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Published: August 7th 2007
Effie 2009
This what she looks like in MAR of 2009A lot of people have contacted me and asked about the saddlebags I have mounted on my Sporty Effie. They were shown in the HOG Tails article. I decided the thing to do was to just write a blog about them and show some good detail. I am sure that there are better ways to mount these, but here is how I did it.
I am a very functional type of person, it doesn’t need to be pretty, but it needs to be functional. So I wanted hard bags that were waterproof, could store the kitchen sink and were cheap. No $995 hard bags for me. I have a friend that is a professional model maker and motorcycle enthusiast, Roger. Roger told me to find the bags I wanted and we would figure out a way to mount them. It took a couple months and I found a set of Dyna Police bags on ebay. I ended up getting them for $252 delivered. They were new never installed. These are some great bags! There is a rubber seal all the way around the lid. It is picky to close, anything at all in the way and the lid will not
The bags
These are Dyna Police bags on my first trip wit them. latch. I have NEVER gotten anything wet inside the bags and I have ridden through some vicious weather. I love these bags and hope if you get a set you get them mounted and enjoy them as much as I have. The bags hold a pretty complete tool set, tire repair kit, a Pelican box that is used to hold small loose items, 2 quarts of oil, map holder I made that mounts to the handlebars when needed, passport, quart QT drink, 5 or 6 maps and the rand mcnally Namerica map book, a couple HOG Tails, my rain gear and cold weather gear, the covers for the electronic consoles… the bags are full most of the time, when I travel all my other gear is put in a big gym bag and strapped to the back rack. Of Course I have dropped the bike, 3 times when I am parking or unparking the brackets have not bent.
After I received the bags, and we held them up to the bike it became evident that the Dyna is different in the rear than the Sporty. We have the same front end, but the rear is different. The bags hung
The inside of the bags
I am pointing at the rubber seal that keeps the bags water tight. past the fender and the lower brackets were going to be in the drive belt. We decided to take on one problem at a time.
The first obstacle to putting the bags on were the rear turn signals. The bags are form fitted to fit around the shocks, this leaves them close into the bike. With the bags being so long, then I needed them waaaay back out of the way. The signals when in the stock location are mounted on the struts. I tried both HD relocation kits but found they still held the turn signals to far out way from the bike, so they were still in the way, although they were located farther back on the bike. I talked with a friend of mine Mack who works with sheet metal. I asked Mack if he would fabricate a new bracket for me, if I gave him a pattern. Mack was quick to agree. He made 2, and powder coated both for me. Roger helped by making the hollow bolts I needed to mount the turn signals to the bracket. I designed a bracket that would have the turn signals mounted on the license plate area and
Rear Turn Signals
They had to move off the strut and they had to be further back but tucked in close to the bike, so they did not interfer with the bags. would be in close to the plate. Pictures of the second bracket are shown here.
The second obstacle was the rear rack. The only one that was offered for my bike when I bought it is pretty useless. I call it a postage stamp rack, because that’s about the size of the flat area on it. There is only one place to hook a bungie or tie cord on the thing. After a year of using it I was ready to get rid of that thing, even after I made custom straps for it. With Macks help again I designed a back rack with lots of tie down holes, a BIG flat spot and the bikes name in it. I fabricated out of wood a replica of the rear of my bike with the docking hardware placed where it would be on the bike. This was the best thing I could do so Mack would have something to ‘fit’ the new rack too. He works in MO and I live in KS. The rack was done around April, we had actual test fitting along the way and prototypes, but Mack and the guys in his shop did a great
Rear Turn Signals
This is the backet Mack made for me. Roger made the hollow bolts I needed. job for me. I had bought the bags in OCT of 2005. This was not a fast project, with all my traveling for work and trying to work on them when I was in town, but this was fine because Roger and I had still not figured out how to mount the bags to the bike.
With the rack done and the turn signals out of the way it was on to the actual bags. We made a wooden box to put under the sporty so it would be held up straight as we worked on a mounting method ofr the bike. We worked at the same job site and spent mostly lunches working on this project. If there was something I could make or do by myself I tried to do it before we met again and worked together. Roger has helped me A LOT with the bike and spent many an evening on helping to install my upgrades. I have learned a lot from him and really appreciated all he and Mack have done to help me out.
The bags come with the pipe brackets that go around the bags. They have 3 mounting locations to
Rear turn signals
Here is a back view of the turn signals. This is before the new rack was done, so the postage stamp rack is shown. This pic is from NOV 05 the bike. One is the upper shock bolt, one is on the bottom side, which ended up being in the swingarm or belt area on the sporty, and the third is the rear fender. We knew the one in the swing arm would need to go, so we cut it off and I found some rubber pipe feet that fit so I put 2 on those cut off pipes. See the picture. The rear mount was about 3-5 inches past the back of my rear fender. The shock mount worked fine, once we found the correct grade of bolt to replace the stock shock bolt.
