangers on the back. So, I had a significant, unexpected, detour on the project:
With my new R18 lifting jig welded up and bolted to the bike, I could get the back of the bike up and remove the rear wheel and fender.
And, here it is: the mid support for my fender had cracked / broken:
Judging by the rust, I'm guessing this has been developing for a while.
Here's the break, from the inner side. When hitting bumps, the fender was dropping so far that it was actually hitting the tire:
At least I already had all the welding gear out from making the lifting jig. And thankfully, this mount is really hidden, so I didn't need to worry about making it pretty:
I was more concerned about making sure I had a good surface on the inside:
The design of this fender leaves a little bit to be desired. There is quite a bit of force on that mount, especially since the fender is mounted to the unsprung swingarm.. Also, the orientation of the struts, turns downward force (hitting a bump) into additional rearward tension on that mount. To try and prevent this from happening again, I added a large re-enforcing plate, contour matched to the inner fender surface:
That's a high strength bolt securing it, and I ran it far enough through the swingarm that I could add an additional nut on the back for support. Also, there's a layer of rubber between this plate and the fender. The plate is pretty stout; I'm not worried about it failing. My hope is that this will distribute the load onto the fender over a much bigger surface, and keep this from happening again. The back side of the plate got a coat of truck bed liner (that's what's on the inner fender surface) which also does double duty as the adhesive for the rubber. This side got sprayed after mounting (right after I took this pic).
All done - now if it would just stop snowing here, I could go test it-
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