Decided to do a minor modification on the bike (Inspired/ copied from Santosh's idea)
- Wanted to cover the gap in the rear wheel tyre hugger
- Stickering the new hand guards
So, here is how I did it.
Covering the gap
I saw that Santosh had cleverly noted that an additional tyre hugger fits perfectly between the small pointy bit near the monoshock (rear hugger) & the OE tyre hugger. Kudos!
SO, basically in the spirit of friendship & communism, I stole the design without so much as a "By your leave".
A post on t-Bhp elicited a response from BHPian Surajit who kindly consented to donate the hugger from his 200, in the interests of science.
Donor hugger secured, waiting the usual 30 days to ensure that one does not spring into action when laziness would do just as well, finally I decided to undertake the project this Sunday.
Preparations
Before I took anything off the bike, I separated the hugger from its frame (
Note: frame available to anyone who wants it!). Then, I trial fitted it on the pointy bit & the OE hugger & marked the position.
Please note that the extra hugger best fit the gap when the KTM is pointing towards the front, in the opposite direction from the OE KTM logo.
Tools Required
You need:
- A set of allen/ hex keys
- A decent drill with a good assortment of bits
- Duct/ gaffer tape
- Binder clips - 2/3
- Colour pencil ( I chose silver!)
- Box spanner set (a must)
- 4 small (0.5") nuts & bolts with washer. I whacked mine from the Kastruba Road SVC after exercise of due charm.
Removing Existing Stuff
- remove the tyre hugger frame by removing 4 allen bolts. The two bolts on either side are, confusingly, different sized.
- Remove the 2 normal bolts on either side of the monoshock to remove the rear huger. The metal cover for the hole will also come off. Be care with this - liable to fall off. You can only remove these bolts with a box spanner set with an extender.
Preparing the donor hugger
- Cover the 3 screw holes on the inside with gaffer tape. After all the whole point is to prevent splatter.
- Now you realize that when you were doing the trial marking, you should have marked the centre line. Curse freely & use the binder clips & gaffer tape to attach the donor to both the huggers.
- Mark the centre line on both the donors & the OE huggers.
- Do other random markings that you might think is necessary
Like this:
(But, only the centre line marking is required!)
Mark off 2 points about 4 cm on either side of the centre line & about 3 cm from the edge of the hugger.
Drill holes that would be slightly smaller than your bolt at the 4 points you marked on the donor hugger.
Being super paranoid, I aligned the setup again and marked the corresponding points on the OE huggers instead of just marking 4cm x 3cm spots. This is useful on the rear hugger side as the curvature is different for both huggers. Drill holes on the OE huggers.
Now, all you need to do is to to bolt them together. When you are done, your new hugger (smother?) should look like this:
Putting it all together
Now it is just a simple matter of finding all the bolts from the various crevices they go hide under once you take your eyes off them. (DIYers know all about this propensity of nuts, bolts & screws to, well, screw you). The only tricky bit is getting the bolt into the LHS mount (near the chain). This requires a lot of patience, good swearing and luck.
When you finish, your bike will look like this:
Now you can go anywhere in the rain without the fear of mud splattering on your newly replaced flexible-plastic-thingy-under-the-seat. Of course, you also lose about 50% of the coolness that the 390 brought to you but then, if you are a middle aged man, that should not matter much!
Stickering
Got new handguards from Aaayush, couriered via Sandeep, both BHPians. (The powerparts guards are fricking 6000 rupees! Thirumala had the 'same' part for 3500.)
Think getting the OE handguards (which, as I can attest, do really guard your hand) from people who do not need them is the best course, IMO.
Since I saved between 3000-5000 rupees, needed to sticker them up! Also I liked the black guards that were shown with the black 390. So, stickered them up in black, did the name as a cutout on the sticker.
Here it is:
I think they turned out pretty good.