Ninja Belly Pan - 1

For most race organizations, a fluid containing belly pan is needed for the bike to be race legal. The belly pan is there to catch any fluids that leak out of the bike like the coolant or oil. They need to be big enough to catch everything the bike holds. For modern sport bikes, finding one is easy as there are many companies making fiberglass race body kits for the popular bikes people race and all of those will have belly pans built into the lower fairing. For the Ninja, there is only one company makes race fiberglass and while their stuff is nice, I'm not ready to layout the cash needed to get a full set of race plastics just yet.

I decided that I would modify the existing lower fairing so that it would act as a belly pan. I'm not planning on running the upper fairing and I'm not sure what I'll do about the tail section just yet. This was an easy decision and should be a relatively easy project.

 I started by attaching the lower fairing to see where I could cap off the back end for fluid containment.

I used some cereal boxes to start making a template for the rear cap.

I didn't do a good job on the first go round.

My first idea was to use a pre-made metal baking pan from the dollar store. This one was not bad, but it only holds about a quart and a half. I need three liters to catch all the coolant and oil in the Ninja. No loss as it makes a great tool and parts holder for anything I disassemble. I may go a get a few more actually.

The bottom of the pan is open, so that will have to be filled in as well. Besides that there is an opening in the front and two vents on the lower front sides to fill. I made the templates and re-fitted the the pan. Everything looks like it will fit and I think I'll get enough capacity, though the rear cap is really shallow.

I'm going to use fiberglass as I have not tried using it yet for any other projects. I figure I'll clean up the lower fairing and sand it up to give the fiberglass resin some adhesion. I'll use my templates to cut some cloth or I might even just glass over them. Once that is done I'll measure the capacity and throw some paint on there. Since this is a Kawi, I'm going to do an eye-blistering green for my bodywork.

Come back to see how it progresses.

Blue