Project Ruckus Part 2 – More Stuff, the Next Stage
by Jeff Naeyaert
In our Last edition of Project Ruckus, we worked mainly on getting the handling and braking of our bike up to a standard of reasonable safety, safe enough to handle the mean streets and venture beyond the safety of suburban neighborhoods and the pits at the track.
Our bike is still far from our goal of it being able to handle itself on main streets though. For one it’s pitifully slow being barely able to creep up to 37 mph. At this speed the poor Ruck will get run over on the crowded, fast main streets of the South Bay where our office is located. It is also not as cool looking as we would like. So in this edition of Project Ruckus we are going to spiff up the looks of our ride and start working on the issue of power.
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| Our Ruckus resplendent in its Password JDM dry carbon bodywork. The fenders, gas tank cover, luggage cover, radiator air scoop and battery box are all carbon. |
We first addressed the looks with a set of dry carbon body panels from Password JDM. The Password stuff is all made of genuine vacuum epoxy infused, oven cured, pre-preg carbon, the real stuff used in aerospace and high end motorsports. This makes for the lightest strongest carbon possible, vastly superior to the typical inexpensive polyester resin wet layup carbon parts so prevalent in our industry. Epoxy gives superior strength and impact resistance to the carbon. Password parts are tough. Best of all, like all Password branded parts, they are designed and manufactured right here in California. Password supplied our dry carbon front and rear fenders, cargo tray, fuel tank cover, radiator scoop and battery box.
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| Bye, Bye froggy. The Kijima front light is really bright compared to stock and totally changes the look of our Ruckus from SUV to JDM. |
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| With the high beam switch on you get both the high and low beam lights, pretty bright! |
We wanted to clean up our front end. We didn’t like the stock Ruckus SUV with a brushguard, frog eyed look so we pitched all of that stuff in the trash. Bowls LA came to our rescue with a Kijima dual beam front headlight, mounting bracket and Kijima turn signals. These parts cleaned up the front end of Project Ruckus nicely. The Kijima dual beam light has halogen lamps that are twice a bright as the stock lights. We installed a diode in the headlight circuit so both high and low beam lights could illuminate with the high beam switch on. This really will help us if we are caught out at night time.
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| The plastic floorboards were replaced with this NCY frame brace with pegs. The Password JDM gas tank cover underneath dresses this area up as well. The stainless and blue anodized Password JDM finisher bolts are a nice detail touch too. |
We next ditched the ugly plastic shrouding and floorboards around the gas tank and the back of the bike. We covered the raw gas tank with the Password JDM carbon tank cover and installed a NCY frame brace over it from Rucksters Customs with footpegs, held down with Password JDM fender bolts. The brace helps stiffen the chassis which helps the ride and handling and gives you an extra place to put your feet and stretch out, a godsend on long rides. To keep the back frame area covered and clean looking we used Password JDM’s carbon rear cargo cover. We also took the time to cover our wire harness with split loom tubing and tuck it out of sight to clean things up visually.
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| Neat NCY billet CNC machined master cylinder reservoir cover looks cool! |
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| The NCY frame slider will help protect our bike in case of a spill. |
