I installed a set of 14” Paul Yaffe Monkey Bagger Bars on my 2017 FLHTK Ultra Limited using all stock cables / wiring. Although the instructions on the Bagger Nation website state that “when changing from stock bars on your 2014-Later Batwing Fairing model to our Monkey Bagger Bars, you NEED cable and/or wiring extensions if you are going with bars taller than 8", that’s not true if you’re willing to do a little work.

Tools needed:
Ratchet Wrench / Extensions
½ Socket
½ Deep Well Socket
9/16 Deep Well Socket
¾ Socket
12mm Open / Box End Wrench
¾ Open / Box End Wrench
5/32 Allen Head Wrench
1/4 Allen Head Wrench
T25 Torx Bit
T27 Torx Bit
File and / or sandpaper
Dremel Tool with small grinding bit and small sanding bit
Dyke / Diagonal Pliers
Phillips Screw Driver
Flathead Screw Driver

Supplies Needed:
Sturdy tape (e.g. duct tape)
Blue painters tape
Weed Whacker Line
Wire Pulling Gel
Safety pins, or other extremely fine-tipped pick like tool

I used the following video as inspiration for the project:

This video was incredibly helpful for figuring out how to work with the Deutsch electrical connectors:

Although you could certainly do the project with the bike on a kickstand, it’s a lot easier to work with if you have the bike up on a jack. I use one from Redline Engineering that allows me to move the bike around the garage as needed during the project.



First remove the seat. Although I did not disconnect the battery during this project, it probably wouldn’t be a terrible idea to do so. There are a handful of electrical connectors that will need to be disconnected to allow you to remove the gas tank. Although they’re pretty straight forward to keep in order (i.e. grey connector goes to gray plug and black connector goes to black plug), I took the couple of extra seconds to label each connection with blue painters tape. The first plug I disconnected got a label that said “A” on it, along with the part it mates with. The next plug / cable pair got labelled “B”, etc. I continued this convention throughout the project to help keep everything orderly / prevent confusion. There are two bolts that connect the gas tank to the backbone of the frame that will need to be removed.



Next step is to remove the bolts (one on the left side of the bike and one on the right) that connect the gas tank to the frame. You’ll use a ½ socket.



The gas feed line is a quick disconnect. Simply pull down on the outer sleeve and the line will disconnect. A few drops of gas will splash (from the line itself) but a check valve keeps the rest of the gas in the tank, so there’s no need for the gas tank to be empty. A paper towel or rag is more than sufficient to absorb the handful of drops.



Now the gas tank lifts right off. Find a safe spot for it where it’ll be out of the work area and drape a towel or blanket over it to protect the paint while it’s off the bike.



Similarly, throw a moving pad or old blanket over the backbone of the bike and put a towel over your front fender. Dropped wrenches have a nasty habit of finding chrome or exposed paint.



Remove the dash panel. You’ll use a 5/32 Allen wrench on the bolts (one on the left side and one on the right side of the cover).



Behind the dash panel you’ll see two wire bundles attached via electrical connections.



Disconnect the connectors and label them.




Remove your auxiliary lamps. You’ll need either a ½ deep well socket or a ½ wrench to remove the acorn nuts.



Disconnect the electrical connection to the lamps, and then carefully place the lamps out of the work area.



Remove the bolts on the fairing holding your windshield in place. Carefully place the windshield out of the work area. Once the windshield was out of the way, I then re-installed the center windshield bolt (just a few threads) to help hold the outer fairing in place as I removed the rest of the bolts.



Remove the bolts (two bolts on the left side and two bolts on the right side) that attach the inner fairing to the outer fairing.




Although you could certainly do it yourself, I had a second person help me when it was time to remove the outer fairing. At this point the center windshield bolt (that I had re-installed before) is the only thing holding the outer fairing in place. With a helper holding the outer fairing, I removed the windshield bolt and tilted the outer fairing off. You’ll then have access to the electrical connector that clips to the headlight. Disconnect the headlamp connector and then carefully place the outer fairing out of the work area.



Here’s what it looks like with the outer fairing removed.



The next step is to label the plugs / connector pairs to make it easy to hook everything up at the end of the project. After everything is labelled, disconnect your cables.




After separating the electrical connections, some of the wire bundles need to be removed from the fairing by carefully dislodging the plastic plug from the fairing chassis.

