As anyone who has ridden a late model KTM 640 Adventure or 950/990 Adventure in serious muddy conditions knows, it can be devastating when your front wheel stops turning because mud gets clogged between the wheel and fender. I had this happen once at slow speeds on a muddy doubletrack in the Uintas. It didn’t throw me, as I was able to hop off and land on my feet as the bike was going down, but trying to lift the bike and roll it out of the mud bog was like trying to push a 300 orange pig away from the feed trough. That pig wanted to stay put.
So after much research, I threw down $275.00 plus shipping for the Touratech LC8 and LC4 high fender conversion kit. I ordered it online and received it via ground shipping 2 days later. These bikes use many of the same front suspension parts, so the kit is shared between the two models. They also offer it in orange, silver and black fenders. I stuck with the orange. Bartman has a homegrown version on his 950 Adventure, but he had to do some serious mods to make it all come together. His solution to the dual rotor issue on the front was to remove the right side caliper and rotor. When asked about how that works, he said “fine on the dirt, not so good on the road.”
Let’s just say, it was an all day job. The directions were spartan, and translated from German. Non-linear would be one way to describe it; there were several steps I did that had to be undone after moving on to the next steps revealed that I had done something wrong. Also, ending up with extra parts is usually not a good thing. Bartman came over and checked it out and thought everything looked good, and wished that he had bought this kit when he did his fender conversion. The only thing I would suggest to Touratech is to make a kit for shorter travel bikes with a shorter second brake line. I had to re-route my brake lines several times before I got a combination that worked. The supplied second brake line would have been perfect if it was 4 to 5 inches shorter. Check out the pics:
This is a before photo of the old low fender. Also, check out the Dunlop D606 front tire. You can see there is not much clearance there.
View from above of the new high fender kit. Hmmmmmm. Lots of clearance.
View of the fender from down under. Note the stealth black leg protectors and the re-routed secondary brake line to the right caliper.
Close-up view of the double banjo bolt at the master cylinder. This was a beeatch to install, but Bartman says it’s cool. So, it’s cool.
