AMCQ46 wrote:
how are you converting the Ape for the left knee?
It was actually fairly simple to convert the gear change to suit my dodgy knee the RSV is a pretty big bike certainly taller than the VTR so there’s more room to start with but I still needed to reposition the gear change. So I removed the OE foot rest assembly and found the lower mounting bolt hole was just about in the place I wanted my repositioned foot peg to be, so I simply screwed an aftermarket peg into the existing bolt hole, then reversed the gear change lever and bob’s your uncle I can change gear.
However there were a couple of issues, the most obvious been by reversing the gear lever I now have a ‘race’ pattern gear change ie 1 up and 5 down, so far this hasn’t proved too much of a problem and I’ve yet to up instead of down or vice versa, but even if I get it wrong the Aprilia as a slipper clutch so it shouldn't lock the rear wheel up, I think I’ll soon get used to it.
The other issue is the need to cut the belly pan to create clearance for my foot to operate the re-positioned gear lever, luckily I found a complete set of fairing lowers on Ebay for a very reasonable £30 delivered so I bought those, I cut the required clearance and still have the OE belly pan intact.
You may notice the colur mis-match the replacement bellypan is from from a satin black bike, so it as a red section where the OE part as yellow but I think unless you knew is hard to spot the mis-match, I think I'll probably end up paint the small red section yellow and clearing the whole thing in gloss 2K but at the moment I looks OK so I'll leave it for the tme being.
Once I was happy everything worked OK I made a new heel guard out of some alloy plate, it still needs a little tidying but I’m quite happy with it.
Adapting a bike to my needs is always potentially tricky but sorting the Aprilia has been pretty straightforward and more importantly can easily be reversed
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