I don't think anyone in world history has ever bragged about the look of their stock fender kit on their street bike. It is sort of crazy that manufacturers continue to issue brand new bikes with this bulky eye sore adorned to an otherwise beautiful piece of machinery. I guess it is good news for aftermarket part companies, especially Competition Werkes who charge an ABSURD $120+ for basically 2 small pieces of sheet metal, some screws and a pair of flimsy turn signals that do not even have enough wire to work standalone. So I will get right to it, I would NOT purchase this "kit" at this outrageous price tag. I use the term "kit" lightly as it's not even a complete kit, you still have to utilize parts from your stock fender. At this price point at least let me completely remove my stock fender and light kit untouched, ready for a quick sale on EBAY or to hang around for the next owner if need be. The only reason I installed this was because I paid nothing for it as the previous owner of my bike threw it in with the purchase. Now with that said you still do need a fender elim kit of some sort, but I would rather just make my own custom one or better yet pay about $50 - $60 bucks for a better kit online. I know there are dudes on forums that have DIY instructions and even sell kits.
Anyways I installed it so I will quickly outline the steps below as I could not find one write up of this anywhere for this model bike. This pissed me off because the instructions are a little bit of a joke as it just shows some black and white pictures that looked xerox copied a few hundred times and you are supposed to piece together what happened by yourself. Some people could struggle with this and others may not, everyones skills are different. I would think there are enough bad reviews out there stating the installation was not so straight forward that someone at CW would think hey it costs us $15 to make this product why don't we at least give these suckers better instructions. Ridiculous.
STEP1:
Remove seat. If you don't know how to do this then stop here and do not even think about doing this install.
STEP2:
(All tools in the toolkit are all you need for this install)
Remove 2 allen bolts from the bottom and 2 bolts on the side holding the fender in place. These are the only pictures that are nicely detailed in the instructions. The 2 bolts on the side are a pain in the ass since you don't have much clearance. I removed 1 screw from the side reflectors and turned them down away from this location to give slightly more room.
STEP3:
Remove left side panel by undoing the allen bolt below. This will gain you access to the wires.
STEP4:
Disconnect the left and right blinker connectors (Only one blinker is pictured above, there is a black connector that looks exactly like the greyish connector. That is the other side blinker). The bullet connectors are the license plate lamp bulb. Cut the 2 zip ties that are securing the wires in place and pull the wires out from the fender and remove the trunk altogether.
STEP5:
You will be snipping the signal wires from the stock fender. Try not to have to much excess wires as there is not going to be much spare room for them in their new home right under the very hot muffler! Also have to snip the new signal wires, not sure what the hell the bullet connector is on them for. Maybe other bike models make use of it? Butt splice the new signals to the stock wire. The wire with the Brown and Black is for the left. I read that the black is the ground in both signals for our bike, but on the kit signal packaging it said that the Red/Black wire are used for +. I dont know but I followed other forum posts and went with the black being ground and it worked out for me. Connected the black (ground) to the striped wire and the brown (signal) wire to the solid wire. Did the same for the other signal except instead of brown this side was green. This will all make more sense when you are actually doing and not reading. Sorry.
STEP6:
Following the pictures assemble the license plate mount and route the signal wires thru the appropriate hole. Easy step and is exactly as pictured in the instructions.
STEP7:
Completely disassemble the license plate lamp assembly from the stock. All you need is the wire with the bulb attached. This bulb gets pushed right onto the plate mount illuminating the light below onto the license. Shit I wish I took a picture of this as their picture sucked and you are left to figure this step out. Sorry.
STEP8:
Route all the wires back thru the channel and connect. Most likely you took the wire channel out and now you got to pop it back on. Only sucks now because you got wires with fat butt splices on them and the panel is not sitting so nice now is it? This is where I got annoyed. I had to pull some wires back out and stuff it as strategically under the muffler as possible and pray they don't melt away in time. This is a big design flaw I feel. They should have built a lid for this enclosure instead of letting the wires chill directly under the exhaust. Time will tell.
STEP9:
Zip tie and button everything back up. I actually used my 2nd zip tie around the wire channel since I was afraid of it coming loose now.
