I’ll start by stating that I’m posting this mainly in the interest of contributing to the forum rather than any sort of display of engineering skill which is definitely not the case. I needed a quick solution for mounting saddlebags over high mount pipes that, while CF, still get too hot for bags.
I didn’t find anything on the market that fit both my high mount pipes on each side, or my chopped tail, so I figured I’d kludge something and have a little fun. The result was only to be a prototype, but it worked well enough for a 4 day Sierra trip, and there are only a couple small things I’d change for a final build if I get around to it.
Again, it’s a crude rack at best, and the intent is just to share something fun. Hopefully it will serve as a good laugh or maybe even spark a few other ideas for more fun. It was also mostly free, so while it's nothing spectacular it served it's purpose.
Here’s a couple tail shots of what I started working with; a monster S2R with high mount CF Zards.
Here’s a pic of the bags positioned about where I wanted them prior to the rack build. They’re great coretech bags.
http://www.tourmaster.com/xcart/catalog/TriBag-Saddlebag-p-146_31.html
This shot shows how they basically rest right on top of the pipes without a rack to push them out or hold them away from the pipes. The goal was to get them out just an inch or so with enough room for flex without hitting the pipes going over bumps etc.
Now for the fun part…what to do? How am I going to build this without welding equipment and no engineering knowledge, and never having watched even one episode of MacGyver? (I have seen many episodes of MacGruber, however, but didn't want to blow up before my trip.)
I did have a fair amount of shop tools, including small propane torch, and a bosch jigsaw that saved the day.
I decided I’d try to make it fun and only use things I already had, so I ended up making the racks out of a pair of metal car ramps I had that I couldn’t get rid of after trying to dump them on craigslist.org, garage sales, or just leaving them on the street. Here they are before the cutting started. I figured what the heck, it was good strong metal and I could cut them up, blow torch and bend the pieces into the shapes I had in mind. Why not. (I still can’t believe nobody wanted these ramps for free though.)
I knew I’d want to leverage the frame tube on each side of the bike just under the cowl where the "handle" looking parts stick out, but didn’t want to drill any holes or do anything that would damage the bike, so I started with some mock ups with some paper, cardboard, and scrap thin sheet metal I had laying around.
I figured with the weight of the bags pushing in and down, I’d make something to push out on the bags and leverage the top outside of the frame “handles” under the seat cowl, and do a pressure plate to hold them there and keep all the weight there, but also attach them under the cowl to the cowl bolt to steady them further. It didn’t put any weight on the cowl , so that was good, and the cowl bolt was long enough even with the added metal of the rack mount. I also bought longer bolts at Ace hardware but didn’t end up needing them or using them. For the prototype, I didn’t worry too much about the length of the bolts and used what I had.
Here you can see the first bit of rack comes out about 1-2” off the pipe.
Here’s another mockup shot to help me visualize where the bags would hit. I figured I wouldn’t need a full solid area like this, however, as it would weigh a ton and I only needed enough area to hold the bags out a bit, plus I didn’t have that much solid area to cut out of the ramp metal that had holes all over.
The flat part of ramps where the tires sit would be just large enough to get a piece from each side that I could cut into a Y shape that would attach to the frame mount and then support the bags at the top middle and at the bottom on the left and right corner spots.
There was also enough solid metal to cut the main rack mount strips that attach to the frame handle and cowl on each side. I just jig sawed them out, sanded them down to clean them up a bit, and heated them up and used a vice grip, metal hammer, and various other pipes and bits to bend them into the shapes I needed. It's surprisingly difficult to do seemingly simple bends without the right equipment, but at the same time you can do a lot with a good vice grip and a torch and things to hit against, bend against etc. It also helps to have good gloves as not to burn yourself or generally tear up your hands. Again, it was mostly an inefficient exercise in having fun with shop tools and a little fire.
Here’s a shot of the Y shape piece in place. The end of each piece has velcro on it, as the underside of each bag came with velcro in those spots already with some padding attached, but since the padding wasn’t necessary for what I was doing I chose to use those spots to keep the bags from bouncing around on the rack. There were also some great straps that came with the bags that attach around the back of the underside of the bags, and those also worked well as a backup way to keep the bags synched to the rack and stop them from moving around.
I ended up using a some cut up plastic tubing to go over the frame on the bike where the rack mounted over it to keep it from getting scratched up. Worked well.
Here’s the final setup in place, as I head out for the trip.
I was amazed at how well it worked, and it comes on and off in fairly short order with a few bolts removed. The only thing I’d do different in a final version if I had welding equipment would be to add some side tabs (in red) to reduce the flex in the metal I used. It was pretty heavy duty and stiff, but did have a small amount of flex, but still stayed clear of the pipes unless I hit a super big pot hole.
The trip was a success. The scotch survived the saddlebag journey…ahhhh.
