A Modern Tour Glide? (the story and adventure) little long

[danglide]

love it! turning out very nice! it's very much "your" bike!

[rageglide]

Originally Posted by Desertkowboy

Thanks, my next "upgrade" will be to fit a late model wheel onto her.

New wheel in front with the larger axle means new fork lowers OR the adapter axle... if you go with '99 up lowers you lose your speedo drive and the old singe piston brake calipers. With the front caliper change you may need to change your front master cylinder to get the right feel with the newer calipers.

It's a fun thread to pull on, but can add up...

[mitchdm]

Awesome Job ~ Thanks for Bringin Ester back to her youth ~ and a little bit better ~Love to see forgotten HD's brought out of retirement ~

[Desertkowboy]

Originally Posted by rageglide

Dig it, a bunch! Anyone who's hacking and cobblin gets my respect.

I know a guy who uses a TG fairing as a "detachable" fairing. He has a plug set up and can quickly pull it and go back to a regular headlight for non-touring situations.

I know I think about it often. RG fairing is nice and all (fugly), but 90% of the time I would prefer no fairing at all.

I have mine setup to "quick change" also.....takes about 45 min to an hour. to go back and forth between TG and EGS.......Summer and local mode. Or I can go stripped down as in the first photo too.

[Desertkowboy]

Originally Posted by rageglide

New wheel in front with the larger axle means new fork lowers OR the adapter axle... if you go with '99 up lowers you lose your speedo drive and the old singe piston brake calipers. With the front caliper change you may need to change your front master cylinder to get the right feel with the newer calipers.

It's a fun thread to pull on, but can add up...

I believe that I can get 3/4" sealed bearings so I can use my legs. I can also have my rotors center hole widened for the late wheel or the late rotor notched for my speedo drive. Still doing the research on that though.

[rageglide]

Cool. Love the quick change! :-)

Sounds like you've got several options for the wheel change. When I was researching in the past I was more interested in the brake upgrades than a wheel change.

[Desertkowboy]

Today I started my late saddlebag upgrade. As others have said....."They are completely different!" They are a bit bigger, in almost every direction, and they have to be spaced 1/2" farther away from the bike to work properly.

I started out by replacing my bag mounting hardware with late model (2004-2006) stuff. It looks cleaner and has a little wider crashbar. I may not have had to, but some idiot welded the lower bag support to the fender strut.....I guess bolts were just to hard to use. I have some finished install pics for now and will do a better documentation with more pics tomorrow. I took a little different approach than Mr. Brown did. They really go on quite easy, except for the battery relocation. I will start that side tomorrow, but for now, this is where I am.

[Paul's Road Glide]

Very cool and very retro looking without actually being very retro. Mad respect to you on the mods.

[RedneckMedic66]

Good work man and finding all the parts you need. I really like your "Quick detach" option.

[Desertkowboy]

As promised, more details and pics.

First, I measured the crashbars......our origanal factory bar is about 10 3/8" from where it bolts on the top to the outside. While the later model bars are 11 1/2" to the outside. Sooo the later crashbars are wider AND better looking! I use the whole late model assembly....fender strut, crashbar, and bag rail. I found the crashbars on ebay for $15.00 and got the fender struts and bag rails from a crashed bike for $20.00, also from ebay, the crashbars were unusable. This is the cheapest way that I found to get all the parts using ebay. If you try to buy them as a set on ebay they are well over $100.00 most of the time.

Factory 89 crashbar


Late model crashbar


Now for more fitting detail..............I had to space the factory rear bag mount out 1/2" and got some beefy chrome spacers from the dealer. They are pretty cheap at a few bucks each (cheaper than buying the late model rear mount) and there is no real mods needed plus our origanal mount is MUCH stronger than the later ones. For the front, I bought 06 and later front bag mounts (47449-06) and had to do a little modding to them. I was going to mount them to the origanal front bag mount, but found that it almost lined up with the front mounting bolt for the rear frame rail covers. I had to drill and shave the slot to make it mount lower and use the larger bolt. I bent the factory mount down and cut it off. Its welded to the frame, and for now I will leave whats left of it there. Sometime in the future, probably when I need to do some motor work, I will strip the parts off of the frame and make it pretty, then get it powder coated.

Late model front bag mount mods


Factory bracket removed