Saddlebag guard rail spacers

[BF]

I've had lots of requests for info about my saddlebags in the past and how I mounted the OEM saddlebag rails....and in particular, the spacers I made to spread the rails out a bit at the rear.  

I had a couple minutes to do a bit of work on the bike today and took a couple pics of my spacers and thought I'd share.  

If you need to spread your bag rails out some at the rear, you can make a set of spacers to accomodate that extra width.  I made my set an 1 1/4" long.  

I made and cut the spacers out of a 3 foot piece of 5/8" round bar (I got the round bar at either Home Depot or Lowe's.....don't remember which, but it was definitely one of those two places) and some stainless tubing I found on ebay.

You could probably find some stainless tubing at McMaster Carr or Grainger, but about the easiest source I found for the stainless tubing was on ebay.  The stainless from the guy on ebay comes in 1 foot sections.  I just ordered two pieces to play with from him.  This is exactly what I bought (Stainless Steel 316L Round Tubing, 3/4" OD, 0.065" Wall, 12" Length) and from the guy I got it from.......

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Stainless-Steel-316L-Round-Tubing-3-4-OD-0-065-Wall-12-Length-/110775382445?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19caba31ad

Rails before spacers....



The spacers....











And the finished product.....







The stainless matches up with the chrome rails pretty good.  I originally thought about and had planned to polish the stainless to better match 'em up to the chrome, but after I mounted everything together, they looked pretty good as they were and I decided not to polish the stainless after all.  Nobody has ever noticed until I point out the spacers to them.

[larue]

Hey "Jopson"bud thank you for the write up, but what I'm looking for is crash bars that go in front of the bags like in some Harley bikes, not the rail around the bags as the case here. Not sure you're familiar with champions rear crash bars that were made for our bikes but later discontinued, blackdog's bike has them. He's the only one I've seen here that has a set. Hard if not impossible to find. Thanks again anyway

[Chrisj CMA]

Look at the date of BF’s post. He’s the guy I bought his bike just before he died. Bruce did a fine job on that bike. I recently sold it to another Valkyrie rider.

[larue]

I know the bike Jeff, it's one fine bike- and Bruce RIP. This was sent to me by jopson one of our members to my private message and I replied somehow it ended up on the general board. All good