The Little How-To Corner: Shortening your rear fender

I wanted to replace my stock front and rear fenders with some shorter cafe ones for some time now. Last weekend I finally found a nice, used K&H stainless steel front fender for 1500Baht (~50$; 35Euros) in Bangkok. A Thai guy called Kung (shrimp) has a small shop around Rama7...well, it's not really a shop, more like a room with parts and a computer. He mainly deals online on thaiscooter.com and srthailand.com, but being the intrusive kind of farang, I went to his place.
The front fender was a bargain, but the rear was so expensive, I would have to sell one of my kidneys to pay for it. No way, I thought.

After installing the front fender, I started working on the rear one. The idea was to shorten the original fender and in the process save a lot of money. A win-win situation.

Of course this has been done before and probably better too, but I've never actually seen any threads on how to do it. I hope this can help you if you intend to do the same.

The big original and the short K&H fender

K&H mounted

The original Rear fender before cutting

close-up view, the fender is held into place by 4 bolts, 2 near the shocks and 2 near the turn signals. You'll have to cut right between the 'shock bolt' and the 'signal bolt' and the move the 'signal bolt' back to the 'shock bolt'.

mock-up (before cutting), 'signal bolt' is now where the 'shock bolt' is 

Find the cutting line. The cutting line is basically where the fender touches the black plastic (on the right in the picture)

I used an angle grinder for lack of better equipment, but it did the job....

 You'll also have to re-position your back light, drill a few holes in the fender and re-connect the cables.

Finished! Looks good I think....