Now I'm nowhere near an expert so please be nice. This is my first attempt at a guide, as there were some things I found when doing this that may be useful to others. I hope so anyway.
This took me about 3 and a quarter hours! 3 hours to take of the rear fairing and fender, cut down the fender and put in the new indicators. The front indicators took quarter of an hour!
I ordered Motrax Micro Arrow Indicators with clear lenses (even though the damn mirrors behind them were amber) with short black stems. I also ordered the generic (mostly) indy spacers. The Indicators were £15 a set and the indy spacers were £5 a set. £40 total.
The indicators:-
The spacers:-
A comparison. You can see how huge the original indicators are. I've probably saved a bit of weight by getting rid of these beasts!:-
I started by taking off my seat and emptying out all the bits and pieces I stuffed down the side. I was pretty impressed by all the stuff I managed to fit down there so I had to take a pic (note: the feet are not normally stuffed under the seat too!):-
I decided it would be a hell of a lot easier to get the fender off if I removed the rear fairing first. You need to detach the connectors for the indicators from the single-wire connections as shown below (one green wire & one black/yellow for each indicator). Just yank em apart gently:-
You can see 6 empty bolt holes below. You need to remove the bolts from all of these to take off the fairing, passenger grab-rail thingy and the fender. You can use the stock toolkit but I found it a lot easier to use a socket set. You also need to disconnect the square white connector you can see in the middle to disconnect the break-light:-
You need to use a large Phillips screwdriver to unscrew the bolt at the bottom of the rear fairing on each side of the bike before you can remove it. You can see it there between the front footpeg and the airbox. Then you can pop the edges of the fairing sideways out of the holes in the fuel-tank and slide the whole thing back off the back of the bike:-
To remove the indicators there is a nut on the inside of the fender that you need to unscrew from each. It's on pretty tight. Then you can pull them out being careful of the wire. I'd advise putting the plate that falls off and the nut back on before you hide them away somewhere. Then you are left with the rubber holder thingy below:-
You can just pull this out. I found it was easiest to push the front through first from the inside. Then you get a nice big hole:-
This is where the indy spacers come in damn handy:-
I found that I had to chop up the smaller, inside spacer before it would fit in the rear (the front one fitted in fine by the way):-
Anyway, you need to remove two more bolts to take off the fender, which makes it all much easier. These are the ones above and slightly behind the rear bungee mount hook. You can see it in the image above.
To chop my fender up, I used duct-tape to outline the straight lines I was going to cut out and then used a dremel to cut it out roughly. I made sure that I left at least 2-3 mm gap from the part that I actually wanted to keep. I smoothed this off afterwards using a file and Stanley knife. This took a while as I was being really careful not to ruin it.
I decided to cut at 90 from the corner of the fender to the bottom of the indicator mount point, then followed that around until I was about halfway and then in a straight line from that diagonally down towards the corner of the numberplate mounting plate (I'd already taken that off by the way as well as the indicators. Then I cut along the bottom of the numberplate mounting plate location. I decided I wanted to get rid of as much of the fender as possible without making it weak. Here's some pictures of the offcut. You can see completed ones further down:-
I found it REALLY fiddly to get the spacers and the indicators to line up. There wasn't room for the round split washer that comes with the indicators - just the nut. The nut actually fits into the inside of the inner spacer and therefore cannot be turned. You have to turn the rubber part of the indicator. I used high quality needle-nose pliers on the rubber part to turn them for leverage. This should actually mean that it won't vibrate it's way off but I'm still thinking about getting some locktite!
Without the indy spacers I would never have got the indicators to fit onto the front and the rear would have been unstable. They look pretty good too. The way you get them on is to thread the indicator bolt through the outside spacer using the cable, then the cable through the hole in the fairing, then though the inner spacer, then through the nut and then hold it all together from the inside while you twist the indicator on from the outside.
Because of the retarded connections that come of the GPZ (or maybe the retarded people at Motrax) the connectors that came with the indicators wouldn't fit. By this stage I was thoroughly fed up with the whole thing and there was no way I was putting the bike back together to go to Maplin to buy connectors!!! I just chopped off the ends of the indicator connectors, stripped the wire, twisted it, folded it in half and shoved it inside the bike connector. Then I used pliers to crimp it all down damn hard and covered it in electricians tape. A bodge job but it's strong and works.
The front indicators were soooo much easier to get out and to install. You just need to get a Phillips screwdriver up under your front fairing (with the power turned off) and unscrew the screw below on the indicators. Then it's a matter of following the wires from the indicators, freeing them from any cable holders, unplugging them from the bike and pulling the indicators out from the outside (the rubber gives easily once the metal clamp thing is off):-
From the front (sexy):-
The indicators are much brighter than the stock:-
And sooooo much smaller. You can see the spacer looking good there too:-
Nice blurry one of the rear:-
The indicator looking nice and bright again:-
And here from the side showing the fender reduction and the spacer:-
And you can see the line of what's left of the fender nicely here as the picture's taken from underneath:-
Anyone desperate enough to use this guide, feel free to ask me any questions you might have.
And now I'm done, partly a guide, partly showing off what I've done - my first permanent mod to my bike. I'm relieved it's over and it does look a hell of a lot better now!
Andy
Ex-500.com - The home of the Kawasaki EX500 / Ninja 500R
