The 2009 I bought used had the fender cut off by the previous owner and it actually looks pretty good. I can't even tell it was cut unless I get right up to it and look at it (has rough cut edges). Like rfesu said, just do it behind the plate and it will look nice. Hell, I could probably even use some really fine sandpaper and get the edges looking real smooth. It looks great but I'm pretty sure I can get a ticket for not having a long enough fender where I live

If I had a stock fender, I'd probably cut it down myself. I've looked into the DRC kits and from what I've read/heard, the plastics are really cheap and do not hold up. However, if you never ride off road, I'd say go for the DRC kits, they look pretty slick. You may want to check with your regulations though. The DRC kit is not legal where I live as the turn signals are not far enough apart (or it may have been that they were too small). So for me it was an easy decision since I off road a lot. Not legal and brittle plastics... No thanks.



UPDATE:
Just wanted to post back about my experience with the free cutting mod. So I'm not sure what the popular way to do this is but on my bike, the previous owner mounted the license plate to the two little screws that are there to screw down the taillight red-tinted cover. The taillight was actually feeling rather loose when I first bought the bike, well after a gentle lay down of the bike it got a whole lot looser. The license plate being so large is likely to hit the ground/rocks and be pushed on anytime the bike is laid down. Pushing on the license plate in turn pushes on the plastic tail light (the little screws only screw into plastic threads). So all this is building up to the moment when I walked out of 7/11 and noticed my tail light and license plate both missing (the little screws actually held on but whatever was holding the tail light didn't). The tail light didn't come off right after laying the bike down, it just got loose and fell out later when I was riding. I ended up finding the light and plate on some single-track trails I was riding earlier that day. I threw em back on with zap straps because the plastic parts of the light that are used to bolt it down were broken. The zap straps lasted about 10 minutes on rough terrain and the tail light fell off again.

So if you ride a lot of aggressive off road, I would have to recommend the stock setup and not cutting anything. Unless you have a nice license plate bracket or some other idea for the plate. If you can't stand the stock setup and don't have any good ideas for mounting the plate (like the previous owner of my bike), then look into the DRC stuff. I have the DRC Edge2 waiting to be installed because I wasn't about to pay the OEM prices to get back to a stock setup. The DRC tail light for the KLX is smaller than stock and fairly protected by a strong metal license plate bracket. So even if the DRC uses cheaper plastic, I'm not too worried about it.

 

 

Having seen too many youtube videos of bikes getting rear-ended by cars I went back to stock from a small LED tail light. I think the OEM tail light lens looks fine. I think it I silly to let mechanical vanity increase my odds of getting hit and the rear turn signals don't flop around anymore.

 

 

I have the Yoshimura kit, was plug and play. I have a couple picks in my fender install thread.
https://www.kawasakiforums.com/forum...install-45134/

 

 

I can confirm if you're only adding rear LED bulbs on the KLX, you won't need a flasher. That's what I did, I figure it's important to let the people behind me know where I'm going, not so much for the people in the other lane.