If you've ever followed a Thunderace for any distance, you might start to wonder why Yamaha left the rear of the bike unfinished.  At least that was my thought.  I could never understand why they went to such great lengths to detail a number of other part of this motorcycle, but when it came to the vast space between the rear tire and inner fender, they just gave up.  Maybe this area was designed after a long celebratory weekend and the engineers endulged a bit too much, or maybe they wanted to leave work early that day and just never got around to finishing it later.  Who knows.  In any event, there is a remedy to improve how a Thunderace looks from the rear -- an undertail enclosure.

Although the end result looks great, installing an undertail enclosure takes a long time to do properly.  Be warned -- it also involves cutting away at least some of the inner fender.  The trick here is to cut away only what you need to in order to have the undertail enclosure fit properly.  If you cut away too much you lose the underseat storage.  (If you purchase an undertail enclosure from Eurobikes, take out their instruction, read them and throw them away.  They're crap.  Instead of cutting the inner fender in half, as they suggest, use your head and figure out the minimum you need to remove in order to make everything fit.)  I spent the better part of two days cutting and fitting, cutting and fitting.  I also fabricated a small aluminum panel to go inside the undertail enclosure at the rear to support both the top cover mounting towers above and the license plate bracket below.  The extra ounce or two is more than offset by the strength of this arrangement. 

The finishing touch for the rear is the custom fabricated license plate and turnsignal bracket.  Instead of mounting the license plate using cheap L brackets, I made up this unit out of a blank traffic sign.  (Don't laugh -- street sign blanks are 1/8" thick aluminum sheet coated to prevent oxidization.  They're strong, they're light, and the local sheetmetal monger was closed the week I was working on this project!)  Instead of drilling holes in the side panels to mount flush turnsignals, or trying to mount them inside the "vent" opening on the side, I made the wings on the license plate brackets just wide enough to accomodate the stalks on 916-style turn signals.  The whole license plate bracket was then pop-rivet onto the undertail enclosure to fasten it securely.  Finally, a rubber grommet goes through the inner aluminum panel, the fiberglass enclosure and the license plate bracket to allow wiring to pass through safely.  The whole package is neat, tidy, compact and very trick looking.  As a bonus, I think it is strong enough to act as a mounting point for my RKA soft luggage.

Want to learn more?  Check out Eurobike's Web site.

^top

I no longer have a Thunderace, so these pages are updated as I have time.  They are an ongoing work in progress and reflect my own personal thoughts.  If you have any questions or comments, please drop me a line.

This page last updated: January 24, 2000