Howdy fron Nashville.

My wife and I have matching TriGlides; and we wanted to have the TriGlide Saddlebags installed on both bikes.

After paying about $350 per set; our local Harley Dealership quoted us 2.5 hours for each bike to do the install.

Now, I'm by no means what you would consider "handy" around the house - but looking at the back of these bags gave me an idea.

The first thing you need to get is available from Amazon: it's a 10-foot long strip of velcro that is industrial strength and 4 inches wide. Here's the link: . The current cost of this is only $9.96 including shipping.

I would tell you how strong this stuff is; but if you need proof - go check out the episode of Mythbusters where they tested the strength of this stuff. It's unbelievable!

The saddlebags are attached to the bike via two metal plates; one at the top and one at the bottom. The top plate is somewhere around 3 inches, and the bottom is around 2 inches. Be sure to measure them yourselves before you cut out your velco to match them (my memory is not what it used to be).





So once you have the velcro; cut a strip of it to be somewhere between 9 and 11 inches. You only need 9 inches to cover from the top of the first metal plate to the bottom of the second metal plate. But I put a little longer on mine so that I can subtly adjust the height up or down as needed.

Now if your worried about the adhesive on your bike; don't be too concerned. Folks have been velcro'ing things to their bikes for decades. Once you remove the velcro you can use stuff like WD40 and "Goo Be Gone" (I swear thats a real product!) to clean the adhesive off your bike.

Notice that rubber plug in the center of the lower plate??? It's gotta go. You need the plate to be completely flat to maximize the velcro efficiency. I used a knife to slice the grommet in half as shown below:




Now measure the width of each plate and cut a corresponding piece of velcro to cover each metal plate. Then affix them to the plates as shown:




Now your ready to begin work on the trike itself. While you can measure whatever position you may like; I chose to put the top of my velcro strip exactly 7 inches from the underside of my passenger armrests. You can get a feel for this by holding one of the saddlebags against the bike and then measuring the top of the bag against whatever landmark you want to use a reference. Here's my photo:




Now I put the velcro on my trike; starting at the 7 inch position I chose earlier. Note that in my case; I actually had to move the velcro over closer to the wheel wells because I have an Air Zeppelin seat and the controls would interfere with the opening of the saddlebags.

So here's what my velcro looked like on the trike:





Once it is installed; you can then simply push your saddlebags into the velcro at the height that you prefer.

Here's how my bags look on the trike when mounted:




Total cost: $10 for both bikes. Total install time of both bikes was about 30 minutes.

Of course, your mileage may vary!

 

Beats drilling holes in the body.

 

My concern is that velcro has to be peeled off, it cannot be
pulled straight off. As I velcroed a flat screen in my RV and
I had to remove it with a butter knife, to brake the velcro.
tenn.vol.

 

I installed them on my wife's bike and didn't find it difficult at all. Nevertheless, if drilling into the body makes you uncomfortable, then this looks like a great alternative.

BTW, I love the chrome on your fenders. Is that HD or aftermarket?

 

Thanks - they are Kuryakyn aftermarket parts. We got two sets of the chrome mud flaps and put one set on the front of each fender without the rubber flaps.

The rear has the chrome fender and the rubber flaps.

The center pieces are also from Kuryakyn.

 

Yup... removing it is not easy unless you use something like WD40 to break up the adhesive. If you begin to pull it up and then liberally use WD40 all around and under the flap you just pulled up it will come off easier.

That's assuming you would ever want to take them off permanently.

And fighting with the adhesive is a whole lot better than living with the holes if you go the drilled-out mounting way.

 

Get it pretty warm with a hair dryer if you need to remove that stuff, too, that helps. There's this GooGone stuff that also works, but it's harder to clean that stuff off than WD40 for some reason.

 

Our Ace Hwd. carries a product by the name of De-solv-it. Seems to work much better than goof off or goo gone. Used it to remove the warning sticker from the luggage rack and the one from the air cleaner cover. Don't like the warning labels on your cage sun visors ? Got rid of them too in short order.

 

The previous owner of my trike used similar Velcro to attach an organizer inside the trunk lid. The Arizona heat melted the adhesive and it fell off. I would love to hear if yours works better.

 

Can you get the panel off to get to the fuse box with the saddle bags on?