I dig it. When I showed a guy from church the pictures of the chrome parts that I painted black over the winter he said I ruined the bike lol. To me, chrome should be an accent and kept to a minimum, not a blinding focal point.

 

I get that a lot....I've been blacking out my bikes and runnin' T-bars and tall suspension since the late 70's.
Back in those day almost no one understood the setup and guys used to dog me unmercifully about my jacked up bikes.

The "chrome everything" crowd doesn't get it at all.

I've had a lot of guys make comments about how I "ruined" a nice Wide Glide with this set up.
If they ever rode it, they'd probably get it, because it handles better than any Wide Glide, I've ever ridden.
It is also much more stable on the highway at high speed than most of the FXDX's that I've ridden because of the extra 4 degrees of rake in the front end.
That is the main reason that I'm building this bike on the FXDWG platform rather than the FXD or FXDX platform.
It started out as an experiment and is actually beginning to exceed my expectations for high speed straight line stability with a very slight loss of agility in slow speed twisties and no discernable loss of handling in the high speed twisties.
A few guys have commented that they don't "get" where this build is headed, but it's all starting to come together now and the direction that I've been going with it will soon be crystal clear, and whether they like it or not, it'll be exactly what I started out to build.

 

Got the stock rear wheel on this weekend and put on the parts that I had powder coated...

 

My front motor mount was not good, so I decided to try the Vibra-Technics "Predator" mount.
It took about 30 minutes to install and as soon as I pulled out the driveway, I felt the improvement!

Here's a couple of photos.


On the bench....




Upside down on the bench....


In place on the bike......

 

I finally moved the speedo and tach up to the bars today...Much better!
Next week I'll be putting on the new fuel tank and dash and moving the key switch to a better location.

 

Love the work you're doing Greezy.

I'm just getting started on a '99 WG that was also previously owned by a chrome lover. I'm trying to track down all the engine/trans covers to replace the chrome stuff. I never considered that a local powder coater could make that wrinkle black finish. Is it a reasonable match for the factory finish?

Would you share the details? Did you take a sample for him to match? It would save me a lot of headache and money!


Also, what have you got going on with your battery cover or is that just the naked battery I'm looking at? I HATE HATE HATE that flat featureless chrome battery cover and I am still trying to figure out how to fix it.

 

I was looking for original stuff too and most of what I found was't in very nice condition.

Find a good shop that does automotive stuff and don't be afraid to ask them to see samples of their finished jobs.
The guy I use for my powder coating is very reasonable price wise and does first rate work.
The wrinkle finish is an exact match for the factory finish I have a mix of factory wrinkle black parts and parts that my guy has done and you can't tell the difference side by side.



I took one of my factory pieces in and he looked at it and said "No problem" and showed me a sample chip of his wrinkle black finish.

To do the battery box cover and top, fuse panel cover, tranny top cover, tranny side cover, horn cover, derby cover and outer primary cover was $175 and took 4 days.


That's wrinkle black powder on the battery box cover.


I am having my gas tank and dash and also my fenders powder coated in gloss black with clear coat and should have the tank back and installed this weekend.
I'll post up some pics as soon as I get it done.

 

Sounds nice. Looking forward to the pics.

 

Nice having that tach & speedo up in your face like that. It sucks to look down when performance riding. You won't even have to move your head. Excellent!

 

Yeah, I love havin' them up there! Been riding with them up there now for a couple of weeks.
I made some little angled standoffs to get them to stand up a little straighter on the bars.
I have seen a lot of them on T-bars that lay at a weird angle and mine did that too when I first mounted them up, so I made the standoffs.