Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech Bolts holding on luggage rack / sissy bar

I have an 06 America with the luggage rack and tall sissy bar. I was a bit bored tonight, and decided to take the luggage rack / sissy bar combo off. When I looked at the bolts holding them on, they are not the standard hex bolts I expected, but instead they have a splined head. If I want to do this, It looks like I will wind up using a pair vice grips to loosen them and then replace the bolts if/when I put the rack back on. If you look at the assembly holding on the luggage rack / sissy bar combo on, these are the rear 2 of the 3 bolts on the chrome bracket on the side of the fender.
Has anyone seen this before? I am wondering what the point is. Could the bike initially have been delivered with saddlebags, and this was part of the mount system? I bought the bike new, but it was a carryover from the previous model year.

my have metric allen bolts

Hmmm... I've never seen anything but hex head bolts on any of the luggage rack/sissy bars.. and I've seen a few. Always an 8mm head on the bolt and a 10mm nut...Maybe inverted torx? Either way vice grips will mangle anything you use them on.
As far as the mounting setup in general, there are two "L" shaped brackets that attach to the rear of the three rear fender bolts on each side and the sissy bar and or luggagge rack attach to these via four 6 mm bolts with nyloc nuts... I'd love to see a pic of your setup.

Here is a link to a couple of pics of these bolts.
http://picasaweb.google.com/101582054182485903964/Bolts#

Its hard to tell, but they could be rounded off allen bolts
Whatever they are, they're sure not stock

Yep... little plastic caps over allen heads.. same as mine. Glad you figured it out..

Sorry I forgot to mention the caps