Take the damn things off! Really. The winglets mount in two places. The lower mount is a wellnut directly into the tank with nothing in between. The upper mount is a stud, going into a wellnut, that has hex flats so you can use a wrench. It's all too easy to put too much torque on that stud so that when you try to take the stud out the wellnut just spins. That's not a big deal until you realize that you MUST remove the stud in order to take the tank off. Thus, if the stud won't come out you can't remove the tank to do things like check the upper motor mounts or replace the fuel filter. I had to have my tank replaced.
Peter Y.