I heartily dislike the stock bars on my 05 FXD as the pullback is too severe for comfort and twists my hands too far for the longer rides so I intended to change them for an easier pullback. I could not find a set of low apes with the desired easy pullback so would have to go with another approach with the proviso being that I wanted to retain the stock speedo and as it is incorporated into the top clamp this would bring its own complications.
After some consideration I had a local engineer make a bar to except risers outside of the stock top clamp. I bought a set of 6 inch pullback risers off trademe and an alloy top clamp from aliexpress and cut that to suit the individual top clamps for the risers.
With this in hand, I contacted the Handle bar company in Nelson and while they were quick to aggree to make a set of drag bars to my design and take payment up front there was no result with failure to return calls or texts so sucked the loss and looked elsewhere. I contacted Hammerdown who were also agreeable to making them for me to the pattern I sent which was simply an 800 long bar with 15degree pullbacks 250 in from each end. Nothing complicated at all but a few days later they got back to me saying it would be a MINIMUM of $850 so flagged them as well.
I eventually contacted Barcraft in Australia and ordered a set of stainless 15* pullback drag bars that I would only have to alter a bit to suit my purposes. Fantastic service and the bar arrived within 5 days although they would have to be cut to allow for the bend outside of the wider set risers. They have an 8 inch bend to bend and I will need 10 3/4 so when I was in the city yesterday I called in to the scrap yard and picked up 2 short lengths of stainless tube. I will have to turn the outer tube down from ita present 1.050 to the 1.010 which is essentially just a heavy polish with the innter tube being quite thick walled so will have plenty to turn down to nipple inside the ends to make the 3 pieces into one bar.
This all took a bit less time (although not less effort) than I thought it might be so they are together in one piece again and ready to be installed but may have to nip an inch off each end of the bars to bring them back to the desired length. It may be a week or two before I can get them on the bike as I have a few knife orders to get done.
First chore was to cut a couple of pieces for the nipples and turn them to fit in the tube ends after grinding the internal seam.
Measuring between the risers at the clamp face I cut a length of the inch SS tube for a test fit and then turned it down to size, sanded through the grits to 1500 before getting to the auto sol and then the buffer.
A bit later it was all clamped, epoxied and pinned together with the pins out of sight and a final polishing buff.
All together with the only thing left to do is remove the bolts through to the risers and locktight them and with a bit of silicone in the top of the recesses to water proof that joint.
Will be a couple of weeks till I can get them mounted but looking forward to a more comfortable hand position on our rides.
