TrailMax Tires in Mud! Removal of front fender?

I hate mud. Sometimes unavoidable. I got involved with some goo mud and picked up a few things. Does not matter what tires you have, you will not be able to keep going or even maintain position. There’s no traction to be had. Take a look at photo, you can see where the fender was cutting the goo off facilitating elimination. Farmers do this with plows In early fields. Today when getting goo off the bike I was surprised to see how much dirt was packed into radiator. Tight packed, took soap and lots gentle spray to get baked on stuff out. I wonder how much worse it could have been had I removed the fender. Probably why dirt bikes put the radiator(s) to the side maybe? Because radiator protectors are meant to flow, I don’t think they would have helped. Maybe make worse. A plugged radiator would really mess up trip, especially since you’d probably not notice until you got a flag your hot.
Avoid mud. After mud be sure and check your radiator for blockage.
Be sure and clean soon as the goo will bake into a brick like stuff that will be extremely hard to remove and not conducive to cooling.

VAdadofthr33 said:

This thread has taken the route of G310GS ADD hell and travelled way off topic. Hoping to recenter it for a moment.... Can you provide any updates on how this has worked out for you? Any regrets? Looks much better. I cant see where this would/could be any worse than any of my dirt bikes have ever been. Could always put a typical deflector on the radiator to protect prevent I guess. It looks SO much better, just want to make sure you dont regret the purchase before I do the same....

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When you're asking someone for information, insulting them is generally not the best opening statement. This is my thread and I just reviewed it. The mud and what-to-do-about-it theme is remarkably consistent and there is nothing about it that's off topic or ADD hellish (whatever that is). That said, I'm glad you asked and I'm happy to update you and anyone else interested.

In post #22 above, I said "It appears that my Rally Raid Engine Guard is protecting the radiator from accumulating crud."

I continue to believe that to be true, Rally Raid's engine guard is doing a excellent job shielding the radiator. However, I'm the type that likes redundancies (it's a Army Colonel thing), so I added the louvered grill radiator deflector/protector that is OEM on the G310R on top of the R&G radiator guard already on my G310GS. I'm not the first to do this; I found out about it from others on this forum. With this configuration, in addition to local riding, I have attended the Death Valley Noobs Rally in California and the April Fools Adventure Rally in Ohio. I was supposed to do the CABDR, but there was too much snow in the upper elevations and I wasn't interested in doing just the lower elevations. I'm retired; I'll do it later. At this point, I have about 1000 miles with the top of the front fender removed and 500 miles or so with the G310R louvered grill deflector/protector installed. Now to answer your questions...

This has worked very well for me. I have no regrets. I agree that the bike looks much better. Looks-wise, the engine guard and tank guards give the bike the GS look and feel I wanted while the removed lower front fender and the high and inside Dominator exhaust give the bike the dirt-bike look and feel I wanted. Performance-wise, there have been no signs of overheating (from the radiator getting too dirty). In fact, thanks mostly to the engine guard I think, the radiator doesn't seem to get particularly dirty. On the other hand, unlike dirt bikes that have a proper high fender, the under side of my G310GS' beak/upper-fender and the lower triple tree area of the forks get absolutely filthy and takes some special attention to get clean when washing the bike. I do wish I could install an upper fender of some sort to reduce that, but so far I have not seen a good way to do it nor anything that would look right to me. Ideas, anyone?

Re your statement "just want to make sure you dont (sic) regret the purchase before I do the same....": As I described in post #22 above, I didn't purchase anything to do this, I removed my OEM fender from my bike and used a Dremel-like tool to cut the top of the fender off in such a way that I could reinstall the two sides of the OEM fender to protect the lower fork tubes. I did this because the fork protector parts of the fender were the best option I found for protecting the lower fork tubes. The pictures in post #22 show this. Note: I used blue painter's tape to mark where I wanted to make my cuts while the fender was still on the bike and I used sand paper to smooth out the cut edges after I made the cuts.

Hope this helps. If you have more questions, ask.


Pictures:

Front view of radiator with G310R louvered grill installed on top of R&G radiator guard...


Right front view of radiator with G310R louvered grill installed on top of R&G radiator guard...

Note: The above pic shows the mod I made to my Rally Raid engine guard to provide an easy access panel for oil filter replacement. This mod along with the mod to make the oil drain plug accessible is well described at...

At Death Valley's Aguereberry Point after climbing lots of wet roads and some mud to get there...


At Death Valley's Kilns after climbing lots of wet roads to get there (beyond here, there was too much snow to continue upward)...


A lunch stop during the April Fools Adventure Rally after a crossing and re-crossing a few rivers a couple dozen times with lots of mud and a few bogs along the way (note the impaction accumulation of dirt on the front the engine guard and the lack of similar impaction dirt on the radiator)...


P.S. Yes, I need a proper off-road helmet; I'm waiting for the BMW National to try out the new Schuberth E2.
P.P.S. I considered both the Death Valley Noobs Rally and the April Fools Adventure Rally to be training opportunities for me. While I have some 700,000 miles of on-road riding experience, I'm newly back into off-road riding as of Feb 2022 after a 35 year hiatus. Both events were mostly street legal dirt bikes with a few large adventure bikes and me in the middle. Thanks to DVNR, I'm now comfortable on rocky roads, rock-strewn roads, and sand. Thanks to the AFAR, I'm now comfortable with river crossings and the often messy entrances and exists that come with those.

VAdadofthr33 said:

Sorry, wasnt meant to be an insult. I missed the part that tires were in this discussion I guess and thought it was in general about fender removal. From my view it digressed to people leaving bikes and panniers stuck in mud which is a far cry from a fender mod. Thanks for the input though, greatly appreciated. Regretting the purchase was not meant to be literal. I understand, cost would be a new fender if it caused issue. Have you had any issues with side mud dragging on the fork covers at all? Doesnt appear to be much clearance at the side knobs.

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All good.

No issues with mud dragging on the fork covers so far, but I haven't had to go through anything with that much clingy mud yet (and I hope I never do). The limiting factor is how close the tire is to the fork tubes themselves. I cut the covers back to be pretty much even with the fork tubes, i.e. the distance from the tire to the covers is roughly the same as the distance from the tire to the fork tubes. Part of this was where I chose to cut and part of it was that's how the fork cover part of the front fender was made by BMW.

In the original pictures, I had TKC80s on the bike; in the later pictures and currently, I have MotoZ Desert H/Ts. Both tires are the same tire size, but the side knobs of the H/Ts certainly make them look wider. By removing the top of my front fender, I have removed the worst and arguably most dangerous mud accumulation point, the space between the front tire and the underside of the lower front fender. With that gone, there are three remaining mud accumulation points where sticky mud might stop a tire from rolling.

The first two such points are on each side of front tire between the side knobs of the tire and lower part of the upper fork tube. With the H/T's currently installed on my bike, the distance from the side knobs of the front tire to the bottom of the upper fork tubes is roughly 20mm on each side. However, the upper part of the fork tube covers have a lot of flex, they will bow outward and wobble around when mud starts to accumulate there. Also, if the fork covers do start to accumulate too much mud, I can completely remove them in a couple of minutes, just four 5mm bolts. So, I think I'm as mud-prepared as I can be in the front.

With no fender in the rear, the third mud accumulation point is between the center of the rear tire and the swing arm. With the H/T's installed, that distance is just 10mm and there is zero flex...unless I air down. So, at this point, I'm more worried about the back tire than the front fork covers.

I'm a mud noob, but I think I've done everything I can for now.

Your thoughts?

Anyone else?