Agreed, it goes on the solid chrome spacer on the front, not on the mount with the plastic insert.

 

Broke mine too. I thought I was just to rough. Now after reading everyones had the same problem another pos ACCESSORY! LOL

 

Dear WW1flyingace,
I installed the detachable tour pak kit today on my 09 EG Classic. For the front mounting posts, the instructions clearly show the metal spacers going on the inside and the rubber posts going on the outside. So I installed it this way. However, when I noticed that the front bracket rests on the spacers, I assumed that the instructions were wrong, and that they meant to have the metal spacers on the outside.
Wouldn't it make more sense to have the rubber posts on the inside so that the metal brackets rest on rubber?

 

Steve,

The front slot of the tour pack bracket has rubber/plastic inserts on it, so when mounted it IS rubber on metal. Is your trunk bracket missing the inserts on the front?

 

Thanks for your reply and the pics--very helpful. Yes, it is missing rubber inserts. Your set up makes sense because you have rubber meeting steel. Yet, why did HD put a rubber coated docking point to the outside of your metal ones? I wonder if the EGC bracket is different than your FLHX bracket, and they were trying to make the docking bracket flexible enough to handle both? I will check with the local HD dealer. If they don't have any answers and can't give me the rubber inserts for my trunk bracket, I will probably just swap the metal and rubber docking points. Wish the instructions were clearer....

 

Dear WW1flyingace,
One more thing: I assume your REAR tour pack brackets don't have the rubber inserts, but that your rear docking pins are the rubber ones, so that you have steel sitting on rubber in the rear. Is this right?

 

WOW! I have an '07 and same type of problem - "brackets too wide at the back, frame mounts too narrow". Sounds like the same engineer designed both.

I'm thinking of adding a washer or two between my rear plastic bushings and the frame to spread my bushings out a little and let the slots line up properly. Would something like that work for y'all?

 

I thought I had the same problem on my '09. While I was busy adding washers to make the rear bushings wider, I realized I had room up front to center the rack better. Once I did that, the back fit perfectly. ymmv....

 

I'll check that out Twinrider - thanks.

Steve

 

I bought the detachable 2 up luggage rack for my 08 RG. It needed a small amount of tweeking to make it slide right on. I think that the people who expect these sort of things to fit within 1 thousanths of an inch right out of the box have never worked in manufacturing. There are variations in most builds and will depend on acceptable tolerances. If you want a bike to have the kind of tolerances that you're talking about you better get ready to pony up even more cash. And by the way, I don't know about all the brackets, or if the one I got was an old one, but the package read made in the USA on it.