I did a little road trip a couple weeks ago on my little Suzuki. Conventional wisdom says one will die on a 250cc bike outside the city. You certainly don't tour on one. Except me I guess.
Part 1: Prep
The first issue was that Suzuki had mounted the rear turn signals in such a way that mounting bags was impossible. Perhaps related the "wisdom" above.
So step one was to move the turn signals to the rear.
The stock mount was removed along with the turn signal. Wires were cut, extended and a pair of L-shape brackets I had lying around were pressed into service. I had some old Mercedes wire kicking around so my only cost was a little bit of heat shrink tubing. The one on the left is stock, the right modified.
Not sure how many of you have bought proper motorcycle accessories but man are they expensive. No off the shelf bags were available for my bike so I took a gamble on some cheap Chinese moped bags bought off eBay. The next hurdle was mounting the bags. There was a company that offered racks for my bike but they would have been several hundred dollars to buy and ship here. Not having that. So I started with some aluminum that I had lying around with an angle grinder and tape measure.
The stock turn signal was re-used to mount the bracket on one side and a plumbing bracket on the other. I did buy some nuts and bolts so they would all be the same size in case (or when) I had to tighten them on the road.
A thing of beauty! I just needed something to prevent the bags rubbing on the metal. I spied my son's old bike with a flat tire in the corner ...
The faulty inner-tube was cut up to give a nicer mounting surface. Luckily the bag will cover this ugliness. Ideally I would have done a test run but unfortunately I had run out time for that. So first (and final) testing to be conducted on the trip.
Packed and ready to go. I swapped the front section of the stock seat on and left the rear off.
Fresh oil change and odometer starting reading.
To be continued ...