In hindsight, yeah, probably. However, there's no reason you should have to remove a wheel to replace a front fender. That's just poor design.
Not busting your chops..(really) but I don't know about a poor design? Think about it, what do you have to do to adjust your valves? Poor design? How about changing tires? I have to lay on my back to change oil....Poor design? How many times would you need to replace a fender? Just sayin
I'm only basing this on my experience with working on other bikes... but, access to stuff (like the air filter) is a hassle. The combination of torx, hex, and phillips heads is annoying- you need so many tools to do basic stuff (I haven't attempted anything difficult yet, like valves). So many screws are tough to access (like the fender screw). On my other bikes, my travel tool kit can pretty much handle 90% of any work that might be required, but with the TR650, I feel like I need a lot more tools with me. Things like the fender screw just don't make sense to me, and I see stuff like that a lot on the Husky. As a comparison, when working on my Beta, I often think "wow, what a smart design". Seriously, that bike is put together in a way that makes sense. (Although, I realize it's a premium brand and costs a lot more). I think BMW is more to blame than Husky, because I had a TE610, and while it was no gem to work on (ugh, airbox problems, anyone?), it wasn't near as frustrating as this one. I consider "poor design" to be things like the airbox, rear fender, water in the swingarm, clutch cable routing, radiator burping, factory luggage rack design, etc. I won't throw the stalling issues into the design category, although it was also annoying until I got it fixed. I've never had a bike where I had to do so much work to an almost new bike to make it ready to ride. Some of the stuff was an easy fix, but you shouldn't need to drill holes in the swingarm of your new bike. That said, I've got the majority of the stupid things fixed, and it rides pretty good. (I'm not even having fueling issues since I adjusted my EJK, knock wood). I know it sounds like I hate the bike, but I don't. I plan on keeping it a long time. The fender breaking was annoying, since it was simply a tipover in sand! When I see stuff like that, I just shake my head and tell people it's a budget bike. We'll see how many times I need to replace the fender, haha. I'm guessing more than once. Incidentally, the new fender was slightly different than the old one- it has a cutout for routing the brakeline (I think)- I like it better than the original.
Try working on a full fairing road bike. Not thats poor design not budget, huskys arnt budget get an ajp if thats what your after.
Broke my new fender this weekend in a low-speed tipover in deep sand. This one only broke where the cables are attached to the fender, so I think I'll just leave it as is. The plastic is so hard and inflexible that it's bound to happen again.
