7 Easy Ways - Comfort for Harley Trike Passengers

welcome to another dk custom products video my name is kevin this is dwayne and today we're going to address an ever-growing myth that it's impossible to make a trike comfortable for the passenger right and it's a question that actually showed up on one of the forums that we're on um there's a whole thread on it a guy asking how do i make this more comfortable for my passenger and then like 15 or 20 people said it's never going to be comfortable for your passenger and i'm going what so a lot of things on a harley you know the golden rule of a harley it is what it is but this is not one of those things but before we address that we'd appreciate if you guys would like comment and subscribe to our channel it would really help us out what we're going to do is this is uh our third trike mary and my third trike we had an 11 went up to the arctic circle we will put a link in the description below to a bunch of the different ride reports that we've done riding on different trikes we had an 11 we had a 14 and now we have this 19 and over the 150 000 miles or so that mary has ridden on the back of one of those three trikes we have refined what it takes for her to be comfortable now before her riding on the trike she rode she has a couple hundred thousand miles riding on the back of two wheel bikes so she knows what it's like to be comfortable on a motorcycle also she's ridden on the back of the sporty many thousands of miles she knows what it's like to be not so comfortable yeah uh when i say not so comfortable hey well i have a bar on my sporty she has fallen asleep riding back from bike night on the back of the sportster so it wasn't that uncomfortable but um anyway so we're going to go over the different things that we have done uh to make this trike more comfortable and that you may want to look at making your trike more comfortable let's look at those now so the first thing you might notice this is not the factory back rest now the factory backrest is very comfortable for most people mary did not find it comfortable for her on the 14 or on this 19. on the 11 it was but in 14 with the rushmore models harley changed the backrest to make it larger more cushy more and it stuck out more and it just made her not uh comfortable so she fabricated her own backrest so but most people will be happy with the factory backrest but i just wanted to point that out uh probably one of the largest things is this tour pack is relocated three inches further back than factory that gives more three inches more room between here and here oh and i apologize it's this trike is extremely dirty uh we just got back from riding uh out in arizona and new mexico and i have not had time to clean it up but anyway this tour pack is three inches further back that's a huge huge benefit not only does it give her more space here it gives her more space down to where her feet are because everything is three inches further back along with the three inches further back because that leaves a gap between the front of the tour pack and the back of the seat we have the kuryakin filler pad right here both the tour pack and information on the kuryakyn filler pad are linked in the description below i think we have a video on it too so we'll put the video up in the corner here the next thing you'll see is the sheepskin the sheepskin makes the seat more cool during the summer and warmer during the winter and so it just gives a uh it gives a barrier between the non-breathable vinyl and this traps heat lets during the winter lets uh air flow through during the summer the next thing is she has pockets one two what's in here chapstick kleenex she fills this stuff full of snacks more chapstick so she has all these pockets back here that she's able to put stuff in and she really likes that we've had that on every backrest is somewhere for her to put stuff when uh that she can access when we're riding she does not like this backrest i just put this backrest on not long ago it's very comfortable for me but unlike previous backrests it doesn't fold forward so when she goes to get on the trike and with pass backrest she could flip the backrest forward and made it easier for her to get on and sit down in to the little pocket here now she has to it's just not as comfortable for her to get on and off of the trike with this backrest that doesn't flow forward so i'm probably going to be even though it's a very comfortable backrest for me it's not for her getting on and off the trike so i'm probably going to be changing it but that's another thing is having pockets and if you do have a backrest one that folds forward is probably better now this doesn't look like it has anything to do with passenger comfort but it actually does because we keep a cooler when we're when we're riding we keep the cooler bungeed to this rack that she can and the cooler has outside pockets that she can reach into while we're riding and so this rack has these loops in the four corners so it's very easy to bungee stuff onto the rack it's easy for her to grab stuff out of the pockets of the cooler on here the other thing we have is a drink holder right here and this just gives her a place to put her coffee or drink her water whatever while we're riding that makes it more comfortable for her obviously all the things we've done to reduce heat when you're riding all the exhausts the catalytic converter everything is on this side of the engine and that heat comes and unlike a two wheel bike get this out of the way unlike a two wheel bike the air can't flow past and behind what happens the air flows past this hot part of the engine where the exhaust is and the catalytic converter and then it hits here and then it comes up here right along the side of the passenger so anything that you can do to get rid of heat will make the passenger more comfortable and so we'll put a link up here on how and why to cool down your twin cam and milwaukee 8 engine there's a lot of stuff you can do that uh will make your passenger more comfortable by getting rid of the heat another thing we've done is we have these adjustable foot pegs so this is the floorboard the factory floorboard that her feet uh go on but then when she's riding she can have her heel here her toe here she can have her heel here her foot sticking out here she can even put her back of her calf here and do that this is also adjustable so if she even wanted to have just to get a different have her foot up that way we do that we can do this and put that all the way back and get it totally out of the way so she has a lot of different places that she can put her feet using this and that made a huge improvement in her comfort because just like i as a rider can sit put my feet like this put my feet like this go like that she can do exactly the same thing with this has all different kind of positions then the other thing we have and this is still the prototype this isn't even powder coated we put the prototype on here billet aluminum this is called the fb16 floorboard 16 because it has 16 different positions and one of them is it puts the floorboard out an inch so the floorboard is not so close to the side cover it's a little bit further away from the exhaust it just gives a little bit of extra out in every position it's one inch further out but it can also go a little bit further back a little bit further forward a little bit further down or a little bit further up in any one of those 16 positions now before you order one think you're going to have 16 possible positions it varies bike to bike sometimes you can't use the highest or lowest position because it might run into the side cover or run into the exhaust so even though