Skinny_Birdman
6th May 2009, 12:49
As anyone who owns a Tuono will tell you, the two radiators and oil-cooler are hopelessly exposed to whatever the front wheel throws at them. After 6000km mine were already looking a bit second-hand, so I started to look around for a viable guard. Not being a metal fabricator, as I saw it, the alternatives were: 1) Buy some fly-catcher grill from Repco and zip-tie it on, thus ruining the appearance of my reasonably new bike, or 2) Rad-Guards (http://www.radguard.com.au/) sourced from their website. Despite the significant cost ($480 odd at current exchange rates) I decided to go ahead with option 2, figuring that either rad or oil-cooler were likely to cost more than $500 to replace.
The guards arrived within 1 week, and I of course immediately raced to the shed to put them on. Pleasingly, a free cap and stubbie cooler were thrown in, however it would have been nice if the necessary mounting bolts had also been included. After a quick email to Rad-guard, these arrived 1 week later.
The guards are fly-catcher mesh in alloy frames which are (I think) powder coated black (they are also available in silver). The coating had a small flaw in it, fortunately not in a visible spot.
The fitting instructions are simple, involving removing belly pan, centre cover and radiator securing bolts. They forgot to mention that you also have to remove the external trim on the rads. You also have to trim the plastic cutout which stops crap getting behind the bike's headlight(otherwise it binds with the rad-guards at full lock), which the instructions on R-G's website did include, but which was omitted from the instructions received with the guards.
The radiator guards clip onto the sides of the rads and bolt on through the securing bolt. The oil-cooler guard has metal tabs which are folded around the cooler end-tanks. The instructions state that you should remove the guards for cleaning with every service - I can't help but wonder how many times I can unfold the clips before they break off...
They look pretty good (http://www.radguard.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3_8&products_id=194) once the bike is buttoned up, and I am reasonably satisfied, although I think for $480 the quality control (ie missing bolts, flawed finish, incomplete instructions) could have been a bit better.
The guards arrived within 1 week, and I of course immediately raced to the shed to put them on. Pleasingly, a free cap and stubbie cooler were thrown in, however it would have been nice if the necessary mounting bolts had also been included. After a quick email to Rad-guard, these arrived 1 week later.
The guards are fly-catcher mesh in alloy frames which are (I think) powder coated black (they are also available in silver). The coating had a small flaw in it, fortunately not in a visible spot.
The fitting instructions are simple, involving removing belly pan, centre cover and radiator securing bolts. They forgot to mention that you also have to remove the external trim on the rads. You also have to trim the plastic cutout which stops crap getting behind the bike's headlight(otherwise it binds with the rad-guards at full lock), which the instructions on R-G's website did include, but which was omitted from the instructions received with the guards.
The radiator guards clip onto the sides of the rads and bolt on through the securing bolt. The oil-cooler guard has metal tabs which are folded around the cooler end-tanks. The instructions state that you should remove the guards for cleaning with every service - I can't help but wonder how many times I can unfold the clips before they break off...
They look pretty good (http://www.radguard.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3_8&products_id=194) once the bike is buttoned up, and I am reasonably satisfied, although I think for $480 the quality control (ie missing bolts, flawed finish, incomplete instructions) could have been a bit better.