Well, I was originally only planning on posting pictures after the install which was suppose to be pretty straight forward. The bars and bushings arrived from Carlini this past Wednesday. A friend of mine and I are doing the install ourselves. We test for the bars and measured for cable length and went down the street to a local shop to buy what we needed. I bought my new Barnett Clutch cable, the Goodridge brake line, fittings needed, and new factory control boxes that already came with extended wiring. Also ordered new mirrors which would be here next week, and bought a set of chrome Avon Renthal grips to see how they would fit. Got a few other misc items and we were on our way.

Now at this point, we had already torn down the front of the bike as needed, removed headlight, nacelle, Heritage bars, fork covers, etc. We had also already gone ahead and swapped in the new Carlini bushings.

The bars look fantastic, but my aggravation was about to begin. We ran through the wiring for the left side control box with no issue whatsoever and that was done in less than 10 minutes. Now we went to run the same on the right side, and again it went in easy, but wait a minute.....lol.....

We also have to run the TBW harness through on this side. This is where the trouble starts. The plugs wouldn't clear the 90 degree bends in the bars with the control box wiring inside. So we take that out, run the TBW wiring first then try to run the control box wiring but again space was limited.

We removed everything again and cut off the plugs, and crimped everything accordingly and tried that thinking it would work because it now had a smaller profile. WRONG!

The inside of the bars were left with VERY sharp corners, and there are a few places where the bars are stepped inside and the space going through is limited. I bought these bars, and paid the premium because various folks told me based on their experience the Carlini's and the Wild 1's are smoother to internally wire, and also because I liked the looks. But man what an ordeal this has all been.

So we remove all the wiring from the right side AGAIN, and then solder all the wiring with heat shrink over each connection to make the profile even smaller.

We fight with everything again, to run the wires through and the TBW is last to get pulled through and after muscling it some we FINALLY get it in! Whee, after 7 hours of this BS, the right side is wired and the bars are done, right?

So now we start on the plugs for the wires to swap them over so it's all plug and play. Wait for it, wait for it.......here it comes.....

This is where I just about wanted to torch my bike

We notice there's an extra plug on each end of the factory (taken off) control box wiring but not the same color wires on the end of the new wires....

So what's different......the damn CRUISE CONTROL!!!!!

So there I am having my (DOH!) Homer Simpson moment, kicking myself in the rear end for not even thinking of checking that when we bought everything. It's not Carlini's fault, it's not the sales guys fault at the local shop, I just plain and simply wasn't even thinking about that.

So this is where I'm sure you guys are cracking up (I don't blame you), but now I was forced with a decision, no cruise control, or take everything apart after fighting with it all day and start all over today and see if it would even work with these bars. I don't think it would because we would have to return the control boxes, and then cut and splice everything and try running it through with the 90 degree bends in the bars. So in my opinion the bars would have had to be returned as well.

Leave it to me to find something (different) that's difficult lol.

So after all this madness, we test mounted the bars to have them out of the way and so I could finally get a feel for them on the bike while I moved it into my buddy's garage. It was almost 10 PM and he had to go to work, so I am awaiting his phone call to go over and finish the install today.

I just needed to blow off some steam, I am a VERY particular person and the lack of cruise is going to annoy me because it was an added expense on the bike, but I am not going through all of this again, not right now anyways, lol. Maybe on the next bike.

I will post pictures after the install is complete, the bars do look killer on the bike, and I am considering leaving off the auxiliary light bar with the turn signals to clean up the look of the front end, not sure though. I am also considering removing my crash bar and highway pegs. The next mod will be the Stage 1 from FM when $$ allows, and then I want match painted hard bags as well.

Sorry for the rant, just wanted to vent and give everyone a heads up on wiring these bars, the Monkey bars my buddy had on his street glide were no where near this bad.

FM

 

Wow.....I am sorry to hear you had so much trouble. You are good at telling the story in words though. I could almost picture the steam coming out of your ears


I can't resist this - see those bars on my bike? They have cruise .........lol. Sorry.....I had to.

 

It's all good I figured someone would rub it in....

 

Man, thats sucks! I hate this saying but "been there done that". I couldnt live with the fact that its not right and would do it over..;-) If you pull everything back out run all the wires back in at the same time. I brought the throttle wires up to the control wires and taped them all to my pull wire. Dont worry, once you do it a few times you will figure out what works best...;-) make sure you post the pics when you finish. Just do it right....lol

 

This is what we had to do, just the first 90 degree bend catches all the wires/tape, the few times we would pull all the wires back out we could see the tape ripped up and the last time a few wires were even chaffed and you could see copper. What a PITA and I just feel they could have done a better job prepping the inside of bars that they know someone is going to run wires through.

 

I hope you staggered all the connections. I remember the first set of bars I put on I didnt stagger them and played HELL getting them through the bars. Your bringing back some bad memories for me...lol

 

There weren't connections to stagger because I bought new control boxes that were wired with longer cables. But after our pm's it looks like that might be what I am doing today. Sorry about the bad memories, but it's not like I'm having fun either, lol.

 

Well we finished the install today. I decide to leave the bike as is WITHOUT the cruise control, for now. We will properly extend my factory control boxes and wiring with time and patience, and then re wire the bars for the install at another point in time and I will have my CC back. Then I can sell the extended control boxes on here or on ebay to recover some of my money.

Other things I decided today finishing up was that the auxiliary light bar had to go, really cleans up the front end. Also the crash bar and highway pegs came off, to add to the clean look of the front end. The Avon renthal grip are VERY comfortable and look nice. My Arlen Ness mirrors are on order and will be here next week, I think I will reverse sides and mount them under the handlebars. The handlebars feel VERY comfortable, I think they look good, and the bike feels lighter and easier to maneuver in my opinion. Chrome fork legs are on the short list as well as Streamliner floor boards and shifter/brake pegs for me. I traded my rear floor board pans to my buddies dad for his RG pegs so that's done. I will have a bunch of parts for sale very soon.

This picture flat out sucks, but right now it's all I have and will have to do until tomorrow or Monday. It's late and I am on shift tomorrow, but now that's it's done I can really say I am glad we did it, and the satisfaction of doing myself after the aggravation has worn off is great as well.

So enough rambling......2010 RKC with 17" (1.25") Carlini Evil Ape's

 

looks very nice!!!
as i was reading your post, it made me wonder about when i wired my PYO. It was not an easy job too ut forget as soon as i ride it.

 

Bars look bitchin bro