I took my seat off and replaced it with one off of a V-Star, I think, much bigger and nicer. I have no screamer seat and even took off the back pegs. Having someone ride with me might be nice on a rare occasion, but 99% of the time it is just me.  However, I still wanted/needed a way to haul a little stuff around. Picking up something from town, whatever.

There was a post on here before about welding, do you do it, and so forth. I have a good friend who is a good welder, we talked and talked about making me a rack for my bike, but when he was not busy I was and so forth. He finally told me, "If you have grinder, you can be a welder."

So I guess I is a welder now!   I had the basic idea in mind, had the metal laying around that I had scrounged from here and there. Not sure where I acquired the expanded metal, he said it looked like it came from a boiler. The frame and legs are off of an old windmill momma had that bit the dust. The spacer under the bolt in the middle, which you really can't see, it's under the bolt in the top view, is a 30-06 case with the bolt ran through it. (You can see the bolt if you look through the grate to the left of the bolt!) Except for a few grinding wheels and some sweat, I don't have much in it at all.

I know there is a weld that has broken, when I get a chance I'll take it off and fix that. The bolts on the side are holding links of chain that I can attach my bungee net to, not really happy with them, thinking more of some D-ring kind of things, but just haven't been able to find exactly what I want. Who would have thought a D-ring would be that had to find?! The bolts will match up with the saddle bags I have, so I can bolt the bags right to the rack with no trouble. I know I'll have to move the turn signals to be able to do that, but one step at the time.

My wife complained a little it was too "utilitarian" looking, but I said it was for me to use, not for people to look at. She agreed and that was that. Overall I am very happy with it.

Looks good! I'm like Tocsik, I'd like to see a pic of the whole bike.

Was the seat hard to fit?

Very jealous! I am taking the winter off and studying welding under a friend so I can have some fun like this too.

Here are a couple of pictures of the whole thing, neither are very good, but they were the best I could do today.





All the D-rings I have found have been too big for my taste. I have seen some online, but the shipping to get them here was more than the rings. Just can't quite go that route.

Dave, I have thought about welding the links on, but not the other things you mentioned. I like those ideas though.

WD. I thought about eye bolts, but I tapped the holes metric, to keep the bike the same. Finding metric eye bolts in Washington, NC is about like finding, well, you can imagine.

I like the ideas though, when I finally decide what to do, I'll fix the crack. In the meantime I'll try to get a better picture with something besides my back steps.

Drestakil, the seat has been on long enough I can't remember all the details about mounting it, but it wasn't hard. Honestly, I haven't had the seat off since I put it on. Seems like I bent a piece of metal to make a bracket to mount to the stock mounting points on the bike and fastened it to the stock mounting points in the seat. As best I can remember this one mounted in similar fashion to a solo seat on my old '87, just this one was much larger.

A little off topic but what fork bag is that you have on there?  And, does it lock?

I usually build them out of round bar.That way you can just hook your bungees to it.But however,if it works...ya did it right.  

Tocsik, I have no idea about the fork bag, I picked it up at a yard sale and before I left the guy just gave it to me. It didn't have a strap to attach it to the forks, so I went to the Goodwill and bought a child's belt. And BOOM! it had a strap!  

Demin, I like the round stock, but my bungees just slide back and forth on that, I have some round rails on my truck and they end up being more for decoration that practicality.  

And Bailingwire, I pity your welding, but come one over and we'll dob something together. Just make sure we have plenty of grinding wheels.  

Very cool! I was thinking about looking for a spare back seat to cut apart and make into a rack, this is a much better take on it.

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