Valkyrie ISO Grip Installation:
This turned into one of those project I wish I had never started and wish I had just bought the right grips. The stock grips are a little too small for my liking and I like the ISO grips. I had a set of Valkyrie grips left from my Shadow and figured they should work. These do not come with the throttle sleeve but glue on to both grips and are about 3/8" longer than most of the grips for other bikes. I figured the left grip would be no problem since the bars are 1" and the grips are for a 1" bar. The right side would need a little more work since I would have to save the throttle sleeve and glue the grip onto it, as with the Shadow. Well, it turns out Kawasaki does things differently and the right grip is actually not glued on to the throttle sleeve but uses a tongue-and-groove system to secure the grip. I ended up grinding off all the "tongues" from the throttle sleeve to fit the ISO grip to fit the Valk grip and in the end it worked out fine but it turned into a bigger chore than I thought to begin with. Anyway, here are some pics showing the result.
The left grip. The end caps are left-hand threads, so turn to the right to get them off. Mine were pretty tight but I used a rag to protect the caps with a set of vice grips and got them off. I used the end caps to cover up the engine mounting bolts as Gadget shows on his web site. I inserted a small, long screw driver under the grip and sprayed in some WD-40, twisted a bit and the grip came right off. Roughen the bar with some sandpaper and clean with alcohol before gluing on the ISO grip.
This shows the throttle sleeve. Note the ridges which fit the stock grip.
The stock throttle grip parts. The grip has grooves on the inside matching the ridges on the sleeve.
I cut off the ridges with a sharp knife but had to grind everything right up to the cable slots to make the ISO grip fit over the sleeve.
In the end, everything fit just fine and works. The longer Valk grips actually fit perfectly since the threads for the end caps make the grip areas longer. I put most of the glue inside the grip rather than on the bar or sleeve to avoid all the glue being pushed up to the top and fouling the switches. So far everything is holding fine.
