New luggage racks and road trip

***** Looking to sell these racks, they are in very good shape and no rips in the bags, just a little faded by the sun from the Houston/cross country trip. They are in Tucson, drop me offers.
Kevin

After many hours of work from my welder/fabricator neighbor, the racks are done. I am happy with the design with the major load being on the rear peg shelf area. Three good tie wraps seems to be enough to secure my crap bags to the racks. Over the next week I am hitting the road and heading to Houston, using mostly State Routes or smaller roads. I may press on further east depending on how my health is doing. Over the last couple of weeks, I have done my first oil change on my SD, hard wired my GPS, GoPro, foot peg extenders, new tyres, and did the seat. I am hoping that this very new to me motorbike treats me well on the long ride.

VERY strange to look at and removable in two minutes.


Two of the three anchor points, the unused hole in the passenger peg bracket and the main anchor where the passenger peg would be.


3rd anchor, under the seat in the rear bodywork hole. This took a lot of work to contour without touching the exposed plastic as well as being able to lock the seat without too much trouble.


Installed

Your neigbour did a great job.
It's not very clear on the picture, but is the bracket touching the visible part of the shrouds? I would stick some felt tape on the bracket, just to be safe.
I'm sure the bike will treat you well on your trip!

That looks very smart in the last pic. Almost like it was a HardPart.

What's it look like from the back?

Far too complicated, how to do it Cornish style, 4 days camping at Le Mans:

Those look GREAT, soar! They really do look like they could be Hardparts. Great job to you & your neighbor both.

Any chance of poppin out some duplicates?

...

Here is a closeup of how it lays against the bodywork under the seat. Most of the pressure is at the bolt


and the back, it is a bit on the wide load side..


About half way through the design and construction process, it was clear that to get a proper fit it had to be tacked (temp weld) while on the bike. This of course was a MAJOR stress freakout for me, by the end of tacking I got the wet towels and cardboard to a place where I was no longer worried about the pipes, tyre, bodywork.


I actually thought about you guys while he was doing the final welds and asked him about producing more. Because of the time it took in the warmer AZ temps he did not seem too keen on the idea. However I will ask him again when he gets back to town in a week. He is kinda a jerk-wad sometimes, but I would love a way to be able to give back to this community.

A big plus for some is your state side. Good job!

That would be awesome, soar. Since the initial mock-up & fitting is already done, making up some replicas would probably be much less lobor intensive & time consuming.'

Either way, let us know. You guys have a winner there...

I would be glad to join in on one of your racks.

Nice work there...let us know after the trip how did the hardware held against the road...

I would be interested too. They look good!

Hi all,
I left on my road trip before my neighbor got back from his trip so I did not get a chance to inquire about making a bunch of these for Forum friends. When I get back to AZ I will let you all know asap. I will get a price from him and a quantity of how many he can make and report back. I will do a call for interest then. I have done 1300 miles over the last week on the SD and it has been a joy. The only hiccup was it has stalled a couple of times so I am keeping an eye on that. Well that and running out of gas during a 80 mile run through massive head winds in a middle of nowhere on a Texas State Route. Even after adding my emergency 887 ml MSR bottle of fuel the SD did not let me down running out again a quarter mile from the first gas station entering Sterling City and just having enough energy to quietly glide to an vacant pump.. The only rack issue is that since my bags are overloaded the tie wraps need a more permanent mounting system to the soft bags, I will be working on that over the next few days.
You all were correct, loving the motorbike more and more the further I go.

Excellent setup!

Hi all,
I am back from my trip; I did almost 9k on the SD. I tripled the miles of my motorbike in a month and a half. My major stops from Tucson were Houston, Dallas, Nashville, Louisville, Maryland, New York, Boston, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Wisconsin, Kansas then back to Arizona. My longest day was 560 miles; I tried to keep it around 350. Frankly the SD was amazing! Besides stalling a couple of times just to see if I was paying attention, it never missed a beat. Out of the dozen lonely rest areas in the Southwest, the battery died in my friend’s driveway in Houston. My fault, it was original and I should have taken care of it before I left. I drove through two tornado warning thunderstorms and had my fair share of baking in 110 degree traffic jams, but I would estimate 80% of the time the weather was perfect. I was very lucky.
I did 70% State Routes or smaller and got to meet some great folks in small town America. I ripped it up several times to the best of my ability on some incredible roads, Route 1 in Arkansas, Route 33 West/Virginia, and 191 right here in Arizona just to name a few. Surprisingly enough I only got pulled over by the cops once, a local in a small town in New Hampshire. A spirited 89 in a 55 and after a friendly chat about the price of lobster rolls at the local Kimball's farm stand I was on my way. There was a few close calls by idiot car drivers, but one of the two very close call was coming within a few inches of a large dog running across the road on a dark Texas Sate Route. I did not even see him till he was close enough to pet at 50mph. The other was the leader of a pack of crazy ass ungeared Chicago sport bikers, scared the crap out of me running probably 80mph faster than the heavy traffic passing within a foot to the right of me. Least I saw the others coming.
I had the oil changed and a new back tyre while I was in New England and only eight people said to me “nice Ducati” during the trip. I only met one who knew it was a SD, this country needs a little educating.
I did talk to my neighbor about producing a number of these racks for the forum, but he was a complete prick wanting $350 a pair. He said that doing mine for $180 was a favor to me and blah blah blah. After not listening to my reason of how it should be cheaper since all he needed to do was copy mine, I told him to piss off. I will let you all know if he will give an honest price, but I doubt he will. If there is someone on this forum in AZ who wants to borrow them to copy let me know. If there is anyone who wants more detailed photos and measurements I will be happy to provide what I can. You will probably have better luck with a local welder/fabricator then I do.

This looks like a project my bud would like to take on. How many we talking about and how much you willing to spend. They will be built in Oregon, not China.

I would also be interested about the racks

Hi All! Well life with the SMR is going well, much better for my body then the SD. Looking to see these racks, they are in very good shape and no rips in the bags, just a little faded by the sun from the Houston/cross country trip. They are in Tucson, drop me offers.
Kevin