Well, I needed a new luggage rack for my Savage (see signature).  I’d been guilty of overloading the trunk at times and the Suzuki rack I had installed when the bike had less than 200 miles on it was showing its age.

The old luggage rack wasn’t cutting it anymore, developing a significant list to port:





(Some of the more observant among you may notice that the subframe is bent a bit on my bike.....I was rear ended a few years ago - twenty-something girl on a cell phone, not paying attention - too bad for me that I did not notice the subframe damage at the time and I let her go).


Here is what the rack looked like with the trunk removed:





Over the years, the welds at both mounting brackets had broken.  I’d had them rewelded, but one side broke again, after the reweld.  The welder said the metal was too thin to do a really good job on.  Here is the side that was rewelded and held:





Here is the side that was rewelded and broke again (notice that the "tab", seen on the side of the rack with the successful weld (above) is missing here):





To hold the side with the broken weld in place, I had resorted to u-bolts (note the stress crack in the old luggage rack, caused by the u-bolts):





Yep, I needed a new luggage rack.

I decided to try the one being made by seviersavage (http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1248731274).

We emailed back and forth and I told him that I needed a rack capable of carrying my trunk with two gallons of paint in it.  I placed the order.  Here is what he sent:





The platform measures 12 3/8” X 8 1/16” and seems to be fairly heavy-duty.  Since it is a cantilever design and I needed something that could carry a heavy load, he modified the mounting area a bit from his standard luggage rack, building in a triangular support section and using four extra bolts:





Here are seviersavage’s luggage rack and the OEM luggage rack side by side:





Does anyone have any questions?

(Almost – see below) all of the included hardware was stainless steel, including the Nylon insert locknuts.  The nuts and bolts all require a 14mm wrench.  I’m likin’ it:





However, he must have run out of stainless steel washers, because one of the sixteen washers he sent (which was larger than the rest) was made of regular old carbon steel:





Wanting to maintain the stainless steel theme, off to Lowe’s I went.  I bought some 5/16” stainless steel washers (they weren’t cheap) and drilled out  the hole in one of them so that it would fit the supplied 10mm bolts.  Keep in mind that I’m not whining here.  At this luggage rack’s price point, I do not mind supplying a washer, not one bit.

Next, since there were extra mounting holes on my luggage rack, compared with seviersavage’s regular luggage rack, the washers he supplied were a bit too big, causing overlapping:





This would probably not cause a problem, but it was easy enough to rectify the situation.  Out came the old bastard (file):





I filed a flat spot on each washer so that they would fit in place with no overlapping:





Seviersavage was nice enough to apply these felt pads to the mounting surface:





Because two of the mounting bolts’ threads would contact the sissy bar posts, I covered the vulnerable areas with a small piece of Ultra-High Molecular Weight (UHMW) polyethylene tape to prevent wear spots (no motorcycle workshop should be without this wonderful stuff, BTW).  You can see a small square of the tape on the chrome surface of one of the sissy bar posts here:





Here is a look at the mounting bolts after I installed the luggage rack:





Pretty stout, I’d say.  The bolts could stand to be 1/8” to 1/4” longer (so that they would thread all of the way through the nuts), but you’d need to install the bolts with the bolt-head pointed forward, instead of aft as I have done.  This is because the rear seat sits right against the nuts as it is.  I oriented the bolts the way I did so that I could get a socket on the nuts easily.

Here is a look at the installed luggage rack:





It is very sturdy (I installed the trunk and loaded 2 gallons of milk into it.....the rack handled the load no problem, I’m happy to say).  I did need to make another run to Lowe’s to get some new mounting screws for the trunk platform.  The luggage rack is 1” deep and the mounting screws that came with the trunk were rendered a bit too short to do the job.

It looks a bit utilitarian, but that suits me fine since my Savage is a bit of a pack mule.  If you were to order one and requested that it be only 6” -8” long, I think it would look pretty good.

Overall, I give this rack a solid thumbs-up.  It is perfect for my uses and is simple.  The quality is as good as it needs to be.  A solid and sure-to-be durable addition to my Savage.

Thanks, seviersavage!

Looks good.  I have no problem with function over form.

verslagen1 wrote on 07/03/10 at 18:51:50:


Chrome plated steel, on the top side.

The underside, where the welding took place, does not have much plating on it.

Keep in mind that the original welds failed before I had the rewelding done.

Sorry about the one washer that wasn't stainless, not sure how that one snuck in there.

It is a bit utilitarian, . . . .but it should hold up. Glad it's working for you.
Be safe
sevier

I made one other small mod I should mention.

I zip-tied a piece of old leather in front of the mounting plate to keep the mounting nuts from possibly wearing into the aft portion of the rear seat cover:





If I'd positioned the nuts facing aft, I wouldn't have had to worry about it.

Digger wrote on 07/04/10 at 20:15:39:



Hyper-Lites are installed.  See here.

Why not just make the holes in the flat bracket plate square with a Dremel tool and use stainless steel carriage had bolts instead?

Bill

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 11/13/10 at 09:00:20:



Jus,

You're right, no doubt.

However, the stainless steel filed pretty easily.  Even I (and, I am lazy) did not find the job to be burdensome.