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Not with stock floorboards and a bike that is not slammed - like the one in your sig pic.
Floorboards scrape in the rear and the bike sits lower in the rear with the riders and/or passengers weight. So, you have a lot more than an inch to go before scraping the crash bar when you scrape floorboards.
And, how many times has someone posted scraping their crash bar?
Hmmm...now there's food for thought. I can't say for rear bars since I don't have them, but my fronts are a little scraped from times I pushed it too far. Curious, I stood the bike upright and put a sheet of plywood next to the wheels and raised it to the floorboards. There was ONE INCH to go to the crash bars, so that's where I got that figure.
Add rider weight, and the bars get lowered even more.
Grind off another 1/4" and it's even closer. (I've ground off a bit more).
As for riders hitting the crash bars, there have been a few who went to the ditches and posted about it too. But you're right; most limit their lean to just hitting the floorboards or pegs. Hit the brakes for some reason when on the boards and bang, you've touched the bars.
(I know you're not supposed to brake there)
Hit the brakes for some reason when on the boards and bang, you've touched the bars.
That's easy, hitting the brakes will compress the front forks two or more inches while the rear will rise up an inch or two.
Just how much depends on speed, how much weight the bike is carrying, and how hard you hit the brakes.
But it should be more than enough to put the bars below the boards and if your not damn careful, on your ***.
Last edited by In Memoriam Citoriplus; Sep 16, 2010 at 06:31 AM.
I meant the reason for hitting the brakes in the first place. The idea of picking good lines is so you can hit the curve at speed and NOT need to hit brakes which can mess up your day. A nice invention would be a front shock lock for when you're at a certain lean angle. Then you could brake all you want; you just wouldn't dive.
I have the 2010 denim black fatboy lo. I use it in the solo configuration so I took off the rear seat. I occasionally need saddlebags but didn't want to pay 700 bucks to Harley for a set, so I got a 90 dollar set of throwovers....to keep them off my tire I made a pair of saddle bag rails out of 1/2 inch rebar, welded 3/8 inch diameter steel pipe to the ends at a 10 degree angle, painted them flat black and bolted them to the rear fender struts...people seem to really like the look. I also now have made a quick detach luggage rack out of rebar that slips on to the two front seat thumb bolts and secures with the rear seat screw(that typically now just holds my fender bib on). Also, I wanted a skull horn cover with LED eyes...seem to average 150+ dollars. At a recent bike rally a vender was selling hollow resin (very tough) novelty skulls, bone color with an aged look (I think bone color looks better than chrome for my bike anyway). I bought one for 16 dollars, cut the back of the skull off with a band saw, glued the round stock harley diaphragm horn to the back of the skull (it fit almost perfectly) with JB weld, and put a bright red LED in each eye socket (from auto zone). Currently I am working on a bobbed fender...bought a used rear fender off evil-bay for 75 bucks, bobbed it, traced willie G off the back of my jacket, had the tracing blown up to 200%, cut it out, traced it onto the fender, cut out the eyes and nose with a jigsaw (the middle tooth gap matched the upper bolt hole where the license mount used to be...very helpful for centering). I plan to put red LED pods in the eyes for signal lights, and one in the nose (all three will come on for brakes).
OK..here goes a try at uploading...various pics of bike with various stuff...including one photo I forgot to mention...I wanted an axle mount license holder...ordered one from demon cycle but softail swingarms are apparently reengineered...it didnt work so i choped it up, made a swingarm 2 point bracket and it looks good IMO....
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