Top 10 Touring-Comfort Accessories & Mods for your Harley-Davidson Motorcycle

hey what's up guys matt here coming to you from laidlaw's harley-davidson so in today's video i wanted to cover a topic that i get asked a lot of questions about maybe not directly related to this topic but a lot of people want to ask me questions about comfort and i think everybody wants to go directly to suspension right away and that's obviously a huge factor in the overall ride comfort when you're going down the road on a harley-davidson but there are so many other factors that contribute to your overall comfort especially on a long road trip which is actually the focus that i want to really touch on in this video is long distance touring comfort on a harley davidson and so what i wanted to do was i wanted to go over my top 10 accessories that you can put on your bike to give you the most comfortable two-wheel long distance machine possible so i'm going to be going over my top 10 list of features or accessories that you can add to your harley-davidson to really increase the comfort and to hone your bike in to be a mileage eating machine so guys i'm going to go ahead and just cut the crap and i'm just going to jump into what i feel like is the number one most overlooked touring accessory that improves the comfort by a lot that very few people take advantage of it's not really a secret or anything it's just something that people overlook and i think that people don't realize just how much more comfortable that this makes the bike and so my number one accessory on the list is going to be the rider's back rest now a rider's backrest can be installed very easily on a touring chassis bike and i'm not going to jump in real deep guys in as far as what bikes are the best for the touring i'll just say that the touring chassis bikes surprise surprise are generally speaking the best bikes for touring now you can also set up a soft tail for touring and you know of course you can tour on a sportster as well but touring chassis bikes are just overall the most touring friendly just because of the nature of the chassis and the available accessories that you can put on the bikes and the ease of putting those accessories on the bikes as well the touring chassis bikes just have a lot better compatibility with this list of accessories i'm going to be going over the softel they have a lot of compatibility with these as well but then as you go down to sportsters you know you progressively have less and less compatibility and it's just harder to implement some of these accessories that i'm going to be going over here anyway sorry about that tangent so the rider backrest you can bolt right up to any touring chassis bikes a lot of people will ask me what is this big slit or this big hole that's in my seat on my road king or my street cloud on my road glide and i say well that hole right there is something that very few people use but a lot of people could benefit from and that hole there is an easement for you to be able to install a rider backrest the long and short of it guys harley-davidson has a couple different backrests they have one that's like a static position where it's a little bit harder to adjust you have to use tools to adjust it forwards and backwards they've also got one that has like a lever that goes right underneath your seat the cvo limiteds come with brighter backrests on them but basically a rider backrest being able to lean back in that seat really just takes a lot of the muscle tension off like your low back and like your core and just really improves the comfort a lot think of when you go to a sports game and you sit in the bleachers and you don't have anything to lean back on when you're at a sporting event it's horrible most professional stadiums nowadays have a seat back where you can lean back in the seat but after a while in those bleachers you're either leaning forward or you're just repositioning constantly it's just the most uncomfortable thing same thing with the motorcycle guys and so many of us ride without a back rest on our bike and i think a common thing you're going to find with a lot of these accessories that i cover is a lot of people like oh wow that turns my bike into like a geezer glide or that it totally kills the the look and style of the bike and yeah you're probably right but the good news is a lot of these rider backrests can be pulled right off one word of caution if you do get a writer's backrest you want to make sure that thing is adjusted just right unless you get the one that you can adjust on the fly with that one you can kind of adjust forwards and backwards to get the perfect fitting right now i personally don't have a rider's backrest because the seat that i have won't allow for one but on my next touring chassis bike i 100 no question i'm going to have a rider's back rest this single accessory that's oftentimes overlooked will increase your comfort by as much as 50 and that's a big number i don't throw that out lightly and we're talking about three or four hundred bucks installed to get one of these things again i can't stress how overlooked and how beneficial a rider's backrest really is if you're looking to take your comfort to the next level and you're a serious road warrior a rider backrest in my opinion is crucial all right guys so let's move on to the number two accessory that i feel like will dramatically increase your comfort on a long ride on your motorcycle and just so you guys know these are in no particular order these are my top ten in totally random order but number two for me would be highway pegs i'd say