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Please note: The following ideas are a concept only submitted by Gary Mace. This has NOT been tried before. Do so at your own risk. But then please report back to us how it worked. :)
For some time, I have been wishing I could easily convert my RSV from a full dresser to a solo-rider bike. So I took off the seats to see how involved this would be and to come up with some initial thoughts. Looking for input and better ideas..
As soon as I took off the rear seat I noticed the back rear seat bracket and wire guides are spot welded on. Since my goal is a solo-ride look, I almost chucked the idea here. But, the plan now is to carefully dremel these welded brackets off, then use a Mustang studded leather fender bib mounted over the cut brackets. This will also serve to protect the fender from the new bracket used to connect the touring components. Problem 1 solved.
Now, how to get the rear seat to be part of the tour pack. For this, a new bracket would be made that runs from the trunk frame to under the driver seat. It would be made so that it sat just above the fender, but didn't touch. It could mount in the rear where the grab rails connect to the trunk frame, and in front under the driver seat where the Utopia (maybe the DiamondR) backrests now mount. The rear seat brackets could be mounted to this new bracket and the wiring ran across the new bracket instead of the fender.
Wiring? Here we would have to place a connector for all cables and wires so that they could be disconnected near the rear of the driver seat. It appears there should be plenty of space to tuck the connectors under the rear seat when not connected.
What about the driver backrest? Here, we could cut the existing driver backrest bracket, drill it, and mount it to the new conversion bracket. Now the driver backrest is also part of the removable tour-pack.
Next, we need a chrome frame the same shape as the existing chrome frame on the fender. To this new frame, we connect the trunk frame rails and grab rail. Using quick connectors, we could quickly mount the new frame to the existing frame.
Now, we want to convert from tour to solo. Remove driver seat. Disconnect new tourpack bracket from under drivers seat. Disconnect wiring. Release quick connectors on fender sides. Lift of entire tour-pack. Put driver seat back on. Tuck wires under seat. We now have a solo-rider RSV that may look something like below. Probably take less than 5 minutes with two people.
Hey, let us know if you are able to make this concept work!
Last update: 12:20 PM Sunday, February 28, 2010
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