Well I just got back from the garage and I believe I have said more cuss words in past 20 mins then I have all summer! I am by no means a wrencher and when I looked at the Docking kit intructions for my sissy bar and luggage rack I was totally lost not to mention the two boxes the stuff comes in is loaded with a crap load of different nuts, bolts, spacers etc. I did find a post some pages back about installation on a SG but is it the same or close to a RK Classic? Right now I am thinking about calling my service manager in the morning and scheduling an appointment for them to screw with this damn thing. The instructions make it seem like ya damn near gotta disassemble the entire rear end of the bike and reroute half the **** to just to add the docking spacers for the sissy bar and luggage rack.

 

I agree with you. Took me two hours to get them on my 07 Custom and 3 of us to figure the instructions out. Not only that but the washer configuration didn't work out like the illustrations depicted. Eventually got it to work, but not without teaching myself a bunch of new curse words. The only thing I can say is man are they nice to have and you only have to do it once thankfully. Good luck!!

 

You need to almost throw the instructions away, but don't. There have been several threads on the docking kit installation. Just type "detachable docking kit" into the search box in the touring section and start looking at the threads and I think they will answer a lot of your questions. I have the luggage rack that attaches to the detachable sissy bar so I am not sure which one you have but I'm sure the docking kit is the same one. You actually don't have to disassemble the whole back of the bike. On my 06' RK FLHRI there was no need to re-route the airline to the shocks either. I am very mechanically inclined and even I swore at the destructions as they are total crap and even a couple of the torque values are wrong. Check out the different threads, I'm sure they will help you.

 

Thanks for the advice--I got mine on so that's behind me now (literally!) ; 0

 

I installed the front & rear kits on my RK Classic and yes the instructions suck...

You have various spacers and hardware which will be left over, I found some of the allen head screws didn't fit with any of the standard or metric wrenches in my complete set, and there isn't any really good pics of the process.

One thing I used to find the right spacers (they list them by thickness) was to use a micrometer I have for ammo reloading.

Good luck!

Edmo

 

I did that last weekend too instead of being out riding. Sure enough, when I was done, it started raining. Anyway, once it's all on it becomes clear how it is supposed to mount. A little confusion on where the actual mounting points on the scooter are, but maybe if you did a temporary hookup to the sissy bar and then held the whole thing in place over the back of the bike, it will make it more clear on where things will bolt in.

The thing that kept going through my mind was what my tour pac would sound like if it were dragging on the ground behind the bike because I didn't tighten something down correctly.