I received my Kuryakyn Mud Flaps the other day and did the install this afternoon. Holy smokes, was that a traumatic experience!
The instructions are very good but I deviated just a tad, and I'm glad I did.
I protected the fenders with blue painters tape and used the supplied templates to measure and mark my holes for drilling. The drilled holes are supposed to be 3/8" in size. What I chose to do instead was drill the holes to 5/16", starting with a very small drill bit and working my way up. My plan was to then use a rat tail file to enlarge the holes as needed until the trim pieces fit cleanly and snugly. This is where it got scary.
After drilling, I found my holes to be off by just a bit and worse yet, the paint around the holes tended to flake off! To me, it seemed like the paint was extremely brittle and wanted to chip off rather than allowing the drill to cleanly cut off the paint around the drilled holes. I tell you, I was freaking out because I thought the flaked edges of the drilled holes would be visible.
Thankfully, the use of my rat tail file allowed me to enlarge the holes to what was needed while at the same time cleaning those edges up to prevent further paint flaking. Also, per the instructions, I used some clear nail polish to seal the edges of the holes.
In the end, I do like the way they look. They look a lot less gaudy than what I was afraid of. But now knowing the dangers of screwing up this install, I probably would not have installed them.
(Click on pictures to see full-size images.)
The instructions are very good but I deviated just a tad, and I'm glad I did.
I protected the fenders with blue painters tape and used the supplied templates to measure and mark my holes for drilling. The drilled holes are supposed to be 3/8" in size. What I chose to do instead was drill the holes to 5/16", starting with a very small drill bit and working my way up. My plan was to then use a rat tail file to enlarge the holes as needed until the trim pieces fit cleanly and snugly. This is where it got scary.
After drilling, I found my holes to be off by just a bit and worse yet, the paint around the holes tended to flake off! To me, it seemed like the paint was extremely brittle and wanted to chip off rather than allowing the drill to cleanly cut off the paint around the drilled holes. I tell you, I was freaking out because I thought the flaked edges of the drilled holes would be visible.
Thankfully, the use of my rat tail file allowed me to enlarge the holes to what was needed while at the same time cleaning those edges up to prevent further paint flaking. Also, per the instructions, I used some clear nail polish to seal the edges of the holes.
In the end, I do like the way they look. They look a lot less gaudy than what I was afraid of. But now knowing the dangers of screwing up this install, I probably would not have installed them.
(Click on pictures to see full-size images.)