relatively speaking a very low percentage of long touring riders use these but the guys that do use them swear by them and will never go on a long ride without them i feel like breaking into the highway peg user world is kind of a barrier for some people i don't know if it's a mental thing or what i know probably for some people they don't like taking their feet away from their foot controls like their shift pegs and their rear brake but i tell you what when you're out on the open road and nothing's in front of you and you're got it in sixth gear and you're just cruising down the highway it does not take very much rider skill at all just to take your feet off the floor boards and prop them up on the highway peg and what this does is it stretches your legs it stretches your leg muscles it really helps relieve that restless leg syndrome out on a long haul on the bike sometimes it's just good to reposition your feet but highway pegs are most commonly mounted off of your engine guard i've seen highway pegs also mounted off of floorboards for people that are a little bit shorter in seam that way they don't have to reach as far but harley-davidson offers a couple with different arms some of them that will swivel back towards you some of them just are straight highway bars right off of the engine guard so this is something that needs to kind of be measured based on your inseam personally i think it's best if you have a slight bend in your knee when your legs are fully extended for me on a long road trip highway pegs are pretty much mandatory at this point i'm super surprised by a lot of my friends and people i ride with that don't have highway pegs maybe they just once again don't like the style don't like that extra peg on the side of their engine guard it makes the bike look a little bit more cluttered but in my opinion being able to stretch your legs out and have multiple positions for your feet out on a long ride will really help out a lot with your comfort by being able to just adjust your the muscles in your legs and your hips and everything you can buy a set of foot pegs and have them installed for about three hundred dollars depending on which mounting system you get and for me the value versus the cost that you put into it is a no-brainer coming in at number three and again these are in no particular order and number three is going to be either a windshield or a fairing now there's really no substitute to a full-size fairing so that would be like the batwing fairing that comes on a streak glide or an electroglide and then the shark nose fairing that would come on a version or variation of the road glide we also have a new fairing that comes on the lowrider st this year which is a smaller fairing and although the wind deflection properties are very good it's still not as good in my opinion as a road glide or a street glide fairing but guys having proper wind deflection and wind protection on a motorcycle would probably be at number one or number two in the most important things to make your bike touring capable and comfortable out on long road trips really the comfort benefit you get from a full fairing cannot be overstated by not having that wind constantly beating on you and just dragging your body in your head and just having the buffeting and the sound that you get from wind constantly passing over your head is an absolute game changer but again this is a different type of comfort a lot of people when they think of comfort they think of once again suspension and just the ride comfort but out on a long road trip when you're out on the open highway and you're doing 65 miles an hour plus wind deflection is pretty much just as important as like the suspension in your bike now there's definitely varying degrees of wind deflection like i said a shark nose or a batwing fairing with a tall windshield on there with lower leg fairings on there as well is gonna give you pretty much the best wind deflection you can get and for those of you who bought road guides and street glides it comes with that short smoked windshield do yourself a favor if you're going on a long road trip pay the couple hundred bucks and get yourself a taller one based on how tall you are a tier below that i would say would be like the full size windshield for a road king with the windshield you're gonna get a little bit more of the buffeting harley davidson's done a lot with the vented fairings in the last seven years to really reduce a lot of that uneven head buffing that you're going to get but a nice big windshield on a road king is pretty dang good you're probably about 50 maybe 60 percent of the comfort you're gonna get out of like a full fairing and then below that would be like a soft tail with like a bolt up windshield on it something like a slim with a windshield on there obviously the quarter fairing on the dynas and the modern soft tails is a very popular thing to do most of these fairings though i will say really don't do that much a lot of them are going to block your body wind but without a pretty tall windshield on these quarter fairings you're not gonna get that much wind deflection out of them there's still a heck of a lot better than nothing but as a general rule of thumb the bigger and wider the fairing or the windshield is the more wind deflection you're gonna get and therefore the more comfort you're gonna get once again if you're going on a long road trip for me a fairing or a good sized windshield is pretty much mandatory and if i was ranking these accessories in order of relevance a fairing and or windshield would be in my top three for sure so