I'm wondering if any of you have tried removing your passenger backrest from the tourpack ? I've had my tourpack off for the last 3 years and had an idea. I have a custom C&C lowprofile seat with riders backrest that in my opinion would not look good with the factory passenger backrest. Since my wife does not ride I was wondering how my Ultra Classic tourpack would look if I removed the pasenger backrest. The second question is about the rear speakers. Would it look better if I removed them also or would they look ok without the backrest ? I looked in my service manual and it looks pretty simple to remove everything. I'm just wondering how the tourpack would look with these items removed. Would it have a clean look or look unfinished ? I thought the screw holes could be capped off and my bike is black so they should blend in fairly well. My other thought was to have C&C redo my passenger backrest to match the seat. Chances are though when I change bikes I will just put the stock seat back on so it might be best not to recover the passenger backrest. My tourpack is stored way up high on a shelf otherwise I would just pull it down and take a closer look. Thanks for your comments.

 

Removing the tour pak backrest would simply make it look like the paks on cop bikes and wouldn't look that bad. I think the speakers hanging out there without the backrest wouldn't look good though.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, pretty much what I was thinking. Guess I need to climb up and get the tourpack down so I can see it. Sounds like a rainy day project to me. Out of the five years I've had the bike the tourpack has been off the last three. I originally took it off because my bike felt top heavy, much better with it off. I feel kind of guilty that I'm not using it so I thought maybe I would try it again. I don't know what the tourpack weighs but when I bring it down from the high shelf it sits on it feels heavy. The bracket it mounts to also has some weight to it. Any idea what the total weight is ? Thanks again.

 

Someone on the forum recently posted a pic of his TP. He replaced the wrap-around standard backrest with a simple HD backrest pad (no arms); I think it was the pad from a chopped TP. It looked really good. I'm considering the same mod.

Not sure of the weight but a full size TP is a lot heavier than it looks, for sure!

 

Do yourself a favor and get the QD 1up mounting bracket (need a 2 point). Leave the backrest on, great support for 1up touring. Take if off for hopping round town.

 

I'm working on my tourpack right now. If anyone would like to know the exact weight it is 38.5lbs. That is for an Ultra Classic tourpack which includes the the mounting bracket. That weight includes the passenger backrest and two speakers. I have removed both of those items and will plug the holes with flat black caps from Ace Hardware. I can only work on it a little bit each day, I will post pictures when complete.