How to Road Trip with a Honda Fury

Published on May 31, 2015

I had my first test ride at the end of June when I tackled the Devil's Highway in Arizona's White Mountains. Two days, 550 miles, and elevation ranging from 700 feet to nearly 11,000 feet. The fact that it rained on the Devil's Highway aside, it was a great ride and good first test. To start, here's what I ended up with:

The bags were great and the universal mount worked pretty well. It's technically made for a Harley fender, but it works for a Honda Stateline/Interstate which is almost the exact same fender as the Fury. The problems came when I went to mount the sissy bar. After a long discussion with the parts guy at my usual shop about what I needed and what the plan was, we ordered the bar and it was ultimately too wide at the base.

After talking with a three different shops, the guys at East Side Performance helped me out with a solution. I was originally looking for a sissy bar that was narrow enough to fit into the existing mounts. They convinced me to get something wider (in this case, it was the same thing I had gotten from my usual parts place) and attach it to the outside of the sissy bar mount.

I ended up picking up some additional hardware from a nearby Ace Hardware:

The rubber grommet was used after drilling the one hole (nicely hidden under the cockpit seat) through the fender and into the metal support strut. Once the mount was in place, I mounted the sissy bar, using the washers (5 per bolt) to fill the gap around the bolts between the sissy bar and the mount.

For the most part, this works and it held up exceptionally well on the road trip that weekend. I do have a few improvements I plan to make before my much longer road trip to the Pacific Northwest.

  1. Swap out the M6 steel bolts with a bolt that is greater length and smaller diameter to give me enough space to attach a nut inside the mount and tighten it down.
  2. Use metal nuts to hold the sissy bar tighter against the mount.

Right now, if there's no bag on the sissy bar, it can shake, which gives me some concern about vibration loosening the bolts. With the nuts and making the mounting tighter, I can prevent that from being an issue.

Update (7/5/2015): I picked up a few nuts (10 - 32) to fit over some existing bolts I had on hand that were the right length (1.75") and got everything attached. Adding the nuts had the desired effect and tightened the sissy bar down so there's no shaking. Officially road trip ready!

Here's the finished product:


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