So with one mounting location down and 2 more to go we started in the rear. We decided to just add a REAR PORCH that could be used to bolt the bags too. With some scrap metal from the shop we formed a back porch. Roger insisted that I learn to weld so I could build this thing. So I learned but it was pretty bad, Roger cleaned it up and then Mack the master welder really fixed it up. Mack also powder coated it for me. We needed a third mounting location to
The Back Rack
This is the back rack top. This is before I sewed the straps onto it. I sewed back packing straps. If the load is large, I can add an additional strap to make them longer. It has not been powder coated yet in this picture. stop the wobble in the bags so we decided to just use a location where the pipe bracket it mounted to the plastic saddlebags and add a forward mount. The 3rd mount goes from the front of the bags to the rear of the passenger footpegs. This might not be a good idea if you have a passenger all the time or frequently. The passenger can not move their foot back on the peg, so when you need to put your foot on the ground their feet are in the way. The few times that I have had passengers, they needed to learn to point their toes way out if we were going to stop. The 3rd set of brackets were the easiest of them all. They are merely pipes that Roger pounded flat at the ends, bent to the correct angle and drilled a hole through. Mack powder coated them for me.
So the bags were completed on 24 May 06. There are more pictures of my bike on the www.sportster.org website. In the boutique sort for pictures by user Sporty05LTR.
In OCT 06 I was traveling on I-40 in NC, it was a horrid piece of
The Back Rack
This is the side view. Originally they were not quick detachable,the back was bolted onto the bike. This spring I cut on the one mount and installed the quick detach hardware. It is powder coated in this picture. road. I had my tool bag and 10K screws (don’t ask) in my right saddlebag. Way too much weight and the road was bumpy. The bag was not full so the items were pounding away inside the bag. The effect was the bracket tab on the rear mounting point broke. This is the original HD bracket that broke, not any of the ones we made. So in the pictures there is zip ties hold up the rear right bag as I have not found someone to weld a new tab on for me. Its ugly but working for the time being.
UPDATE FEB 2008 Well in SEPT or OCT Roger, bless is heart, welded on a new tab and beefed up the bracket on the pipe bracket that had broken earlier. I will post a picture later. That worked well for a while, then I noticed that the back porch was broken. The new weak link in the mounting system had showed up. Of all the joints and holes in the back porch, the break was in a solid piece of metal. The one that goes around the back of the fender. I didn't think I needed to
installing the bags
This is Roger working on the bike. The bike is on a block so it is level, the saddlebags are held in place with cardboard boxes. I think the top is already on the shock bolt. You can see the rear mounting tabs are out past the rear fender. take the saddlebags off, because the pipe was still welded on and that would hold the back porch together. However, when it broke it allowed the rest of the bracket to tweak, causing cracks in the weld that mates the pipe to the bracket. See the attached pics. I took the bags off as soon as I saw the cracks in the welds. I couldn't leave them on incase the pipe broke free and things really went wild.
I thought about the problem for quite a while on what to do different. I believe the solution was going to be to get rid of all welds and use thicker metal. The problem of getting rid of the welds is cause by needing more than 2 places where the back porch was bolted on the fender, so it could not move either sideways or up and down. I designed a new bracket that would be just one piece of metal, it would go up farther on the fender and curve around and back up on the other side of the fender. So there will be 4 bolts holding the bracket on. Looking from the side of the bike, it will
Installing the bags
This is Roger working on the bike. We removed the plastic bags from the pipe brackets for part of our planning. look like an L. I made a template and found a fabricator to cut and bend the bracket for me, I will do all the finishing work. At the time of this update, I am 4 days from getting the new bracket back. It is going to be made out of 14 gauge steel.
UPDATE 12/4/08 All this was done in early April, but I wanted to make sure this new bracket set was going to work before I updated the blog. I have been it for over 19K miles and am really happy this time. It has been the best set up yet. So I last left off with waiting for a new bracket of 14 gauge steel. It was so under spec'd that I didn't even bother putting it on. Flimsy to say the least. But one of the bikers from the American Legion Rider group I belong to gave me some really thick steel plates that he had cluttering his garage. It was just scrap steel to him. Darrel and I cut these, drilled the fender and used these as the new brackets instead. We took this opportunity to change the rear fender. I had 2
cut off bottom mount
this is under the right saddlebag. The rubber stopper is visible, this is where the bracket was cut off. other fenders I ended up getting off ebay. Both silver with pinstriping, they came off 1200 customs. Needless to say we needed to move all the wiring and lights to the new fender.
