Figured I'd post my experience with a set of cheap lowers I bought on amazon. The brand is XFMT and I put them on my 2004 RKC. Typically I make every effort not to buy this knockoff Chinese crap. I know full well you get what you pay for. In this case I had an amazon gift card I wasn't using and I'm just looking to take some wind off my legs to keep riding into the cold a little longer. Being that these are just body work and not something integral to the working of the bike I figured I'd give them a shot. I've wasted 65$ on dumber stuff. I don't expect them to last that long. They are pretty thin, the snap closures are pretty cheap and the overall quality is suspect. I do not plan to store anything inside the compartments. The snaps seem like they will fail quickly. I would NOT expect to buy these and routinely use that storage area with those cheap snaps.

I will say though, they were packed extremely well. They were wrapped up in packing foam with several layers all taped up. The vivid black finish on them honestly is excellent. There were no defects on the painted side that I could find. The vents open and close just fine but are thin and have a single plastic pivot piece. If anything goes first I think it will be the vent doors.

Mounting them up was pretty easy but they came with no directions at all. The top two bolts go through the storage compartment into molded plastic tabs with threaded clips.

The bottom mounts up with a clamp style clip. They do not provide any instructions and I had to bend the hell out of the clamp to make it fit. I used a thick rubber grommet on both sides of the bolt for the clamp since none were provided. Being that I added two thick rubber grommets to the inside and outside of the clamp mount, I had to find some longer bolts. Not a huge problem but it wouldn't work with the hardware they provided.

Overall if you set your expectations accordingly I think these are fine. My bike isn't black as you can see so they will be coming off when it warms up in the spring. For now we'll see how much cold air they take off. If they totally suck or fall apart, they go in the art bin.

 

They look real good, I have amazon hard bags on my bike that I'm very happy with.

rk classic.

 

I bought the bracket for my Tour Pack that I added to my RGS for when my daughter rides. No complaints here. 1/4 of the HD price.

 

A brother of mine bought a tour pack from that company. Fitment was a nightmare but once he got it on it works great. It’s definitely a “you get what you pay for” situation. But for the money they’re acceptable.

 

I had the EXACT same ones on my '11 classic....you are right the snaps will break the first time you use them, so I got a bag of replacement snaps online, but like you I didn't use the compartments....they were cheap but did the job. One of mine was poorly finished on the inside so I attempted to return but got a partial refund instead. a little flat black spray on the inside and it was fine. Yes, no directions but there are a few youtube videos on lowers that kinda show you hot to go about it. Overall I was pretty happy with them for the price...the HD ones were like over 400 bucks I think!

 

so i took it one step further. i bought the rushmore style lowers off of amazon, from tcmt, for about $100. had the same issue with hardware, i just went to hd and bought the p-clamp for the stock lowers. i think it's about 1/4'' bigger. then i looked up all the part numbers for the rushmore style boxes, and doors. for less than $100, i took off the 'replica' glove boxes and replaced it with genuine hd. looks better, works better.

 

You can not tell the different from the OEM ones.

 

JMO, but I wouldn't have wasted my hard earned $$ to buy cheap plastic parts from offshore that I knew were going to be subpar, brittle etc. and have a short lifespan.

I bought the soft lowers from Harley which seem like good quality fabric and fasteners. I hope to get many years out of them. They extend my riding season in the spring and Fall by aprox 3 weeks on either end.

They are psycho with salt up here so generally speaking, after the first real snowfall, I'm done, even if we get nice days (because there's still salt everywhere still)

 

i don't know about 'short lifespan'. the ones i bought i have had for almost 2 years now and they still look new. i didn't want to spend 'harley money' for something that sits so close to the ground and gets beat up from the road.

 

I’m running eBay knock offs with the speaker pods. I recommend slipping some rubber hose over the crash bar, inside the back piece to cut down on the rattles.