Monday, Jan 26 2015 [1546 miles]
I’ve been meaning to replace the plastic air deflectors that Suzuki calls hand guards with something a bit more proctective for a while. I finally got arround to ordering some guards with small wind deflectors. They arrived this morning.
These are the stock guards. They keep the air off of your fingers. They don’t do much more than that.
The above are the Moose Racing kit that I ordered from Procycle. The first picture shows the small black protector test fit on the aluminum handguard so I could mark the spot to drill the needed mounting holes. The appropriate size drill bit came with the deflectors.
I took off the stock handguard on the clutch side and then tried to remove the bar end weight. That didn’t go so well. I couldn’t break the screw free with the tools I tried. I wasted lots of time, mostly due to being too lazy to break out the proper tool.
Tuesday, Jan 27 2015 [1546 miles]
I stopped being lazy. I hooked up the impact gut to the compressor and had the bar ends off in about 7 seconds. Took longer to hook up the tool and put it away than to do the job. With the bar ends off I got the handguard mounting hardware ready.
It’s a minor pain getting the bar clamps in position. There is no access to the top clamp mounting screw when the clamps are rotated into their proper position — the cross bar is in the way. I tightened the top screw to what I hoped was an appropriate amount then rotated the clamp to position the guards and finally tightening the bottom screw of the clamp. It seems pretty sturdy.
The new guards and small wind deflector mounted. The ball of the clutch lever just touches the guard. I may remove the guard and give it a slightly different bend to try to get some extra clearance. The throttle side is fine.