The old fender was wearing out. In all places it was wearing out was where the fender nut for the seat is installed. The hole where this nut is installed is not round, it has a slot on one side, to fit the fender nut, so it does not twirl in the hole. On my fender the slot was enlarging so the hole was more of an oval. This allowed the fender nut to twirl in the hole, making removing the seat a real PIA.
The pieces that I was given were almost perfect the way they were, we just needed to trim them up a little bit then grinded them for smooth edges. The other issue I had was a brace to keep the rear of the brackets separated. Our problem was solved as we were replacing the fender. There is a bracket under the fender that mounts between the struts. Perfect size, so we just reinstalled the old brace with the new fender
Top mounting bracket
The top shock bolt was removed and replaced with a threaded rod. NO it is not a normal threaded rod, this is a very stressful joint, so make sure the grade of bolt or rod you use meets or exceeds manufacturers recommendations. We used additional nuts to space the bags away from the bike. You can also see from this pic that the bags are formed to fit around the shock. We used the self locking nuts. then used the new shiny one for the saddlebags. This was black powder coated so it was the perfect color, size and shape.
It takes 2 holes on each side of the fender to secure the new bracket side pieces. If you just use one hole they could spin. So we drilled 2 holes in the new side pieces where we knew it would mate up flush with the fender. Next we had did a quick fit with the saddlebags so we knew where the brackets needed to be placed on the fender to mate up with the saddlebag mounting tabs. Because of the shape of our new side brackets there could be a lot of slop in this step, it didn't need to be exact science. We did this before we drilled the holes in the fender but after we had drilled holes in the side brackets. When we had the side pieces placed correctly then we clamped them to the fender and marked where the holes needed to be drilled in the fender. After the holes were drilled, then we installed the bolts and bolted them on. Mounting the front of the saddlebags we then dry fitted
Back Porch
View of the back porch we made. As you can tell the right side has a broken bracket. But it was the HD bracket that broke not the ones we made. For now some Zip ties have been holding the bag. I need to find a someone to weld another tab on there for me. them again to determine exactly where we needed to drill that mounting hole for the saddlebag. We use this same hole to also secure the brace. Thats the brace we got from the new fender. This will keep the side brackets apart. A can of spray primer, a can of black spray paint and they are fixed them up nicely enough. The next day we installed the painted brackets.
I looked and was surprised that I didn't have a picture of the new set up. I took several pics of us as we were making the side plates. I will add pictures later.
THE LOCKS The only issue I have had with the bags in 2008 is the locks. If I don't keep them oiled then they jam up and are very hard to unlatch. It always seemed to come to a head after riding through a rain storm. A couple of times I had to buy WD-40 at a gas station so I could get into the bags while on a trip. The bags nevered leaked, but the locks would be a PIA. Well I finally had to just take one of the locks out, because it
FRONT SADDLEBAG BRACKET
This is the bracket that joins the front of the saddlebag to the back of the passenger peg. wouldn't unlatch. After prying the bag open I just took the lock off. I replaced the lock with a piece of hardware I found to plug the hole then I used a strap to keep the door shut. Well, this happened on the way home from the XL East Coast Rally so that was in late May. I had taked the lock to 5 different lock smiths and to the harley dealer and no one could help me to fix this one or with a replacement lock. It was an injection molded plastic piece that couldn't be disassembled. Yesterday I got the lock and a flashlight to look it over really good, you know how the eyes go. It is a SouthCo lock so a web search and an hour found the part and a distributor here in the KC metro area. Unreal, they only have 5 or 6 distributors worldwide. Anyway I call them this morning with the part number and the part is being shipped to me from Houston. I actually ordered 2 new locks, getting them both keyed the same. I should have the part in a couple days. $19 each. I have had easily $40 worth
Front bracket
This is the front bracket that mounts from the front of the bags to the back of the rear passenger pegs. of hassle dealing with it not working, so the new locks are a bargain. (BTW the part number is 93-313 its a "Push to Close" latch)
MAY 9, 2009
ARGGGGGGGGGH! That original failure point on the saddlebag brackets has broke again, same spot as the Oct 06 failure! Well all but about 1/4 inch is broke. The tab has cracked through right under where it is mounted to the brackets I have on the sporty. I was actually standing in Rogers driveway when we noticed it. I hadn't seen Roger for awhile. We (He) is going to reweld it tomorrow. I'll get pics.
Other blogs showing installation of parts on Effie are:
08 Trunk installation on my 2005 883 Harley Davidson Sportster, Effie 08 Installing Floorboards on my 05 883 Harley Davidson Sportster, Effie. 09 Using RAM mounts on my 2005 883 Harley Davidson Sportster, Effie
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