I get a kick out of dragging the foot pegs but the original feelers are crap and I figured I might as well make a spectacle of the thing while I am at it.
I saw
this thread by Xyzzy but the price for those is high getting them to Australia ($130au) so I found some that were for an VTX 1300 and gave those a shot for $50au.
These screwed straight in and where pretty much the right length so I thought I was onto a winner.
This however IS NOT the case.
While these things spewed sparks very nicely they were trashed in 4 laps of a round-a-bout so unless you are pretty light on them I would not advise the use of these.
If you look at the photo above you might notice the damage my Vice Grips did to the things. They are very soft so I should have realized what was going to happen.
Sorry about the blurry image but you can see these have gone from brand new to gone and eating into the foot pegs in a few laps of hilarity.
$50 bucks gone like that but I am an infant at heart and really got a kick out the sparks so I decided to revisit
Xyzzy's thread again. The bit about them being not quite in the right place because the Goldwings pegs are a little lower then the Valkyries bothered me so I emailed pepsx.com and asked them if they do them for Valkyries. I got a response back really quick from Dan saying that he was sorry but at the time there wasn't much of a market for Valkyries.
Stuff it, there must be something I can do so I thought I will give this thing one more shot and ordered the
titanium peg savers from PepsX. They turned up and the first thing I noticed was they were really hard. I couldn't dint these things so I was hopeful of a better outcome however the Valkyries have a spacer that the Goldwings didn't so that had to be addressed.
I am basically lazy and will pretty much always find an easy way of doing something and hey presto I found a real easy way of addressing the spacer issue.
I just left the original spacer on for the first bolt and made one for the second bolt... with a nut... hahah.
First I went down to the hardware store and spent 5 bucks or so and bought these 2 items.
The nut is to use as a spacer, the bolt is for the extra length the original Valkyrie spacer creates but the Peg Saver kit doesn't accommodate for.
If you are a pro you take the pegs off and jig them etc but as I said I am lazy and I will find the easiest way to do stuff thus the instructions that follow.
1: Unbolt the foot peg rubber but leave the peg on the bike.
2: Remove the original feeler but don't lose the spacer, or the bolt.
3: Bolt up the peg saver with the original bolt but NO SPACER.
4: Using the Peg Saver as a template carefully drill a 7/32 hole to get yourself a good pilot hole then remove the peg saver. I wanted the hole to be in the ball park as much as possible so I used 7/32 as it close fit through the hole in the Peg Saver but was not tight so less chance of thread damage.
CAUTION: Take care when the drill penetrates else you will have a nice hole in your side cover.
5: Using the 7.32 hole as a pilot run the 8mm bit trough it then waggle it around a lot to account for small misalignment that may occur. Probably better to use bigger but I don't have bigger so a good solid waggle does the job nicely.
CAUTION: Take care when the drill penetrates else you will have a nice hole in your side cover.
6: Bolt the thing back together using the original spacer and the new bolt and the new nut as a spacer and good to go.
NOTE: Don't forget to use locktite.
Job done!
Now are these things pissweak like the first ones I tried I hear you ask? No.
Are they worth the $130au it cost me in my opinion. Yes for 2 reasons.
1: I like the sparks as I am an not the most mature middle aged person you may come across.
2: Look at the condition of them
I installed them on Friday the 24 of April 2014 and that photo was taken a few minutes ago on the 5th of July and at least every Saturday I ride. At minimum that would be 1 or 2 decent touch downs if I just go down for just breakfast. If I go on a ride I will touch them down every single opportunity I get. As I said... immature but hey... sparky sparky and my pegs don't get any more damage.
BTW the my mounting method seems to have no issues with strength. I have clipped some "cats eyes" and while the bang was considerable there doesn't appear to be any damage. All good so far with extreme abuse.
IMPORTANT: I did this job months ago so some details may be slightly incorrect but basically this is how it was done. Also if you botch it then it is your fault for following dodgy instructions from the internet.