 

Next remove the lower trim piece. There’s a stud on each side of the forks that is removed with a 9/16 deep well socket.



There are wire bundles on each side of the inner fairing that have to be detached. Carefully pry / pull to get the plastic plugs holding the bundles in place from the chassis.




Remove the two remaining studs (one on each side) attaching the inner fairing to the forks. You’ll need your 9/16 deep well socket. Rock the inner fairing back approximately 45 degrees, and then slide outwards and away from the bike. Carefully place the outer fairing out of the work area.





Here’s what it looks like once the inner and outer faring is removed



Secure your clutch and brake master cylinder. It’s very important that they not be allowed to dangle upside (to avoid the possibility of air making its way in to the lines). Another consideration is allowing them to flop down and scratch chrome / paint. I opted to zip-tie them to the back bone of the frame to keep them out of the way.



Take note of which plug is for the left & right side handlebar controls / corresponds to the connector on the frame. The next step is to remove the hand controls and pull the wires out of the stock handlebars. You’ll need a T25 and T27 Torx bit. Once the cables are free, reattach any labels that were damaged as you pulled the wires through the handlebars.





I installed polyurethane bushings (these particular ones are made by Arlen Ness). The OEM bushings are made out of rubber to help absorb vibrations. However, when you install apehangars the increased leverage afforded by the taller bars make it more likely that the bars will move around on you when you’re maneuvering the bike. Stiffer plastic bushings help keep the handlebars in place. You can see the OEM rubber bushings installed in the triple trees in this pic.



Here is where the riser bolt is physically located. I used a ¾ wrench to help break the bolt free, followed by a ¾ in socket to remove the bolt. It’s easiest to remove riser bolts with the handlebars still bolted to the bike.



As you can see, when you leave the handle bars attached they are clamped down (part 5) and physically connected to the risers (part 10/11). When you remove the riser bolts (part 15) you can then set the whole handlebar assembly to the side while you drive out the OEM bushings (part 8), spacers (part 9), and end cap (part 7) from the triple trees. A light tap was all it took to remove the old rubber bushings and reinstall the new hard plastic ones in place. With the risers attached to the clamp via clamp bolts (part 1) and the handlebars keeping everything straight, proper alignment of the risers is assured when you reinstall the riser bolts. Per the service manual, proper torque value is 30-40 ft-lbs. Don’t forget to apply blue Loctite to the bolts.



Once your new bushings are installed and the riser bolts are torqued in place, then you can remove the handlebar clamp bolts and carefully place your factory handlebars out of the work area. You’ll need a ¼ Allen Wrench to remove the clamp bolts.



Now it’s time to transition over to the workbench where you set down your inner fairing. The gameplan is to reposition the plugs inside your fairings that the handlebar control wires attach to. The factory configuration has the connectors facing forward (towards the headlights), but we’re going to change the routing so that they face towards the rear of the bike. This will give us the extra space needed to use the factory wires without worrying about wiring harness extensions.

The first step is removing the two plastic screws that help attach the plastic plate at the bottom of the radio.



To get good access to the screw, remove the plastic plug holding the wire bundle in place.



If you try and remove the plastic screw strictly by using your Philips screw driver you’re nearly guaranteed to strip out the head of the screw. Apply light pressure on the backside of the head with a flathead screwdriver to help lift the screw body as your rotate it with your Philips. You’ll see once it comes out that all the plastic screw is doing is expand another plastic wedge piece that helps keep the cover plate in place.



With the plastic cover plate free, you can now flip it upside down to gain access to the plugs inside the fairing that accept the handlebar control wires.




Clip the zip ties holding the wire bundles in place and reposition the handlebar control connectors to the back portion of the plate (now facing the opposite direction than the factory configuration).




Reinstall the plastic cover plate. Carefully tighten the plastic screws in to the wedge expansion plugs, and reattach the wire bundles to the chassis by pressing the plastic plug back in to the hole in the sheet metal.

 

Next we’ll need to concentrate on maximizing the efficiency of the clutch and brake hydraulic hose routing. The goal here is to get as little wasted hose length due to physical interference with other cables / bracketing. The first step will be to address the OEM configuration of the hoses. We’ll start by disconnecting the electrical connections associated with the ABS. It’s found by the right fork.



