Hey folks. Got a few pics and a few words for anyone interested. I bought my 2000 Standard, it came with some Champion Bags that were not mounted and needed some TLC. Really just a good paint job. A shame, since they already matched the red of my Valkyrie. But they had been tossed around a garage for a few years and showed it. I started the process of refinishing them, but my patience for such tasks is small. I had subsequently ordered a Woody's fairing
http://woodysfairings.com/index.html which I chose to have wrapped in leather by Northern Michigan Leather Co.
http://motorcyclefairingbra.com/Gallery.html. Well because I chose to leather wrap the fairing, I thought it was fitting to keep the leather theme around back as well. I really like BFs mustang bags, but when initially looking at price they were upwards of $900. I believe they can be had a little cheaper now. The other option I came up with was the Road King Bags. I paid like $350 for a set that are brand new off e-bay. I always thought they looked pretty good. They were my favorite bag vs. the hard bags on the Road Kings. They are leather on the outside with a hard inner shell. The other thing about them is that there is a speaker grill kit that will allow me to put 6x9 speakers in the lids. That will be forth coming. Got to cash flow some home expenses first
Obviously there are issues when mounting anything not directly designed for our bikes. So here are a few pics that show what I did.
I had a good solid mounting surface to start with. The Champion bags mentioned above, mounted with a large flat chromed piece that provides an excellent surface to mount onto. It is very solid.
In order to get the spacing to accommodate things like the shocks, clearing the ultimate king big boy( fat boy) seat, I ended up using this.
It is a solid PVC board used for replacing exterior trim on your house. I chose a 3/4" x6" board that came 8ft. Long
I sandwiched two pieces together to get the desired thickness. I used PVC glue. I then mad my measurements for the holes I'd use. Using the boards as spacers allowed me to mount the boards to the chrome brackets and then use the Harley Bag mounting holes to mount to the boards. My positioning also took into account the e-bay knock off bag rails that i ended up paying $192 plus shipping. Total was $211.00.
I made rough cuts first and the did a final cut after the mounting holes were determined.
The Harley Bags inner shell is ABS I believe. It is intended to also have support underneath. Besides looks, this was also one of the reasons I got the rails. As a system together, the bags are very, very solid and ready for whatever load I throw at them. I was originally going to weld up a bracket that would come underneath the bags and mimic the way Harley had intended them to be mounted. After receiving the rails, I determined that what I did will be more than sufficient.
The rails have mounting point under the bags and to the rear of the bags. For the underside, I simply cut a piece of 3/4" aluminum tubing to the length needed, polished it and then ran a stainless bolt up through the mounting point and cut tubing and into the bottom of the bags utilizing stainless washers between the tubing and bag. For the rear mounting point, I used a flat aluminum bar, drilled the holes on each end to mount between the rail mounting point and the chrome mounting plate/bracket.