number four on the list is one that i think would rank if i was ranking these one through ten it'd probably rank down there around like eight or nine or something like that it's a little bit more insignificant than some of the ones i've already covered but for me number four is gonna be the heel shifter now a lot of guys that grew up in the motorcycle world that didn't really grow up in the cruiser world probably have never used a heel shifter and therefore you they may look at it and be confused by it and not really want to bother with trying to learn how to do it but a heel shifter is basically you add another shift peg behind your heel on your left hand side with your left foot and basically in a nutshell all it is is instead of lifting your toe up underneath the front shifter to shift up you are instead pressing down with your heel on the rear shift peg to shift up now again is this something that's really going to affect your overall comfort out on a long ride no again this is one that's a little bit less significant when you compare it to the other that i'm going to be talking about but that being said on a long ride especially if you're riding with large bulky boots being able to always press down as opposed to trying to tuck your front toe up underneath the front shift peg this can be a really nice feature that i prefer it's just a lot easier and a lot more comfortable especially on a long ride when you're doing a lot of shifting all right guys so let's jump into what everybody wants to talk about and that is suspension i gotta say of all the random phone calls i get on a daily basis this is probably the number one topic i get asked about and that is hey matt what shocks should i buy what is the best just level with me everybody wants to talk about how their shocks are the best but just tell me straight up what is the best shock out there and honestly guys i hate to say it but i don't know but here's what i will say and this is the same thing that i pretty much tell everybody as you get into that 800 900 or a thousand dollar range for rear shocks everything is gonna be pretty dang comparable to one another the street glide and the road glide have a 12 inch shock on there they've got 2.1 inches of travel which is not enough i'll just be brutally honest with you guys once you jump up to a 13 or 14 inch shock back there and you got to be careful with the 14s because a lot of times the 14s will start hitting your mufflers but if you go to like a standard 13 inch you can do a progressive you could do a legends you could do a fox they're all pretty dang good and they're within a pretty close margin of one another now once you start really narrowing down the exact type of riding you plan on doing that's where i could really start to try to guide you as to what shocks that i feel like might be the best for your use case anything where you're gonna be riding hard and there's gonna be a lot of cycling of the shock for a long time then theoretically something with a remote reservoir like a olins or something like that they're gonna be able to circulate that fluid and keep it a little bit cooler because once the oils in your suspension get really hot that's when you start to lose the performance of the suspension now here's where the opportunity is to really take your suspension to the next level is when you pair it up with front suspension a front and rear suspension that's designed with one another that will complement one another is gonna pretty much always beat out just a rear shock alone of any brand or caliber so what i typically tell people is if you want like a tier three suspension upgrade buy a nice set of rear shocks and throw it on your bike you want to bump it up to like tier two buy a rear and front suspension that are designed to complement one another like a full set of legends or what i'm personally running right now that i'm very happy with is the wilbur's suspension system but once you go to what i call a tier 2 suspension setup now you're paying more money you know you're going to be spending at least two thousand dollars on just parts for a front and rear suspension setup but if you're serious about getting the best ride comfort i would definitely recommend getting front and rear suspension again a front rear suspension that are designed to be used with one another can you run like a progressive front end with like a legends rear shocks yes of course but i personally feel like it's a safer bet and a little bit more user friendly and idiot proof if you buy a suspension that's been designed by the manufacturer to work in unison with one another now a tier one suspension setup and again this is suspension according to matt laidlaw just kind of oversimplified there's a lot more to it than this that would be like full on like race bagger type of suspension that you're gonna see like in king of the baggers or the bagger racing league or something that's like your whole like olin's inverted front end on there you can adjust your compression or rebound and all that good stuff you do that in the front and the rear you've got your remote reservoir shocks for your dial in the compression and rebound as well on a front end like that you can easily spend five to six thousand dollars and on a top of the line set of rear shocks you can easily spend fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars there as well do most people need that absolutely not i personally feel like if you're a road warrior that just wants really good stuff and you go on long distance touring then right around that two to three thousand dollar price