it's an fb16 you might end up only getting eight or ten of the possible 16 options but you definitely when you use this you're always going to be an inch further out you're going to have some up adjustment you're going to have some down adjustment you're going to have some forward adjustment and some rearward adjustment so that the passenger can get their foot in the most comfortable position depending on how long how short their legs are and that's been a big game changer right there another reason for the fb16s is because almost everybody no matter how long or short their legs are almost everybody with the floorboards in their stock position the bottom of their thigh gets dug into by this grab handle okay so there's two choices one is you can remove the grab handle which is not such a great idea especially on a trike because sometimes in sharp curves any kind of aggressive writing the passenger wants to grab onto the grab handles that's why they're there to help give them a little bit of security and so um but you can get rid of the grab handle so they don't dig into the bottom of the thighs mary uses them she likes them so with the fb16 she was able to position the floor where we were able to get the floorboard in such a position that this is no longer digging into the bottom of her thighs cannot tell you how many customers have wanted to know if there's some way to keep grab handles but not have them dig into the bottom of the thighs you know could we reshape them could we make them different well it's easier to put the floorboards in such a position that these no longer dig into the thighs than it is to refabricate these grab handles and get them chromed and all that so that's a big thing there also while we're here you'll notice there's two ports here these are for heated gear when we decided to make our trip to the arctic circle we did not have heated gear and mary said she was not going up to alaska and riding along around all the glaciers and up in that cold without heated gear and we got heated gear that's a huge makes a huge uh benefit to the passenger to have that heated gear so they're not getting cold remember you as a rider you're being active you're concentrating you're thinking you're steering you're doing a lot of stuff that's generating some heat the passengers just sitting there and so they're more likely to be affected uh than the rider so that's a big thing so one of the biggest complaints about the tri-glide is how bumpy it is on a two-wheel bike you have one track and you can avoid a lot of the bumps with a two-wheel bike even a car or a truck you only have two tracks you have your left wheels your right wheels and you can avoid a lot of the bumps by straddling them with the trike you have three tracks it's harder to avoid bumps on a trike than any than a two wheel bike or even then a car or a truck and it's a straight axle and it has car tires which are stiffer than they need to be for the little bit of weight that a trike has relative to a car so the first thing that we do is we take the oem psi on the rear tires from 26 pounds down to 20 21 pounds and that gives some sidewall flex and when i first did it i was very concerned i stepped my way down slowly but i was concerned about going aggressively around a curve and having the tire pop you know the bead on the wheel and i can tell you i've ridden uh over 200 thousand miles on trikes and very aggressively for very many miles 20 21 pounds psi never even thought about that tire just never thought about coming off but having that lower air pressure will give a more comfortable ride the next thing you can do is a convertible comfort lift which changes the angle of the shock and smooths out the bumps a little so those are two things that are either low no cost or low cost that you can do to make the ride more comfortable then what does cost more but makes a huge huge difference is front and rear suspension and we have uh videos on that that will put up in the corner and we have written reports that we'll put down into the description but by having better front suspension so when that front tire hits a bump it articulates correctly so that by the time the rear tire hits the bump the rear suspension is able to do what it's supposed to do because the front has done what it's supposed to do also changing the rear suspension to make it more comfortable so i have in here some uh upgraded front suspension i also have upgraded rear shocks in here and the bike rides 99 as smooth as your best setup on a touring bike two-wheel touring bike very compliant very plush ride and no complaints about the bumps it is more expensive but in the big scheme of things it's not that big of an expense when you look at how much the trikes cost and that that makes a huge difference with the proper front and rear suspension along with the convertible comfort lift you're going to get 95 percent a good ride as your best independent rear suspension out there and so you can get a very very good ride on a harley trike if you set it up correctly we've done hundreds of hours of suspension testing developing different suspensions for the trike over the years and i will tell you this what the rider feels here is completely different than what the passenger feels here and so a lot of times when we do our testing i will ride as a passenger to see what the passenger is feeling like i write as a writer i will also write as a passenger to see what patch is feeling because there's a totally different feeling that you get up here than you get back here part of it is because you're not holding on to the handlebars when you're a passenger the other part is they feel much more of the rear suspension than they do of the front suspension because they're almost directly over the axle i mean they're like within an inch or two of being directly over the rear axle so to wrap it up get a good foot position that gets to your legs up off your thighs up off of the grab handles get more space right here experiment with different whether it's sheepskin beads whatever to get the best there reduce the heat reduce the heat and i'm going to give you one other little trick if you have done a good job at reducing the heat of your engine and you're not worried about your engine getting too hot for its own good when it's really hot out close your front lower faring vent your right lower faring vent that will make not as much air go across the engine not as much air come and hit this side panel right here and come up to the passenger i do not recommend doing that if you've not done other strategies to cool down your engine because you're reducing the amount of air flowing past your air-cooled engine when you do that but it does make your passenger more comfortable when it's really hot out to close that so get your feet where they need to be reduce the heat get more space here give them some places to put stuff up here right here get them a drink holder and get the suspension working well hope that answered the questions on how to make a trike ride comfortably for a passenger you all ride safe out there

Channel: DKCustomProducts

Views: 82,278

Keywords: Harley Davidson, dk custom, dk customs, DK Custom Products, DK, Comfort Lift, Convertible Comfort Lift, Lift Kit, Trike series Shocks, rear suspension, shocks, suspension, improved ride, comfort, quality, shock upgrade, trike, tri glide, freewheeler, street glide, sportster, lift kit install, progressive shocks, charts, test, results, harley, ride smoother, harley davidson street glide, harley shocks, passenger, rider comfort, trike passenger, Trike Ride Quality, Trike too bumpy

Id: HQVYFXV3yW0

Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 05 2021