Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums Accessories Need schooling on E-Z brackets

I've never had a bike with bags, and the throw overs that came with the bike aren't very good.

If I understand the system correctly, you buy which ever bags you want, and buy the brackets separately and affix the bags to the brackets. The brackets are "mounting post specific" depending on the centers of your fender bolts, and hook on the mounting posts attached to your bike. If I have that right, all I need to do is buy all the stuff and bolt it on.

Now for the real question......... I'm cheap........ and need to know what other bikes, if any, cross over to our bikes so I can shop for used on ebay? I don't mind doing some modifications to make it work out if it saves me a decent amount. Are all leather bags that aren't throw overs OK to use with brackets? Thanks for the help. Bob

If I understand, you want to know if any other brackets work? Any bags work cause you need to poke holes in the bags to bolt them to the EZ brackets, but you probably need to get the ones for our bikes because there are sort of keyhole slots in them to slip over the posts which correspond to the fender support bolts. Anyway, get whatever bags ya want, and get the brackets. Once you get em, let us know cause almost everyone has reinforced their bags.

I used masonite (peg board without the holes) cut to the shape of my bags as reinforcement.

It's really nice to be able to take the bags off with ease when I feel like tinkering.

i used some plexi cut to fit. seems to be holding up well so far

Frank

Buy your EZ Brackets from Brent; he's got them as cheap as anybody else and he'll send them with posts to fit your bike perfectly (whether or not you have a sissybar/luggage rack).

I got my EZ Brackets from him and couldn't be happier. Well, maybe I could be happier if he gave them to me for free...

Kansas, good luck. The EZ Brackets work great. Be sure to reinforce the bags, whatever kind you get.

I've been meaning to post this -- If by chance anyone is using the Triumph sissy bar with EZ brackets, they might want to increase the length of the EZ bracket socket head bolts to 70 or 75 mm long. (The thread setup is 8 x 1.25) The sissy bar brackets significantly increase the distance from the bike side of the EZ bracket's mounting pins to the fender's threaded boss. There's a whole lot of stress going on between both the weight of the bags and the possible push of a pillion rider or wind load against backrest to have it all on two or three threads per bolt. Then mix in some road spray and subsequent corrosion on the mostly exposed threads within the bosses...

With the sissy bar, bolts shorter than 70 or 75 mm are likely threaded into the fender by only a few threads. I learned this lesson the hard way, and lost a half day of travel getting it fixed. If anyone has concerns of this, try reaching into the fender bosses with a toothpick or seal pick, and see how much open thread you have. IMO, there should be little or no open thread area inside the fender bosses, as there isn't any excess depth of thread in there to begin with. The total amount of thread depth in the bosses is around 1/4".

The bad news is, I believe you'll find like I did that most hardware stores don't stock 8 X 1.25 X 70 or 75 mm socket head bolts. If per chance they do, beware of low quality imports.

These folks seem to have the right stuff -
http://www.boltdepot.com/product.aspx?cc=25&cs=132&cm=77&cd=1607
as do these folks, in stainless
http://www.mmsacc-stainless.com/metric/html/metric_allen.html

Sample of a socket head bolt:

I had a helluva time finding a bolt for the fender support just in FRONT of the ez brackets that I am using for my bolt lock. The thread pitch is in between fine and coarse...

I got both my bags and brackets from
http://www.leatherneckjim.com/
Some of his bags are from Auburn leather, they make great stuff... have a set of their leather bags I bought from Leatherneck Jim's about 3 years ago for my Harley, no problems with them at all. I have a set of their fake leather ones on the Triumph, I can tell the differnce, but they'll do ok, they were a couple hundred $$ cheaper. Both sets have the same plastic backing, no problems.
When I ordered the EZbrackets for my Speedy, they came with longer bolts.
Mary

Not sure if there is a name for it, but on normal SAE bolts, are the nuts usually the same size as the bolt head?

I'm most familiar with SAE nuts and bolts needing the same sized wrench. I hadn't seen otherwise until I bought the Triumph. I first saw it on the Triumph OEM sissy bar backrest bolts.

First time I noticed was the rear axle. Kinda nice considering they are large! I could easily scrounge up two 12mm sockets, one deep, one standard, or a 12 pt, but I only have 1 24mm