range for like a drop in cartridge on the front end and a new set of rear shocks on the tail end that's a pretty dang good bang for your buck like i mentioned right now i'm personally running the wheelburst which is a spring and an oil in the front and a set of rear shocks that are self-leveling in the rear and i'm very happy with those right now i've also ridden with a full set of legends which is very very good as well i've also personally run the russ wernamont stuff in the rear which is a very very good rear shock as well but again it just comes down to what type of riding you're going to be doing and how much you want to spend so for number six let's take a close look at the seats on your motorcycle and i think this one should be the most obvious but for whatever reason it's not the actual part that your body is in contact with and the most weight bearing is your seat and yet a lot of people this is like one of the last things that you look at and it's also one of the most cost effective things that you can change to make the most dramatic comfort increase on your motorcycle as well so many times people want to look at shocks and suspension before they look at their seats and i get it changing your seat into something a lot more comfortable also a lot of people would argue that you degrade the overall look and sleekness and appearance of the bike because let's be honest the seat of an ultra limited is a lot more pillowy and just doesn't really look great on a street glide or something without a tour pack and the seat visually really affects the profile of the bike and makes up a large portion of the surface area when you're looking at it from a curb appeal standpoint but once again the theme that i always come back to is a lot of times you have to compromise form to get the function and really when it comes to the seat it's not an exception to the rule so as a general rule of thumb the bigger wider more surface area thicker cushion you have on the bike the more comfortable it's going to be which i'm not spouting off rocket science here guys me personally i have a seat that i feel like is kind of a happy medium i'm running a bmc corbin seat on my bike the surface area is a little bit more cupping wider the weight of me the rider is a little bit more evenly distributed across a larger surface area i have a nice little lower lumbar lip in the back as well which is a good substitute to putting a full on rider backrest on it's not quite as good but you do get a nice bump in comfort when you have a step up on your seat there i personally run two different seats it's very easy to swap out of seats it's one screw so i'll have my solo rider seat i'll have my two up passenger seats if you can afford it it's nice to have different seats for different occasions and different uses if you want to go all in saddlemen makes a seat called the road sofa that's really really plush and premium very comfortable harley-davidson has a hammock seat or you can check out their sundowner line these are all very good choices if you're going for maximum comfort and on a nice top of the line seat you're gonna spend about four to seven hundred dollars which may sound like a lot but when you compare it to some of these other comfort things i'm going over a new comfortable seat on your bike is actually a is a pretty dang good bang for your buck and weighs out very favorably in dollars spent to comfort gained ratio so the seventh accessory or modification that i want to cover that's really going to influence the overall comfort of your harley davidson motorcycle is your bars so i want to say changing the bars and modifying the bars is probably in the top three most common modifications we see at the dealership and people change their bars for a bunch of different reasons sometimes it's just style an example of that would be like ape hangers sometimes it's a fitment thing where guys like to have a certain pullback and upright seating position when they're riding their harley but i really want to focus on ergonomics and ergonomics as it relates to a motorcycle is really the relationship between your seating position your feet position and your hand position which is also commonly referred to as the rider's triangle so there's a certain range or spectrum of latitude on a seat you can get like a seat that pushes you back two inches which is actually exactly what i did or a seat that bumps you up floorboards can be moved around you can go from mid controls to forward controls or forward controls to mid controls and then bars the spectrum becomes even bigger in terms of what you can actually do and exactly where you can place your hands now i'm not going to be going into style or style suggestions or anything like that that's a whole different conversation but if i'm just cutting to the chase as far as comfort is concerned i personally feel like bars that are about four inches below your shoulder height that have a far enough pullback that allow you to sit in like an upright position on your bike is probably the best comfort setup that you can get on your bars the most common mistakes i see are people that put their bars above their shoulders and although you can get a pretty badass look doing something like that after a while it's just not the most comfortable thing sometimes you get like weird pinching in your back sometimes the blood drains out of your hands and your hands fall asleep or the other thing that you don't want is your bar is just too far away where you have to lean forward to hold your bars so if you're leaning forward that's going to put undue pressure