Fit Foot Guards

Skill : 2. Tools : 1. Personally dirty : 1. Work mess : 1. Space : 1. Time : expert 45 minutes, average 60 minutes, "first-time" 90 minutes.

All nut and bolt sizes are given for the spanner size required to fit them.

Tools : 8mm, 10mm, 12mm sockets; 12mm ring spanner; ratchet handle and extension bar; Allen key set; hand or electric drill; 4mm and 10mm drill pieces; sharp knife.

The lower foot guards and their mountings come as a complete kit from your Honda dealer or direct from David Silver. The part number for the set is 73-MBL-801, £57 + VAT and postage as at April 2009.

This page refers to a UK specification NT650V4 Deauville and I can't speak for what differences there might be on other variants. I welcome amplification of any differences from fellow owners - by all means contact me with a view to providing comparable photos, which I'll credit accordingly.

All the tools, hands, and bike in the pictures are the author's. I am very receptive to comments and suggestions, but you use these pages entirely at your own risk. I recommend wearing surgical gloves when working with oils and other fluids, or just to help keep your hands clean.

the Red Fox says : "After working with the supplied instructions which came in the box with all the various pieces, I am of the opinion that the handout was written by someone's Grandma after a bad night out. The diagrams were poor and the text was minimal. What's confusing is that you'd kind of expect that the left and right shields would be symmetrical in the way they attach to the bike - but they are anything but symmetrical in this respect and the various mountings are completely different between the left and right pieces. I had to look very hard at everything before it was remotely clear how they bolt on, and shortcomings in the text don't help. Grrrrr !! Anyway here is how you do it."

Here are all the pieces. Left and right guards, 4 coach bolts, one long aluminium mounting bracket, one long and one short spacing tube each with a bolt of corresponding length, 4 shallow depth and two deeper shouldered washers , 2 x 10mm nuts and two matching bolts.

The left and right guards have L and R moulded into their inner faces so you can't get them wrong.

You don't need to remove any part of the fairing but you do need to take off the black plastic engine protector covers. Starting with the right hand one, undo and remove the bolt on its underside.

Now squeeze the top and bottom faces of the cover very firmly to release the tabs which clip it to the recess in the fairing. It's quite a hard squeeze to pop the tabs free - there are upper and lower ones at the front and the rear of the cover.

Use a 12mm ring spanner to loosen the bolt which secures the rear of the right hand engine protector bar to the chassis.

The bolt isn't very obvious in this photo, but if you follow the line of the spanner, the bolt is situated just above the blue tape at the spanner's throat. You can see it quite clearly by eye once the crash bar cover is off.

Once the bolt is loose, reach in with your hand from underneath and unscrew the bolt with your fingertips. This bolt you can now keep as a spare, as the guard kit should come with a replacement bolt.

The long aluminium strut fits on the right hand side of the bike. Its upper eye - this is the one without the slot - goes at the top and is secured by the replacement bolt which came with your kit. The bolt goes through the strut's eye and back through the crash bar into the chassis. Drop some ACF50 on the threads and replace the bolt, finger tight.

The bottom eye of the strut has the slot. This is secured into the unused hole in the crankcase, immediately above the exhaust heat shield. On my Deauville this hole wasn't threaded but the bolt which came with the guard kit cut its own thread as I tightened it.

Jukka Typpo comments "I tried to drive the screw that came with the kit to the crankcase hole without lubrication, hoping that it would just cut the thread. It almost did, but when about 1 mm was left, the screw got broken just under the head. The result is that I have 95% of the thread length inside my crankcase, and the piece of the bolt that sticks out is far too short to be taken out by regular hand tools. It is also too short to do its job, it does not support the aluminium strut at all. When mounting this screw, it probably is better to lubricate the thread before driving the screw. Then turn 1/2 clockwise and 1/4 backwards until the screw head makes the contact with the strut."

Mike (Assybish) adds : "Like you my Deau has no thread in the right side lower screw hole so I used a 6mm tap VERY CAREFULLY as it is aluminium casting - it worked beautifully and is very secure. Thought you might like to suggest that on your page as I fear that self cutting using the screw depends on the sharpness of the thread and it can vary and risks tearing the whole out."

This is how the right hand strut situates. Whan you are happy this is correct, fully tighten the bolts.

The guard itself has brass collars which are inserted from the inside outwards at the two rearmost holes. These collars stop the holding bolts from chewing away the guard's plastic mouldings.

Offer the guard up to the bracket and fasten into place with two of the coach bolts. Don't do them up fully tight, but they should be firmly screwed in so that the guard is held in its natural position.

Temporarily pop the crash bar cover back into place but don't fix it with its underside bolt.

Holding the footguard firmly against the crash bar cover so that there is minimal or no air gap between them, use a felt pen or whiteboard pen to mark the position of the third mounting hole which will be under the front edge of the fairing.

Remove the crash bar cover and the footguard and drill a small pilot hole through the centre of the marked place on the fairing.

Then use a 10mm drill to make the mounting hole. This hole has to be large enough to accommodate the inner bush of the brass collar.

Using a sharp knife or blade, reach in and trim off any plastic which was turned up by the action of drilling the mounting hole.

Again using one of the brass collars to protect the body of the footguard, insert a bolt from the underside and use one of the 10mm nuts to secure it. You can reach into the space inside the fairing from the underside to get the nut in the right place, but it's a little cramped.

Tighten all of the mounting bolts, replace and re-bolt the crash bar black plastic cover.

Here is the right hand footguard completely mounted.

The left guard is attached in a very different way. First remove the crash bar cover as per its partner, but don't remove the rear crash bar mounting bolt. The left hand footguard is bolted to the upper and lower 8mm bolts which secure the grey plastic engine cover which is directly next to the gear lever.

Remove the upper and lower 8mm bolts. Don't remove the grey plastic cover. Both these 8mm bolts are now spares.

The left hand footguard also uses two brass collars inserted from the inside outwards at the rearmost two holes. The long hollow spacer bar and the long matching bolt go on the inside face of the lower bolt, and the short hollow spacer and bolt go on the upper hole. These replacement bolts will screw into the places from where you just removed the two 8mm bolts.

In this picture the foot guard has its lower edge towards the camera.

Again bolt up the two rear positions quite firmly and pop back the crashbar cover. As you did with the other guard, hold it tight against the crashbar cover and then mark the position of the third mounting hole.

Remove the guard and crashbar cover and drill the pilot and then 10mm hole, attach the guard and crash bar cover and tighten everything up just as you did on the other side. Don't forget that the crash bar cover has a securing bolt on its underside.

Here is a photo from directly under the engine, pointing up and back so you can see how the long extension spacer is situated.

View from the front, with both footguards fitted.

You are welcome to comment on these pages but you must manually remove the extra 'z' from the email address, and put "Deauville" into the message header or body. If you don't do this, I won't receive your message.