Russel Day Long on a Triumph Trophy SE

This is a late post but I finally gave up on the Laam Seat and purchased a Russell Day long last summer.

The plan was for it to be completed and drop shipped to the start of the seven day Butt Lite 7 rally. I wasn't too enthusiastic about riding a 7 day rally with the Laam seat. Well, the seat didn't arrive in time so I had to suffer through with the Laam.

The seat did arrive before the rally end and I immediately installed it for the ride home (2000 miles).

As I have reported with my blogs on the Laam seat, seating comfort is a function of time. A seat that feels good for a Sunday morning run with you buddies, may not feel good after a full day, and so on.

I am very pleased with the RDL. Since I only had the rider seat converted the price wasn't that much higher than the Laam. I've put quite a few miles on it but so far nothing more than about 2 days at a time. So far I quite happy with the RDL and wish I would have stayed with my original plan to get the RDL first thing.

I'll know more later this year. I'm in the 54 hour Heart of Texas Rally in April, the 30 hour Mason Dixon 2020 in May, and the Iron Butt Rally in June. I expect that my days in the saddle and miles traveled to be 30 and 30,000 respectively.

Here are the pictures.

BMW Pillion Mount Aux Tank

I recently had a client that wanted me to make an auxiliary tank to mount over the pillion seat on his K1600GT. He wanted to use his existing BMR shelf as the mounting.

The BMR shelf required a cutout for the shut off valve but otherwise it was a pretty straight forward job of building and mounting a tank. Stainless steel rivet nuts were installed in the BMR shelf and the tank bolted straight onto it.

Having access to the BMR shelf worked out perfectly for me. I was able to get the measurements I needed to make brackets and now have the solution to mounting a tank above the pillion seat using these stainless steel brackets I am now fabricating.

With these brackets I can fabricate and mount a tank that leaves the BMW top case intact. Alternatively, I can fabricate a longitudinal tank that extends from the rider's seat back over the tail rack. 

This means that there are now three options for the BMW models that use the lattice type luggage rack, these models include: the K1600GT and GTL, all flavors of the R1200, the R, RT, and ST, the K1200GT, the K1300GT, and all variants of the F800, the R, S and ST.