With the electrical connectors out of the way, you can see the OEM configuration for the hoses in the mounting bracket. As you can see, the brake line occupies the top spot.



I unclipped the clutch hose and move it to the top portion in the mounting bracket. The extra space this grants is vital to giving the hose room to stretch out once the clutch assembly is mounted on the handlebars. The brake line is allowed to “free float” above the clip. Once you’re rerouted the cable, reconnect your ABS electrical connectors.




Similarly, we’ll change the hose routing configuration on the bracket / clip that is stationed on the frame backbone (above the engine). The factory configuration has the brake hose at the bottom.



By moving the brake hose to the top position in the bracket / clip just a little extra “slack” is created.



We’ll continue to make extra space for the brake hose by routing it inside the plastic box that runs along the frame backbone and protects the wiring harness. When you pop the top cover off you can see that there’s plenty of room inside the plastic box. You’ll need to cut an opening in the plastic wall to provide access for your hose to run inside the box.




After cutting an access port in the wall of the plastic box I used a file followed by sand paper to clean up the edges of the plastic and smooth / deburr the freshly cut portion. I also wrapped some tape around the portion of the hose that would be in the vicinity of the plastic edge.



Once the brake hose is rerouted inside the plastic box that runs along the frame back bone, you can snap the top cover back in place.

 

The next step is to start routing the handlebar controls internal to the bars; it looks SO much cleaner than running the wires along the outside of the handlebars. Because my bike has heated grips, there’s a LOT of bulk in wiring that has to be routed inside the bars. On the right side I needed to snake wiring that included the throttle by wire cables, power to the heated grips, and handlebar switch controls, all inside the handlebars. That bundle of wires takes up a bunch of physical space inside the bars while you’re trying to get them to snake through. As far as I’m concerned, the only way to get all those wires to route through is to take off the Deutsch connectors. The key on this is to take copious notes (and cell phone pics) on which wire correlates to each slot in the Deutsch connector. A dental pick works well to help disassemble the Deutsch plugs.


**** Critically Important****

Take note of the orientation of the individual pin as it goes in / out of the connector. There’s a distinct notch on the pins, so pay attention and take notes of which way the pin needs to point (as it relates to the “top” of the Deutsch connector) for when you go to reattach the electrical connectors. Take the time to watch the video at the top of this writeup for further discussion on how to disassemble the connectors.

[img] https://i.imgur.com/Zd9oA2B.jpg



I made a bundle of the throttle by wire and heated grip cables by taping them together. At the same time, I attached a long length of weed wacker line. To keep the line from slipping, I wrapped a roll of tape around weed wacker line for approximately 80 percent of the cabling, and then routed the line back down the length of the cable and wrapped it in tape a second time. This might have been over kill, but I didn’t want the weed wacker line to slip while I was trying to pull the wire bundle through. I did the same thing for the right switch control cables.




Now it’s time to get the cables through the bars. Fish the weed wacker line through (I used a piece of twine tied to a small socket) to help get the weed wacker line started through the bottom of the bars. Make sure you feed the starter lines for both your throttle and switch control wire bundles prior to trying to pull the cables through. Apply copious amounts of cable gel (I purchased mine at Lowes) to the outside of your cable bundle. Now the miserable part starts.

You’ll need to pull with great force on the weed wacker line, while also pushing on the other end of the bundle of wires. You’ll find that the bundle binds up inside the bars periodically as you’re trying to pull it through, and the only thing you can do is pull it slightly back out and try to get the bundle to twist inside the bars while you continue to pull on the feed line. Having a second person to help push / twist the cables while you pull is close to a necessity. Given enough time you’ll eventually get everything to feed through.



If you’re working with a bike that has heated grips, you’ll need to reconnect the heated grip power cable. After the throttle by wire assembly is seated inside the bar, plug in the heated grip connector male pins to the female holes in the TBW unit.



Repeat your performance on the left side. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about near as much bulk on the left side wire bundle, as there’s no TBW cabling to contend with. I still had two bundles to run (one for my heated grips and one for my left side handlebar switch controls), but because the wire bundles are smaller it’s easier to work everything through the bars.



