Custom Fender – Part I

Part I was a complete bust, but here is what we did and how we failed. Don’t worry, part II is far more promising so I’ll keep this short.

So the ultimate goal was to create a fender that showed off a lot more of the rear tire on the Victory Vegas Jackpot (it’s got a 250mm wide rear, stock). If you’re not into bikes, then I suppose you won’t get this, but the rear end was just way too hidden by the stock fender.

First we went with a dyna style fender simply because the fender rails were set up as such. We really had no idea what we were doing at this point, and that was my fault. I know how to do this kind of stuff but sometimes you just get too excited and start fiberglassing too soon. We had not done the proper preparation, and we suffered later for it. Anyways, the fender rail supports:

We covered the fender rail supports with a metal mesh made of Gutter Guard (available at any home depot). By fiberglassing over the metal mesh, we’d be able to create a truly rigid, supportive fender:


For the initial fiberglassing, we did it on the bike itself. We use some very heavyweight plastic sheeting to mask off the whole thing, and then put the fender skeleton back on the bike. We skinned the metal mesh with a white T shirt and did a light coat of resin, then some long strand fiberglass matting, and a thick coat of resin. After a bit, we removed it from the bike and let it dry for a day. We ripped off the plastic dropcloth from the inside of the new fender and then put some long strand fiberglass inside with some more resin. All in all we made a decent shape, and incredibly strong fender.

Here we tried adding a spine to the fender to match the spine that the jackpot has over the tank. Obviously this isn’t indicative of the final look, this just makes the bondo easier to do later if we have something to build on. In any case, as you know this was a mess up so on with the pictures:

Some post trimming test fits:

The end result was a fender that looked kinda cool, but mostly because it was unique and we made it, but would not fit properly, was asymmetrical, and would have ended up causing way too many problems. After evaluating it, Joe and I looked at each other both ready to admit we had to start over but afraid to admit it. Eventually after much time of sitting and staring at it under the floodlight, we agreed that starting over would produce a much, much better fender. So start over we did, and thus begins Part II…