In this article, Tyler walks you through the simple ways you can make this DIY Motorcycle Fender Mounting Strut Kit 2.0 work for you and your latest chopper or bobber project.
Here at Lowbrow Customs we try to make your life a little easier by giving amazing solutions ready to weld and make your project look exceptional all while saving you time and money.
Helping your fabrication needs but still allowing you to customize your motorcycle any way you want, with limitless options and combinations of our hundreds of bungs and mounting tabs we have to offer.
What Do You Need Before Making Custom Fender Struts?
We designed and made our DIY Custom Fender Strut Kit many years ago and decided it was about time we offered an alternative style. Included with this kit are the following pieces:
- (2) Oval, mild steel upper tabs, 1/4" thick, with 5/16"-18 threaded holes.
- (2) Mild steel upper tabs, 3/16" thick, with two 5/16" holes.
- (2) Lower mild steel tabs, 3/16" thick, with one 5/16" hole.
- (2) Pieces 1/2" thick Cold Rolled Steel, each 18" long.
How to Use Our Custom Rear Fender Struts v2.0?
The oval tabs are designed to be welded to the sidewall of a rear motorcycle fender. They can be welded inside the custom motorcycle fender to keep them hidden, having first drilled holes for the hardware to pass through. The upper and lower strut tabs weld to the supplied 1/2" diameter, cold-rolled steel to make custom motorcycle fender struts.
Cut to length and bend (if desired) as needed. This entire setup gives a very strong, durable and reliable fender support. Using whatever style (hex head, button head allen, etc) 1/2" long hardware desired will secure the strut to the fender without having to put a nut to the inside.
Alternatively, a slightly longer bolt and a half-thickness jam nut can be used (along with thread locker) for even more security. Everything included is mild steel, easy to weld, and Made in the USA!
Watch the Motorcycle DIY Fender Struts 2.0 Video Overview:
Grab the Fender Strut Kit Version 2.0
Hey, it's Tyler with Lowbrow Customs. I'm going to show you guys and gals our new DIY fender strut kit. We've been making fender strut kits for many years but this is version 2.0. We still sell the original, but this is a new kit that offers a variety of other components you might find very useful.
Included are two pieces of half-inch round, outside diameter, 18-inch long, cold-rolled steel. This alone with all the rest of the components in this kit like many of the products we make are made of USA steel made here in Ohio, USA.
The fender support
We have an assortment of tabs that come with this kit. First off, your 3/16-thick bottom tab that would be meant for the bottom of the fender strut or the fender support. You can also use these on a homemade sissy bar or something like that. It gives a very strong mount, you can see it sits very nicely on the supplied half-inch cold-rolled and it gives you a large area of weld, and this makes it very stout and secure lower mount.
The upper tab
For the upper tab, it's a similar style in that it'll slip right over the material here, the round stock, and you can slightly even angle it a bit before you weld it as needed depending on the bike and which fender you're mounting and everything.
The unique part about the fender strut kits version 2.0
The unique part about this kit is the secondary upper tab, this is quarter-inch-thick steel and it's threaded 5/16-18 thread in there which is a standard thread. We don't include hardware with this kit because it's more of a thing of personal taste. I bolted this together with some half-inch long button head Allen bolts here that I had in the garage.
Some people like chrome, some people like hex socket head, there's all these different style hardware so we let you choose what you want to use, but you can see that when these two tabs are bolted together, the profile matches and it looks very nice and clean.
The reason for this is, on a fender such as this GasBox fender for 16 and 18-inch rears, it's got a really nice sidewall for it, and this lends itself very well to this 2.0 style mounting kit. The idea is you would weld the quarter-inch-thick oval style tab to the fender, and that allows you to unbolt your strut and then bolt it directly to the fender without having to fiddle with through bolts and nuts.
Things to help the fender strut kits look neatly
I'll illustrate this here with the one that's not bolted together. Another thing you can do, these holes are on one-inch centers, you can measure, mark and drill 5/16 holes in your fender, weld the tab in place over it. That'll allow you to run longer hardware if you desire and even throw maybe a thin nyloc on the back for added safety so these bolts won't loosen up, but we always do recommend using Loctite on motorcycles and on the hardware.
Another neat thing you can do is, drill the holes in your fender on one-inch centers and this tab could slip on the backside to the inside your fender and be welded all the way around. Now that gives you a very clean look with that tab welded in there and the hole is drilled, it'll allow you to mount your fender straight and just bolt it to the outside of the fender which is great. If you're doing that method, I would suggest you watch your clearance. If you weld the quarter-inch tab to the inside on both sides just ensure that it's not too close to the sidewall of your tire. That's about it.
I hope you found that a little bit useful and gave you some ideas on mounting your fender on your next project. If you want to see a complete in-depth video, where we mount a fender on a Triumph, one of Todd's Triumph Bobbers, check out our 'How to mount a rear motorcycle fender' video and you'll see everything from spacing your fender and your tire to chain notch clearance on your fender to fender strut kit, upper lower mounts and the whole shebang. Anything you need, check out lowbrowcustoms.com. We offer free motorcycle technical support and are here to help you out any way we can. Thanks.
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