Motorcycle Bike into Bagger Totw Saddlebag & Fairing Part 1 of 3

"Bike into Bagger", the ultimate transformation. Part 1 of 3. Welcome to this week's Cruiser Customizing Tip of the Week. Over the next three weeks you're going to see a transformation, where we're going to take fairings and hard bags and transform a fairly stock motorcycle into a bagger. For this transformation we're going to show you three different options: an economy option, a middle-of-the-road, and an absolutely badass combination that you're going to want to put on your motorcycle. We have the Airmaster fairing from Kuryakyn as the high end fairing. This fairing comes complete with speakers, stereo, everything you're gonna want. And these Mustang vinyl cover hard saddlebags. This will make your bike the ultimate bagger. For the middle of the road option: you've got the Sportech fairing, also from Kuryakyn, and the National Cycle hard bag. For the economy bagger we're going to put a set of Saddlemen saddlebags and Memphis Shades Batwing fairing on this V-Star 1300. So stay tuned so you can see the transformation from bike to bagger. This week we show you the installation for all three of these bags. For the install this quick-release set-up from Saddlemen, I'm going to invite Stan from Saddlemen to join me on the install. Hey, you guys have a really exceptional piece here that's really economy-driven. You can have quick-detach saddlebags or a permanent mount saddlebag at a low price point, so you can put bags on just about any motorcycle out there. STAN: Yeah, that's really the great thing about Saddlemen products is they're very quality, yet they're very reasonably priced so anybody can actually have that quality with a very reasonably priced system. So today what we're going to be doing is using our quick detach system with our saddlebags. It's a straightforward install, it'll probably take us about a half hour to do. Now we have the bracket that's going to hold it up, and we're going to decide where it looks best. Make a mark on the outside where the stud would go through. Our next step is to drill this. Take the bracket off the bike again just so that we can make a mark. Make sure the holes are both on center and then we're going to mark this one as well. [drilling sounds] Prior to drilling, which I've done already, I made sure that the bag was empty and that there was nothing in it. Now what we're doing is we're putting the bracket on. Now when you put the bag on, it hooks into place just like that, so it holds the bottom from moving in and out. Now what we're going to do is put our hole in, drilling slowly in the center because we've already put a pilot hole in. [drilling sounds] Working to the back. You want to be sure you keep your holes circular so that you don't change either the shape or the distance between the holes. Look at this hole I filed out, and I want you to see that it doesn't have to be perfectly round, because we have this grommet that's going to take up, and it's going to even out and give us the exact fit that we want on the outside. It's going to be fine on the inside, so don't think that you need to be perfect. Start one end, push it in, and kind of roll it around, making sure that you're getting it in the grooves. If you can, always use a flat blade screwdriver to help you get it in place. Now once it's in place, I roll this screwdriver around in it to open it up. We've mounted the clip, we've mounted the two grommets. So the first time is going to be a little bit difficult, unless you put a little bit of Vaseline or WD-40 on these. The bottom first, working to the front from the back. Now we take our quarter turns. See how easy that went on with the WD-40? Lock the front one in place, lock the rear one, put the lid down, latch it up. Take it out of our condor stand, and we're ready to ride. KYLE: Here's the intermediate bags from National Cycle. These bags are a plastic bag with a locking top to provide you lots of storage. The installation of these bags is so absolutely simple it's incredible. Take a look. You could probably do it in your garage in less than 20 minutes. Here you've got the hard saddlebag, and here's the bracket. And with two Allen keys we're going to go ahead and remove these two bolts, attach this bracket, and then the saddlebag is quick-detach off this bracket. Awesome. Both this front bolt as well as the rear. You want to pull this bracket up, get the recess in. Now with that started we're going to put the spacer in, and this back bolt. Really, it's that simple. We can go ahead and open up the saddlebags, and if you notice, there's a quarter lock. We set these two brackets over the bottom of the rail, where we're going to lean the bag up, twist the quarter-lock, and these bags are installed. Here we have the VTS naked, no saddlebags. Now we're going to turn this VTS into a bagger. I'm going to show you how to use any hard back saddlebag with the use of easy brackets. This installation is extremely simple. We're going to be able to put these Mustang hard saddlebags on this motorcycle quickly. We're going to replace these two bolts with these two docking posts, and we're going to remove the front bolt. Then we're going to take the new docking posts and both easy brackets. Now that we've got the front docking post in place, we're going to do the rear. Alright, now that we've got the docking post installed, and we're going to install the easy bracket just like so. Now what we're going to do is we're going to take the saddlebag, hold it up now we're going to take a Sharpie and we're going to mark the two holes. [drilling sounds] A common question that we get every single day is, "How do I make sure that I get the other saddlebag, the second saddlebag that I mount, perfectly matched with the first?" I want to show you something today that I've been doing for years. Now that we've got four holes drilled in the original side, I'm holding these together, making sure they that all of my seams are matched, and I'm just going to reach through this side that I've already drilled, and put my pen through, and mark the center location where we need to drill on the second saddlebag. Now that I've got all four of these screws in the middle of the bag I'm going to go ahead and put my washers and Nylok nuts on the back side. Now that we've just finished, making sure our holes are nice and tight, slide it on the bike, lock it into place. With this bag installed, we're going to turn this bike into a serious bagger next week And here we've got all three of these saddlebags completely installed. You've got the premium bag from Mustang seats. You've got the intermediate National Cycle cruiser saddlebags. And we've got the budget economy saddlebags from Saddlemen here on this V-Star. As you can see, the installation of these saddlebags was quite painless, and produced great results. You've just watched part 1 of 3 in the "Bike into Bagger" Tip of the Week series. Join us next week when we talk about the Kuryakyn Airmaster fairing, the Sportech, and the Memphis Shades batwing. You'll also see installs of the Batwing and the Sportech fairings. Till next week, take care, and ride safe. Closed Captioning by http://www.captionmonkey.com