on your low back you won't be able to utilize a rider's back rest if you have one on your bike and bars are really tough because there's no good way to really test it out unless you can find a bike that has the exact bars that you're looking to buy so many times i have customers come in that say oh do you have a bike on the floor that has 14 inch bars on a road glide and sometimes i get lucky and i have it but most of the time the exact bar that people think is gonna fit them we don't have it just sitting around on our floor and to change bars you're looking at over a thousand dollars especially if you have to change out cables and so somebody may spend fifteen hundred dollars or so changing out bars only to find that the ergonomics aren't exactly like they wanted and i don't have a really good solution for this but what i do know is if you get it right this can make or break your comfort game out on the road on a bike if you get it wrong however this can be one of those modification mistakes that will haunt you for the rest of the time you own your bike as long as you have the bars set up incorrectly on your motorcycle and i've seen it before and i hate to see it but guys that get the wrong bars that just don't fit them and the ergonomics aren't quite right after an hour into their ride just weird muscles start to get pinched on their back and things like that and it just kind of becomes a nightmare so really the best thing you can do and it's easier said than done is just to find a friend or find a bike somewhere maybe it's in a pre-owned inventory at a dealership set on a bike that has modified bars or as close to yours as possible and then make small tweaks from there but i will admit this can be a tough one to get right for a lot of people number eight on my list of accessories that you can add to dramatically increase the comfort of your motorcycle is cruise control now cruise control is one of these things that you don't know what you're missing until you've tried it and then once you've tried it and you've been on a long trip with it you can't live without it unlike cars motorcycles don't all commonly come with cruise control cruise control is one of these options that's still really only offered from the factory on touring focused bikes you're not gonna find cruise control on sport bikes you know upright naked sport bikes and even a lot of the smaller to mid-sized cruisers you're not going to find cruise control on currently two of the soft tails that harley davidson offers has cruise control on it so your lowrider st and your heritage both have cruise control and it definitely makes sense on these models because they're more of a touring focused bike even the touring chassis harley-davidsons didn't all necessarily come with cruise control until the 14 model year when the rushmore project came out for a long time it was a factory option that you paid extra for but i'll tell you what when you're logging three four five six seven hundred plus miles in a day to be able to relieve that tension off your right hand and wrist is one of those things that like i said once you experience it you can't ever live without it just to be able to set the control and drop your hand down for a few minutes really helps out with the fatigue on your hand a lot i know it's really easy to drop your left hand once in a while and take a little bit of a break but without cruise control if you're out there on the highway doing 65 miles an hour plus it's pretty much impossible to drop your right hand and give it a bit of a rest if you don't have cruise control now there are devices out there where you can stiffen your throttle and so the throttle won't snap back i call that poor man's cruise control and i don't really like those systems just because it can be kind of dangerous if in the moment you have like a panic situation and you need to reverse the throttle direction quickly plus with the electronic cruise control you can hit the button and make it go up and down by one mile increments it shuts off when you hit the brake much like any cruise control is going to function that we're all used to and that's also kind of a big safety thing as well but again guys i'll repeat myself if you've never used cruise control and you're a guy that likes to travel on their motorcycle i would highly recommend and encourage you to try it out because once you try it out this comfort factor combined with everything else i'm talking about in this video is an absolute game changer number nine on my comfort accessory list is going to be lower leg fairings now i think most people that use these probably just buy a bike with them on there like an ultra limited or a road glide limited i think very few people add them after the fact although i know it does happen sometimes this would be an accessory that i think is more of like a use case accessory like if you live in the cold i think it's probably more relevant than if you live in the heat because it does block some of the airflow passing over your engine but in harsher conditions like rainy weather or most notably really cold weather the lower leg fairings are actually very very nice to have and will definitely increase your comfort out on the road so the road glide limited and the ultra limited they actually have to stay on there because the lower leg fairings actually house the radiators for the twin cooled milwaukee 8 engine so they cannot be removed and i think for a lot of people they don't buy these bikes because they don't like the look of the lower leg fairings they definitely change the overall appearance and profile