i have 2012 iron and see some of you guys removed the stalk like thing that extends the bullet light away from the fender. can i remove the stalk and run it tight against the fender? if so please let me know and what hardware do i need.

 

I did this recently with my fender chop. I unbolted the fender struts and used a 1/2 inch metal spacer and shorter bolt to mount the turn signals. The wires exiting the blinker were exposed so I used some heat shrink to cover them up. Pretty simple job and really cleans up the back end.

 

It is easier once you shop your rear fender however, if you are keeping everything else stock, it can be a little tricky. Once you take the "arm" off of the tailight the actual tailight itself will not mount flat onto the strut because the housging is angled, if that makes any sense. A lot of people just mount it ias close as they. HD makes a kit that that comes with a plastic piece so you can mount it like you want however, it does not have a hole for the electrical. You would need to get hollow bolts so you can run the wiring through. Somewhat of a pain. I tried all of this and in the end I purchased new tailights that mounted directly to the struts and were smaller. Sucked because it was kind of pricey. If you can makes it work with the stock tailights and be happy with the outcome I would recommend it.

 

Some of the Softail bikes use a stalk that's the same as the Sportster but shorter. It's an easy bolt-on replacement.

 

+1 on what cHarley just said. The standoffs for the new Fatboys are a lot shorter. They come in black or in chrome. You do have to shorten the mounting stud and tap more threads on it, or just use a piece of 5/16" threaded rod.

 

These are the standoffs from a Softail. They're 3/4" shorter. The short ones are on 200mm tire bikes. '06 was the first year for the 200 rear.
These were powder coated gloss black (over chrome, before Harley had black units) by FigureFinishing.com


The detachable docking hardware barely fits, but it'll go. Here's a mock-up with hardware and shorty standoffs I did for another thread:

 

If you move them to a different stud you can make them really short. You may be able to do it with a bracket even in the stock spot, I dunno. Here's what I did recently:

 

You can get shorter stems on ebay (and other places online) for fairly cheap.

HERE

 

hi there take a look at this thread , youll see some good ideas there , including my $4.00 signal relocation .

https://www.hdforums.com/forum/sport...ation-kit.html

hope this helps , ride safe , ride often

 

Hey Dafy that looks pretty awesome, I've been wanting to get the shorter stalks for a while but your way might work well too. Did you just fab up a bracket yourself out of flat stock?