This is it's story:
Within days of taking delivery of my 2019 KLX250, I did some Dremel work on the awful looking rear sub-fender. Essentially, all I did was cut about 7 inches off the sub-tail and took the side reflectors off with my angle grinder.
However, that was just temporary as the real problem was a horrific looking tail light.
Shortly I came across a post on FaceBook about a cheap tidy-tail with an integrated full-range tail light (running, brakes, signals, plate) that people were getting for their KLXs...and other bikes. It looked pretty good (photo from the FB post below).
While it was clearly a knockoff of the "aluminum" DRC Edge Tidy Tail (a $50 part) this one was a mere $8.55, with a U.S. location...no kidding. I thought, for that price I'll give it a try.
Unfortunately, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.
While it looked the part, the material was clearly the wrong stuff for this application. It was made of a hard and brittle plastic and would never stand up to the off road usage that my KLX endures. The listing described it as ABS Plastic...whatever that is, so I knew it was plastic, but again, this was a very weak and brittle plastic. Yet it had a lot of positive reviews on eBay, so who knows...maybe I got just a bad one.
Salvage Opportunity?
Although the plastic of the tidy tail turned out to be trash, I continued to work with the tail light, which seemed to be a fairly decent component. It was pre-wired for running, brakes and signals. I honestly think the worst part about the KLX tail is that ridiculously enormous taillight.
The only mod to the sub-fender that was necessary was to grind some widening notches/slots in the sides of the stock taillight mount. That effectively maintains the integrity of the sub-tail should I need to go back to the stock tail light....which, at this point, I'd probably go find something else anyway. The stock tail light is just so awful.
From there, I took a couple rubber washers to get it properly set and secure against the sub-fender.
That opened up an opportunity to move the license plate bracket up a full three inches, which I did as shown in the next photo.
Here's a photo with the new tidy tail light, as installed, compared to the massive stock head light and the raised license plate.
Lastly, the smaller taillight and the raised license plate opened up another opportunity to cut some more of the sub-fender out below the license plate. The next two photos show the final mod.
As to the turn signal mount points, I left the factory grommets in place and put a license plate reflector/bolt in the wire hole on each side.
Overall, the lighting area of the aftermarket taillight is much smaller than stock, particularly as to the running light (shown in photo above), however it seems bright enough to be seen seen from behind. As to it's ability to withstand the bumps and grinds of the trails; well, that's yet to be seen.
In the final analysis my $8.55 investment was not a total waste in that I got a operable taillight and an opportunity to cut another couple inches off the whale tail. When it comes down to products with very low pricing relative to market, though, intuitively there's an obvious cost cut somewhere in the manufacture. Couple that with the fact that the tail section of an off-road motorcycle is catching a lot of the trail bumps, it's probably not a good place for a plastic part...say nothing of a cheap one.
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