of the bike pretty significantly and take it up into that full terror image very quickly but i'll tell you what i've ridden in some cold weather with the lower leg fairings and just the fact that they deflect that additional windshield off your body but also mostly off of your legs that really makes a big difference when you're out there in the cold weather you combine those lower leg fairings with a nice full size like bat wing or shark nose fairing and you pretty much create an entire bubble around your body so there's absolutely no wind hitting your body at all and then if you're a stereo guy you can mount a couple speakers on the lower leg fairings as well so you kind of have a dual benefit there but if i were to rank these i'd probably rank them pretty dang low on my list just in terms of overall comfort gains with these and like i said if you live in warmer climates you probably don't want these because most of the time if you're riding in hot weather you want that air passing over your legs and the engine area but if you're a guy that primarily travels and does a lot of long distance riding i would encourage you to get a limited and i don't want to turn this video into me trying to help you find the right bike i've got plenty other videos that do that but just know if you want the absolute best wind protection and protection from the elements then lower leg fairings are awesome if you're riding in the rain everybody knows from your knee down to your foot on the front of your leg where your shin is it gets absolutely soaked in the rain when you're riding a bike this is going to completely eliminate that problem now the final and number 10 accessory to add comfort to your motorcycle for long-haul touring application is going to be heated grips now this is yet again another accessory that i think a lot of people overlook it's one of those things that you don't know what you're missing until you've tried it and then you gotta have it so obviously this is a cold weather item but even in sunny southern california where i live in the winter time especially late at night or early mornings this is something that i personally would use and have used when you're out on the road and it's cold outside there's really nothing worse than having cold hands and a lot of times if your hands are out in the winds they're not behind a fairing or something like that having cold hands can absolutely make your ride miserable and although you may have pretty dang good gloves on full finger insulated gloves after a while there's really nothing you can do to get away from the chill of the cold wind but being able to turn on the heated grips and change the intensity based on what you need can be an absolute lifesaver right now from the factory the bikes that come with heated grips are your limiteds your road glide and ultra limited and then your cvo road glide limited and the pan america special comes with the heated grips as well so most of the bikes that are sold do not come with the heated grips but they are an accessory that you can buy out of the catalog but if you're a long haul touring guy the heated grips in my opinion and once again i know i keep saying this guys but that's why i'm making this video the heated grips are absolute mandatory you got to have them and i think that's really been the theme of this video is the top 10 accessories that you didn't know you needed but you definitely do need that make a significant difference out on the road when you're touring the thing that's nice about the heated grips is the versatility as well you just shut them off when you don't need them and it's like they were never there but when you do need them you just dial them up based on your needs the pan america special has three intensity settings but all the other bikes have a knob on the left hand grip that have like a one through ten i wanna say dial and you just dial up the intensity to where you need it if you're logging a lot of miles and travel into a lot of different states or countries or whatever it may be i guarantee you you're going to eventually use your heated grips and having them is going to make your ride a lot more enjoyable thanks a lot for watching guys if you feel like i left an accessory out please leave it in the comment section below i want to get your opinion or if you agree with my choices please let me know as well i want to hear from some of you hardened road warriors that have logged more miles than i have if there's a point about one of the accessories that i left out leave it in the comment section below if there's an accessory that left out altogether mention it below a notable mention that i left out was heated seating the heated seats are available on the cvo limiteds those can be very nice i haven't used them that much just because i've never owned a cvo limited never been on a big long road trip on a cvo before but let me know what you guys thoughts are appreciate you guys watching if you'd like to support the channel please check out matt hyphenlaidlaw.com for all your aftermarket accessory needs and if you're looking for a bike in southern california come see us at laidlaw's harley-davidson la area's oldest largest and finest i'll see you guys on the next one later oh

Channel: Matt Laidlaw

Views: 369,908

Keywords: Harley-Davidson, Motorcycles, Laidlaw's, Motorcycle Touring, Motorcycle accessories, Comfort accessories, Matt Laidlaw, Street glide, Road Glide, Road King, Electra Glide, Ultra Limited, Road Glide Limited

Id: aGV-5UhqO54

Length: 28min 43sec (1723 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022