Hard Luggage
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:48 pm
After much surfing and uming and ahhing, I managed to pick up a 2nd hand Wingrack on the cheap and have successfully managed to mount it to the Falco, giving me the option of full hard luggage. After searching through numerous posts about topboxes and the like there seem to be plenty of people who wish to go down this this route but have been unable to due to the lack of fittings available.
Once I got hold of the rack I found it was actually quite simple to fit to the Falco. The rack came with the universal fitting kit which was handy as you use the longest supplied bracket fixed to the exhaust mount and then up the front of the Wingrack with 3 p-clamps which are included. The clever bit then is to get a long piece of 8mm threaded bar which goes through he grab handle mounting holes and through one of the mounting holes in the top of the rack and cut a 55mm spacer from steel tube to fit between the rack and the bike.
This was attempt one and was largely successful. I would like to point out at this point that stumbled across a post on the AF1 forum where someone had done the exact same thing. My main concern though was that there seems to be some flex in the threaded bar and i wasn't sure how it would stand up to being fully loaded so I cut a couple of pieces of 1 inch angle iron which I cut an 8mm hole in then tack welded onto the tube spacers to give some rigidity. So far so good after a couple of test runs and a well-loaded trip to Silverstone at the weekend. I have to load up again toward the end of the week so i will try and put together some pictures.
As an aside, if like me you have always been put off by the price of hard cases and are not too keen on buying second hand, check these out:
http://www.getgeared.co.uk/MOTO-DETAIL_ ... tegory=205
They are made by Kappa but just with different badges. They are quite basic but sturdy and well made and spacious, not to mention a fraction of the price of Givi or Kappa branded originals and fully compatible with the Monkey system
Once I got hold of the rack I found it was actually quite simple to fit to the Falco. The rack came with the universal fitting kit which was handy as you use the longest supplied bracket fixed to the exhaust mount and then up the front of the Wingrack with 3 p-clamps which are included. The clever bit then is to get a long piece of 8mm threaded bar which goes through he grab handle mounting holes and through one of the mounting holes in the top of the rack and cut a 55mm spacer from steel tube to fit between the rack and the bike.
This was attempt one and was largely successful. I would like to point out at this point that stumbled across a post on the AF1 forum where someone had done the exact same thing. My main concern though was that there seems to be some flex in the threaded bar and i wasn't sure how it would stand up to being fully loaded so I cut a couple of pieces of 1 inch angle iron which I cut an 8mm hole in then tack welded onto the tube spacers to give some rigidity. So far so good after a couple of test runs and a well-loaded trip to Silverstone at the weekend. I have to load up again toward the end of the week so i will try and put together some pictures.
As an aside, if like me you have always been put off by the price of hard cases and are not too keen on buying second hand, check these out:
http://www.getgeared.co.uk/MOTO-DETAIL_ ... tegory=205
They are made by Kappa but just with different badges. They are quite basic but sturdy and well made and spacious, not to mention a fraction of the price of Givi or Kappa branded originals and fully compatible with the Monkey system