The stock Honda fender has plenty of plastic to work magic on. Now that it's summer, just remove it from the bike (or not) and leave it in the hot sun for an hour or so. Once it's nice and warm, use a new blade in a box cutter or an exacto. Use a metal guide (I used a 12" Crescent to get a nice compound curve) and slowly score the plastic on the first run. Then just go over it a few more times, it will go through all the way with 5 or 6 runs.

I did mine so that I could salvage the stock license plate assembly and light, moved up about six inches or so.

http://homepage.mac.com/tschoepe/.Pictures/Motorcycles/fendertrim.jpg

If you mess it up real bad, then buy a fender eliminator :D

Daryl

Werd, thats the exact same method I used a month after I bought my hawk. Cheapest and easiest way to do it. I found also that if you arent too steady with the knife, you can use a rubber trim used to cover trim on the fender edge.

I think my favorite part of this procedure is the fact that once you remove the silly reflector from above the taillight, you can move it up and the holes line up perfectly. Like god wanted it there or something. :)

I modified mine by using a ruler as a straight edge and used a dremel with a cutting wheel on it.

Took me a whole 2 min. to do it! 8)

I have been contemplating whether I should just do this or not.

Do you have any other shots of the bike and how it looks from the back, farther away, etc.?

I have a Ventura pack and need the fuller guard for the wet days,..
So .. instead of cutting I angled the number plate a bit and louvered the area under the plate to allow air to flow freely ,.. but deflect the water.
:twisted:

hey, NZred, your post is useless without a picture!! :lol:

by the way, gorgeous city you got there! Auckland! I was there on a business trip a couple of years ago, beautiful country! gorgeous roads!

some of the models of the motorcycles there were different than the ones here in US. you should post some pics of those bikes too.

Hi FAZ,
I will try and take some pictures for you all.
Mean while,.. look at what they do with the front fender of dirt bikes.. to allow air flow but keep out the dirt.

I did the exact same thing, with a dremel. Quick and painless. I'm thinking next I'm gonna buy the license plate frame with LED turn signals down the sides.

I simply used a pair of Sheet Metal Sheers to trim mine after using a ruler and pencil to make a cut line.

No fuss, no sanding, clean edge cut...

I just did mine this past weekend. Both in this case and a previous bike's case, I used the good old box cutter after drawing the lines using a pencil.

It works great, no rough edges, very controlled cut.

I now want to shorten the length of the stock turnsignals in the back. I know it can be done, just never done it myself.

In addition to trimming the monstrosity of a rear mud guard, if you are ambituous and confident in your Dremel tool abilites, you can cut out the bottom of the tail-light lens and thus make things a bit cleaner-looking by remaining (quazi) DOT-legal while still removing the OEM license plate lamp.

To modify the tail-light lens so it also provides lighting for the license tag, after removing the tail-light from the VTR and cutting out the bottom of the tail-light lens, you can either custom-fit and glue-in a thin piece of plexi-glass (GE Lexan), or you can simply, trim, insert, and glue-in a thin piece of plastic, such as that used in the clear plastic sleeves of software packaging.

SuperChicken II had the latter of the two above lens modifications, and I never had trouble with the thin plastic either fogging/clouding or letting enough road spray by to wipe out tail-lights via the water-drop-on-a-light-bulb effect.

cheers,
HotStreetVTR

i used some of my kids chalk they had outside untill i got it how i wanted to look and attacked it with a dremmel