Over the winter I replaced the buckhorns. I'd meant to document it here but forgot until Tom pointed 'em out today.
Ebay el cheepo's... they were advertised as Honda CB bars. Iirc the ad said 28" wide. They weren't... they were 26" and too narrow. The brake master literally covered part of the tach.... and touched it when I angled it where I wanted the lever.
And even at that the throttle tube still hung out some. Suppose I could have flogged the guy and got a refund, but I do enjoy a challenge.
I cut two 1.5" extensions off a wrecked set of bars and welded 'em on the ends. That gave me 29" wide bars. "Vee'd" the ends for good weld penetration, sliced a tube lengthwise to jig the extension, safety wired that in place and tacked the extension(s) on.
Welded all the way around and ground it down smooth...
Much better.
Finally got to try 'em out this spring. Wasn't happy with 'em. Don't get me wrong, low speed handling was pretty good... better than the buckhorns, but they had me too far forward. Almost like a sport bike tuck... at least it felt that way on my knees. And my aftermarket rt knee weren't havin' none of it.
Kinda late now to bitch at Ebay... crap. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. After some mashup experiments that I didn't get shots of, I settled on 1-1/2" back and 1-1/2" up as being about where my knee was happy.... or should I say... not unhappy. So I fabbed up some risers that are a bit on the ugly side, but strong and functional.
Cut those down to a oblong shape and JB Welded some washers on the back hole to get me to the 1-1/2" I was shootin' for, and to add some thickness for the cut down bar mounts.
Cut the shoulder down on a spare set of mounts, then drilled and tapped for a 1/4"-28 bolt.... some Pratt & Whitney engine hardware jus' layin' around.
A little paint and here we are...
I like the look, and low speed manners are better than the old bars. My knee's still not real comfortable with 'em... but that's getting better. Now the mirrors are too far in for a good look behind me. I tried some bar end mirrors but didn't like 'em. The hunt continues.
While I had it all apart I went ahead and replaced the rubber isolators in the top triple and stuck some foam grips on the bars. Funny story.... ran it out to around 80mph early in the season and noticed that my feet seemed to be vibrating a fair bit. Finally dawned on me it weren't more in the feet, it was much less in the bars. Even with some very (too) light summer gloves, there was hardly any vibrations in the bars. The mind was playin' tricks.
Well I've officially fried my brain trying to recall all this, so...
Anyway, function
and form is nice when you can get there, but I'll take function
over form any day.
And cheap never goes outta style.