I finally did it! Looks better. I went to the mother ship (Seattle Rad store) and asked them about the situation. The sales guy was clueless; they have a bike for display with the wrong configuration. A service guy gave me more helpful information. He said that Rad made a decision to change the setup after getting reports that the original configuration was leading to complaints about the rear fender "slapping" the rear wheel. He said the photos on the website were taken pre-production and had not been changed. That seems somewhat plausible, but I took a test ride after changing it and encountered no such problem; this included riding on a very rough stretch of road and going over speed bumps at 18 mph. As the OP said, just do it!