I've been working on the bike for the past week after returning from our Florida trip. I ordered a set of Wild 1 Chubby's from Jim (hd-dude) and they had come while we were gone, so the next weekend I started on this project and adding a couple of additional bits of chrome to the bike. These bars are up and back about 1.5" from stock, and are 1 1/4" bars, so they are a little fatter looking. Actually, they are 1 inch bars covered by another 1 1/4" inch tube, so they will fit the riser clamps and all the grips, etc will fit.
Let me tell you, this is NOT a fun job to do!! To get the old bars out and the new ones in, the entire radio system must come out, the lower inner fairing has to come off, and of course all the wires inside the bars have to be pulled out and installed in the Chubbys. Of course the connectors for the switches, grips, etc will not pull through the holes in the bars, so all the wire pins must be removed from the connectors, wires pulled out, pulled into the new bars, then all pins inserted back into their proper places in the connectors. The is not really difficult, but it is necessary to be very careful about being certain that all wires go back to the proper place. I drew a wiring diagram of the pin holes with the color wire that goes into that particular pin hole...you could insert the wires back into the pin holes when the bars are mounted on the bike with the wiring schematics, but it is tight in there, so I opted to do it on the workbench. I also took this opportunity to internally wire the Legend Shock Switch. The Legend Switch is made for 1 inch bars, so some modification with a Dremel tool was necessary to make everything fit properly on the new bars, plus a channel had to be cut into the switch so the wires for it could go back into the hole for the rest of the wiring that is internal on our bikes. This modification of the legend switch turned out well, but took some time to get right. A couple of hours or more...
The hardest part is getting the rear bolts out of the risers, at least on my bike. You MUST have a ball end allen wrench to do this. My inner fairing must have also been mounted as far to the rear as is possible, as I ended up having to loosen the lower inner fairing by removing the Aux spot light/turn signal brackets on both sides to gain a little extra room to get the bolts out. The bottom of the radio opening is sitting right on top of the bolts for the clamps...when the bolts come up, they actuall hit the bottom of the radio opening, so some movement of that area is necessary to get them out.
I really like the look of the new bars, and the riding position is much better for me. I have not given it a true test yet, but I feel certain the riding position will alleviate the shoulder neck pain I got after riding a few hours with the stock bars...I was having to reach too far forward and down to reach things. We'll see...
If I had someone I REALLY trusted, I would have let them do this job, cause it's a beautch...but at least I know it was done right, though it took some time for me to complete.
Here's some pics of parts of the process...
First, outer fairing off, radio unplugged ready to begin pulling...
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Topic: Wild 1 Chubby 575 Install (Read 37005 times)