The other day I unintentionally hijacked Terrabella's thread on how he modified his broken vertical fairing brackets, and while reading his thread I was inspired with an idea to strengthen the area around the horizontal brackets. I asked for feedback on the idea of mounting a second horizontal bracket to each speaker and even Photoshopped a pic showing what it might look like. Well, today I decided to go ahead and do the job since it seemed within my limited metal-working skills with no downside that I could think of. IOW, I thought the chance of screwing something up was relatively low.

Back in 2008 I started a thread about modifying and fixing the vertical brackets and approached it like Terrabella did only with less finesse and attention to cosmetic detail, to say the least. My green left-side repair made from a piece of metal flower-bed edging speaks for itself, but both sides have held now for almost three years. Here are links to those threads and one more, the last being Fabrik8r's rather ambitious project that I think you will agree would guarantee an improvement in structural rigidity. With his solution I believe the fairing would survive a direct hit with an anti-tank weapon.

Terrabella's thread

My old thread

Fabrik8r's battle-ready solution

Anyway, back to today's project. Many of us have added larger and/or heavier speakers and this stresses the already marginal brackets on the bike, so I thought adding another one to the top of the speaker could help relieve some of the stress on the stock horizontal bracket. I bought a strip of 1/2"W x 1/8"-thick steel from Home Depot for <$4 and proceeded to hack, hammer, grind, and drill it into submission. I pride myself in the exercise of crude jury-rigging techniques. I didn't go with aluminum because I wasn't sure if it would hold-up well.

The results were two brackets that fit better than they had a right to considering the lack of precision given to the procedure. I used screws with extra length to equal the thread depth of the old ones, as the bracket material is 1/8" thick and I also added washers. The speaker threads are plastic and the upper-vertical fairing bracket are brass, and I thought going short on the bolt threads might cause trouble down the road. The stock upper vertical bracket bolts are 1/4" x 20 x 5/8"L Allen socket-head and I substituted a 1/4" x 20 x 3/4"L with 7/16" hex head. The speakers used small machine screws and I just used some I had in the parts bin that were a bit longer.

Anyway, one thing for sure is that it does feel sturdy, so we'll see how long these flimsy HD horizontal brackets last now. A quick ride afterward indicated that the fairing doesn't shake as much now, or at least such is my perception.

 

Thanks for that. Thats one of those "why didn't I think of that?" ideas. Brilliant!!!

 

I can't help thinking about this mod. I'm adding an extra horizontal bracket that connects at the top vertical bracket bolt, so at first glance it might seem that it would be adding stress to the vertical bracket at that point. But the more I think about it I believe it wouldn't, as it isn't connected to the bracket itself, and it might even help the bracket at that point since it is providing more fortification by linking the speaker mounts to the mass it's attached to. Does this make sense?

 

Check, I'd say you are on point with your thought process. That was my philosophy on the matter, adding an extra link like mine between the two OEM vertical brackets and the extra top speaker brackets like yours, ties everything together giving more strength to the original set up. At a minimum you have added 2 more mount points to redistribute the same amount of fairing weight, effectively reducing the stress on all the mount points.

 

Pure genious! LOL
(although I often wondered what support that little screw on the bottom of the speaker....screwed into plastic could provide.)

chuck

 

Sounds like what I wanted to hear. I do notice less fairing shake in the usual places, like idle and just above, and feel good about the effort so far.

 

Playing the devil's advocate here boys and girls but a few years back in this same forum there was a theory circulated that the brackets were meant to fail.

Yes meant to to fail.

Instead of addressing the front end shake ( improved motor mounts) could the MoCo have designed the brackets to flex and eventually break rather than have them hold to the inner fairing so tightly that the mounting points on the inner fairing would vibrate so bad that they would fail there with a much more costly repair needed?

Personally I beefed up a broken bracket a few years back and the mounting tab on the inner fairing holding the brass threaded insert eventually broke off completely.

I ended up having to replace the inner fairing and replaced the brackets with newer style ones and almost immediately replaced the front motor mount with one from http://www.glide-pro.com/ .

The improved motor mount took a great deal out of the front end shake that vibrated up thru the handlebars and upper forks and into my fairing.

Just something to think about:

If the inner fairing is shaken, which point will take the most stress and what might the results be?

 

I hadn't heard they were meant to fail, but that they were marginal for failure. IOW, they were meant to fail before something else did, like in an accident. The idea is that it's better to break a $10 bracket than a $CCC plastic fairing component.

The '07-'08 bikes shake more than any other modern Harley that I know of at idle. The 96" is more of a shaker than previous TC's, and in '09 they re-engineered the motor mounts. These control shaking at idle much better, but based on the bikes I've ridden I also think vibration is greater at speed.

You would think more movement (flexing) for a plastic part would not be conducive to long life. If this is the Moco's strategy I'm not following the logic at all. I would think that controlling the motion would be better for longevity.

Doesn't the outer fairing hold the brass inserts? I had this happen to a tab on the outer fairing early on before I made any modifications to the brackets. I applied JB Weld and it held until I had my accident in '09 and the outer fairing was replaced. I haven't had any more cracks since, and the modified vertical brackets have held for 3˝ years and one accident. The horizontals have been replaced 2-3 times, all the older type, and so far the newer design has held up well. As shown in my first post I also added a second horizontal bracket, and in 10 months since doing that I haven't had issues with any fairing brackets. Granted, that's not much time for a good test, but time well tell and I'm hopeful. I now have the new-type horizontal brackets and the original verticals with the mods.

I'd like to look into alternatives to the HD front mount. The question I have is will the Glide Pro mount have a decent service life? I'm at 53k and 5˝ years on this original mount and it is still intact. It makes the bike shake like hell at idle but is very smooth above that. Did you notice any change in vibration at speed with the Glide Pro mount?

 

Look closely, is it truely in tact, or is the cast in core seperated from the rubber, or at least cracked. The Glide-Pro and Sta-Bo mounts are of similar "floating Core" design, both urethane and stainless, the Sta-Bo is a lot cheaper and it touts a tunability feature. Since the core is not cast into the damper material, there is nothing to wear out, break, crack, or seperate. I'm not sure what the life expectancy is but I got well over 10k on my Glide-Pro, no evidence of wear or deterioration. Didn't pick up any extra vibration at traveling speed, and definately tamed down the idle shake. I don't think you can go wrong with either one. Little off topic but I tried the Vibranator handlebar vibe dampers, and they do take the buzz out of the bars.

 

This has been my experience as well.

My problem is with the design of the factory motor mount. Intact or not I feel it can be improved as shown by several other companies attempts with alternate designs.

The outer fairing has the openings but all the brass inserts to tie the two fairings together reside on the inner one where all the shaking starts.

As stated it is all just a theory at this point and up for discussion.

P.S. Forgot to the thank the OP for the original thread. Very informative and helpful!