I ran into a problem here: although I got the left side wires to run through the bars just fine, I could NOT get the left side heated grip on to the bars. The problem is that the heated grips have a heating element that has to run on the inside of the bars. I think the inner diameter on the Paul Yaffe bars is ever so slightly smaller than the OEM bars. I fought with it for quite a while, but I could not get the left grip to mount on to the handlebar because I couldn’t manage to get the heating element inside the grip to slide in to the the bars. I ended up using a Dremel tool with a grinding bit to radius / chamfer the inner diameter of the Paul Yaffe bar. I then used a sanding bit to smooth the metal and deburr the edges. This created a lightly polished feedramp to help guide the heating element contained within the grip in to the handlebars. This allowed the heated grips to slide inside the bar, but it was still a really tight fit.



With the left grip installed, now I could focus on feeding the left handlebar switch cables through. Same story here: pull on the weed wacker line while pushing the wire bundle from the other end.



Once all your wires are internally feed through the bars, snip the ends of the weed wacker line off and cut back the tape you used to create your bundles as far back as you can to expose the wires / pins. As you can see, there’s barely enough cable left over with these 14 inch bars to leave a little wiring poking out the bottom of the bars.



Now it’s time to reconnect your Deutsch connectors. This is where your earlier detailed notes and cell phone pics pay dividends. Again, you’ll need to know which way the pins face (up for these type of connectors). Once the connectors are reattached, reapply labels to the wire bundle (ensure the plugs has the same naming convention as the when you previously labelled them with the OEM bars). It’s going to be really cramped work here (due to how little the wires / pins actually stick out of the bottom of the handlebars) so you may want to grab a set of tweezers to help guide the pins in place.

 

Finally it’s time to bolt the handlebars up to the bike! Take the time to put your seat back on the bike and verify that you have the bars tilted at the correct spot forward/backwards for your arm reach. You’ll see white factory stickers taped to the hose lines (that were formally out of view inside the fairings). Now that they’ll be visible, it’s worth taking the time to remove the stickers. There’s also rubber sheathing on the lines that I trimmed back along the newly visible portion. Take a moment to clean the outside of the hoses; I used a shot of brake cleaner sprayed into a rag to remove the sticky residue from the remnants of the stickers that I removed.



As you can see, there’s not much excess cabling length sticking out of the bottom of your new bars once the connectors are reattached.



Have a helper slide the inner fairing in place, and then tilt it back at a 45-degree angle. There’s JUUUUST enough space for you to reach in and snap the connectors together.



Once that’s done, tilt the inner fairing forward. Your inner fairing should bolt back up to the forks with no drama. I couldn’t quite get the holes inside the inner fairing to match up with the mounting location on the forks at first. I realized that my bars were BARELY touching the inner fairing because they were rotated too far forward. I loosened the handlebar clamps and rocked the bars back a ¼ of an inch; this gave me more than enough clearance to allow the inner fairing to settle in to place and allow me to bolt it to the forks.


Your next challenge will be ensuring you’re getting every possible fraction of an inch possible for your hydraulic and clutch hose line routing. Prior to hooking up your electrical connectors, make sure that the hose is routed through the fairing as efficiently as possible. I found that when I slid one bundle of electrical wires out of the way and allowed the hose to route underneath it (instead of on top of the bundle as in the factory configuration) it freed up quite a bit of space. It’ll only take you a moment or two to glance at the setup and figure out the best routing for your hose. When you are satisfied with the hose routing, hook up your electrical connectors. This is when all those labels you made earlier pay off as you simply snap one labeled electrical connection to its corresponding labeled receptacle.

You’ll likely find that the angle of your hose isn’t optimal to maximize hose length / routing. Here’s how mine looked when I initially hooked it up.


I used a 12mm box wrench to just barely crack the banjo bolt open. It only needs to move a couple of degrees to allow you to rotate the hose; you need to be extremely careful to allow air in to the system. Reposition your hose and then tighten the banjo bolt.



I found that I needed to run the hydraulic clutch hose along the inside portion of the handlebars to allow enough room.



The dash panel would not bolt up initially. I figured out that I needed to create a small cutout / channel on the back of the dash panel to provide physical space for the hose. I used a dremel tool to grind off enough room on the back portion of the dash panel to allow the hose to pass by. If you go slowly and carefully you can remove more than enough plastic off the back side of the dash panel to provide clearance without marring the glossy front side of the dash panel / damaging the cosmetic appearance of the panel when it’s mounted.



