Ducati Manchester had clear out of stock a couple of weeks ago so I went down to see what I could snaffle! Was looking to get a Comfort seat +20mm higher and was hoping to see a Akrapovic twin underseat exhaust.......no such luck but I did see a selection of front mudguards in matte black. All brand new items retailing for about £100. Price tag on it said £20 so I thought I'll have some of that. Give the bike a fresh new look as this is what you get on the 2023 V4S. Got to the till and he said call it £15 !!! Straight into the garage Sunday to get it fitted and what should have been a very simple job turned into a days work. Its held on with 4 Allen heads bolts......I rounded the head of the last one to come out a set of bolt extractors, mole grips and 5 hours later, I got the bastard out with any damage to the bike
Seen this before Paul…. Not sure what the score is with over tightening such small bolts, plus thread lock! And a head made of cheese. Hope you put some nice replacements back in
Everything is thread locked Dave, really no need for it on things like bodywork fixings!!! They're actually quite hard metal to be fair, I ended up drilling down the centre of it, then the top popped off. When that happened i was at least able to remove the original mudguard, i then drilled the centre again trying to get a fine bolt extractor in there but that still didn't work. That's when I resorted to the mole grips and how I ended up with a spade like end on the exposed bolt! I thought the end would just twist and snap off but it was hard enough to turn it out! I had a spare fairing bolt which I used as a replacement, just used a bit of copper grease on them all so hopefully won't happen again!
Another little boredom mod........thought I'd swap out the seat cowl to update the look a bit. 2023 models is red so I bought a Chinese one on ebay, got some Plastikote spray paint and a bit of primer and this is the result. Colour is near perfect which I'm pleased about! Before...... After!
