I know a lot of folks don't think the 650  could make it as a road bike. Those of us that have done some long hauls on it beg to differ in that opinion. Once there's been a few comfort mods made the "little bike that can" will putt down the road just fine with a pretty good load on it. I've not tried the west coast mountains "yet" (they are in future plans), but fully loaded my bike had no trouble in the eastern version hills over the last couple summers on three long trips from MN to the far south east and back. I added a picture of the "Super-Bee" fully loaded (without my 180 lbs) on BikePics for any one to see what a working road beast looks like. Just scroll to the bottom for a look.

http://bikepics.com/members/jazzcarter/00savage/

Someday I might just figure out how to include a picture in these postings.

Jack

Thusly:

 
(do a quote to see the syntax)

Out on the road on my steel pony.  

hello i'm interested in the trailer hitch

* sluggo

sluggo wrote on 01/27/08 at 15:07:38:
He wrote it up about a year or two ago.  I'd look it up but the I have partaken of the fruit of the vine and the forum is getting fuzzy....

It's a V-Star saddle seat, a Harley Soft Tail 5 gallon one piece tank and, although the bike was yellow when I got it, this is a slightly different powder coated yellow. I got a good price on the job by taking one of their stock, in house colors that was really pretty close. That's why there's no decals. I designed one that I was going to get made to put on the front tank (a tire burning bumble bee) but even the big red "S" on the back tank wouldn't bend around the curve on the front one where I wanted to put it. So until I get around to making a stencil and spraying a design on it, it stays naked. I was thinking of just taking a Sharpie to notate every long ride I do with the mileage on it in random placement. Give it a rough-and-ready look.

I did do a write up on the hitch last summer. It comes apart for removal. And although I had the major stuff welded by a guy in western ND, it could be done plenty sturdy with just bolts. If you look at the pix closely I think it's pretty much self explanatory if a guy wanted to do one himself. It's built to come apart to keep it simple in construction. The left side goes right up and is bolted with a U-bolt to the top shock mount. The right side does the same but has to have a little dog leg in the front to fit in because the two shocks have slightly different placement. The ball cross-piece plate across the back can be removed for tire removal even though it only takes about five minutes to take the whole thing off. The way it was designed there are only two extra holes drilled through the fender and side rail - one on each side. The hardest part would be the cutting of the 1/4' steel plate into the shapes. As you can tell from the pictures the welder is an artist.

Jack

Oops.  Didn't look close enough.  Wasn't paying attention.  Sorry.

I did write up the tank mod a couple years back. It wasn't too hard a job really. You do have to cut the two steel pegs that hold the front of the stock tank off and drill a hole through the triangle brace plate for the bolt to hold the front of the Harley tank mount. And move the horn and electronic thingie thats attached to the spark plug wire. Oh yeah, you ned to re-route the wiring under the tank a bit and come up with another speedometer solution. and of course the back of the tank sits higher than stock due to the frame width so you need to either come up with another way to mount the front of the seat or do what I did, which was to raise the whole seat a couple inches. I never tried this with the stock seat and the V-Star seat is a bit longer than the original so I had already made adjustments anyway.

Like I said, I've written all the changes to my bike on here and I'm pretty sure they can be found on here somewhere. From reading the above it sounds harder than it really was. This is my first bike ever and I just jumped in with incentive from this site and the knowledge that it was just money, blood, sweat and "no you can't bring that into the house to work on it" to contend with.

Jack