Project Ruckus Part 2- More Stuff, the Next Stage

A NCY seat frame lowers the seat by 3" which really makes our bike look better.  It helps aerodynamics as well.

To lower the bike's profile, Rucksters Customs came to our rescue with an NCY lowered seat frame. The seat frame drops the seat 3" which really makes the bike look a lot better. As another plus, the lower profile makes the bike more aerodynamic and actually makes about a 2 mph difference in top speed.

A Zoomania rear taillight assembly is LED bright and visually makes a huge difference cleaning up the exceedingly ugly stock light assembly.

Since the rear taillight/turnsignal/license plate holder assembly is about as nice looking as a monkey's butt, we dumped the whole assembly in the trash, we replaced it with a sleek underseat LED Zoomania unit from Bowls LA. This really cleaned up the back of the bike. The rear frame had an ugly stub where the taillight assembly bolted to but we cut it short and fabricated a bracket for the license plate out of aluminum that bolted to the stub. We installed the bracket and the plate with Password's bolts.

We fabricated this bracket out of a piece of angle aluminum.  Then we cut off the stock taillight mounting stub and drilled to accommodate our bracket which is all bolted together with Password JDM finishing bolts.  Looks pretty spiffy huh?

Although we think that the KN Kikaku rear shock was way better than stock, we felt that it was still oversprung and under damped so we searched for a replacement. We found a Kitaco remote reservoir adjustable damped gas shock in the classified section of www.totalruckus.com . This is an amazing shock which works incredibly well. The spring rate and damping is a good match for the bike and the adjustable spring preload and damping are great for tuning the shock to the rider’s weight. Unfortunately this shock is no longer available except as a used part.

Our awesome Kitaco shock works better than anything we have tried to date by a long ways and matches the action of our NCY fork perfectly.  Too bad it's not made anymore.  The forged aluminum Kitaco kick starter looks and works better than the stock steel piece.

Bowls also provided us with a few other dress-up parts to help round out the cosmetics of our Ruck. We got a set of Gallery Fresh Main Frame bolts to replace the pedestrian stock bolts. While we were at it, we got a bunch of stainless allen bolts from McMaster Carr and replaced every single bolt possible with them. We also installed a Zoomania rear axle nut, rear reflector a Daytona oil temp gauge dipstick, Kitaco alloy kickstarter, Bowls billet gas cap and a D. Bros axle puller all from Bowls. We also installed a CNC billet rear brake adjuster and braided steel brake cable from Battlescooter.

Gallery Fresh main frame bolts look a lot tricker than the stock plain old bolts!

Zoomania rear reflector, Battlescooter biller rear brake adjuster, stainless allens and more Password bolts clean up the rear end nicely.

Spiffy Bowls billet gas cap looks way better than the el cheapo stamped steel stock part.

D. Bros axle puller helps speed tire changes and looks cool to boot.

Zoomania rear blue anodized alloy axle nut looks a lot better than the stock steel part.

Daytona oil temperature gauge is handy for us to judge the effectiveness of our oil cooler.

We also installed a carbon fiber chin bone brace from Mr. Shorty from the total ruckus.com forum. This brace was an awesome piece with CNC billet aluminum fittings and a real carbon tube. Surprisingly this part made a big difference in the ride and handling, smoothing out the ride and making the bike more responsive in the corners. After cutting too big of a hole in our beautiful carbon battery box, Brian Kono of Afterhours Automotive came to our rescue with a carbon reinforcement to patch the box back up. Brian also made a real cool carbon fender mount to replace the aluminum mount we made and relocated the speedo to the battery box as well.

Mr Shorty's carbon fiber chinbone frame brace is amazingly effective.  You can feel the difference in both ride comfort and handling.  We messed up and cut the hole in the battery box too big.  Brian Kono of Afterhours Automotive came to our rescue with this cool carbon fiber reinforcement to make our mistake look like something we did on purpose.