Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Replace a Windshield

Most of my stuff on here has been political, but I felt like mixing things up a bit, so I'm posting stuff about things I'm doing on my new motorcycle.


When test riding the HD Softail, I noted some wind buffeting about my head, so my first upgrade was a windshield by Long Ride Shields http://longrideshields.com/ . The shield has a little “flip” at the top to direct the air up over the riders head.

Starting in with the stock windscreen:

    




















After removing the screen from the forks, I noted the frame was assembled with Torx machine screws:


 
 

Upon dis-assembly, I found the screws at the junction points of the frame were slightly longer that the rest, so I carefully set them aside from the others:
















Since all of the frame pieces are separate, when reassembled, the alignment of the hooks that connect the shield to the forks may be misaligned, so I just put everything together loosely, and mounted the whole thing to the forks to make sure my alignment was correct:

 




          
Before fitting the rest of the screws, and tightening everything completely. Since the two lower screws are behind the running lights, I had to remove the shield to completely tighten them. Once everything was in place, it all fit back together nicely. It’s about 1-½” shorter than the stock screen, but other wise, from the front, it appears completely stock.