The brake line runs along the outside edge of the handlebar. No radiusing of the dash panel was necessary on the right side.



The next step was to turn the bars full left / full right to verify function. Once I was satisfied that there was no binding or issues, it was time to bolt everything up and put the bike together! I hooked up the fork trim piece, outer fairing, windshield, and auxiliary lights.




Now I was ready for the moment of truth: time to start the bike up. I proudly gathered the family around, only to quickly find out that all the controls on my right handlebar switch did not function and the nothing happened when I pushed the start. Words can’t express how frustrated, angry, and dejected I felt. I opted to go to bed for the night and tackle the project the next day.

The next morning I woke up dreading the prospect of a broken cable inside my handlebars; the absolute last thing I wanted to do was pull the cabling and rerun it after all the hassle I went through to fish it internally through the bars. I decided to check the connectors. This meant pulling the inner and outer fairing back off the bike to gain access to the Duetsch connectors that link the handlebar controls to the connections inside the fairing. Luckily, I quickly determined that one of the pins didn’t seat when I reassembled the Deutsch connector the previous day. Although I would much rather have avoided any drama on the project, I was happy to have quickly discovered the problem. Once the pin was reseated in the Duetsch connector (with an audible click), I was sure that I had solved the issue.

After buttoning the bike back together I was relieved to discover that handlebar controls now worked (e.g. turn signals / radio controls). However, I still got absolutely nothing when I pressed the start button! After a few choice words (and a conscious thought that putting a hole in my garage dry wall would do nothing to solve the problem), I opted to step away from the garage for awhile. A little fresh air did me some good; when I came back I noticed that the bike wasn’t in neutral. As soon as I shifted the transmission out of gear, the bike turned over with the starter! Only one little problem…. although the bike was turning over, it wouldn’t actually start. Luckily this was easy to diagnose: I hadn’t hooked up the fuel line when I bolted the gas tank up to the frame. How embarrassing. Once I was hooked up the gas line, the bike started like a champ.

Although I’ve only had them on the bike for a little over two weeks, I’m 100% sold on these bars and would absolutely do them again if I had a different touring bike. I find the wrist angle to be more comfortable, and the height of the handlebars is absolutely perfect for me (I’m just a smidge over six feet tall). The extra leverage feels like power steering when I’m doing low speed maneuvers.


A few thoughts from the project:
-I set up a folding table in the garage to provide a clean and neat workspace. Keeping all my parts and pieces physically in one spot helped me keep track of my project.



-A little organization goes a long way. As I mentioned, I took extensive notes along the way. When I took small parts off (such as the electrical connectors), I placed them in a plastic baggy along with the 3x5 note card related to the part. Waaaaaay cooler than trying to remember which pin goes to which location or looking around for tiny parts.



-Go easy on the torque you apply to smaller parts. I overtorqued one of the Torx bolts in in the handlebar control switch housing. This damaged the threading (the thin-walled metal around it snapped), and now I have to replace the cover.

-Like most projects, this took longer than I thought it would. The very best case scenario is that this is a 3-4 hour job after you’ve done it a few times, but you’d be wise to start this early on a Saturday morning when you have the whole weekend free. I churned through most of a three day weekend fighting through it. I definitely could do it on a Saturday now, though.

-The sharp angle at the top of Paul Yaffe bars look really cool, but make it extremely hard to pull cable / internally route through the handlebars. You’re really going to have to work for it. Handlebars with a more gentle radius / bend will be much easier to deal with. Heated grips make the whole process even more difficult due to the extra bulk of wires. However, it’s worth it! I love my new bars and the grips work like a champ in the cool fall mornings.

-14” bars are the absolute limit of what you can get away with. Again, that sharp upward “peak” at the top of Paul Yaffe bars looks cool but adds to the length that you must route your cables through. 12 inch or shorter bars would have plenty of wiring / hose length available (if you follow the rest of the mods I did).

-My check engine code was illuminated for several days after the project. I think it’s from turning the engine over without the gas line installed / fuel starving the bike. I wrapped up the project the day before I had a long multi-day trip scheduled, so I never had time to pull the engine code while I was on the road. Regardless, the engine fault code cleared itself out and hasn’t reappeared since.