I am building a sissy bar for the 1988 Sportster from some 1/2″ steel round stock I picked up from JR Enterprises in Chesapeake. A little bit of bending, a little bit of welding, and a lot of grinding. Worked on this a bit last weekend and made some good progress. The cost of the 1/2″ round stock for the sissy bar and the 7/8″ round stock for the fender struts was a couple cents over $11, for this I got enough to build two (figuring I would screw up a fair amount of it).

Here is the vision. Nothing real fancy. I wanted to build it myself, so trying to keep it in the realm of what I can accomplish with my limited skills and tools. The lower part of the sissy bar will be attached to the fender struts and the upper will be welded to the lower. The tail light will be on the cross support of the upper section. Once it is cut down the sissy bar will be approximately 33″ tall.

I tried to bend the upper section, but could not get a tight enough bend so I ended up cutting it, welding it, and grinding it down to a blunt point.

I made a set of fender struts out of 7/8″ round stock and attached the lower part of the sissy bar to the struts. I cut some supports to reinforce the uprights and welded them in.

Every time the welding torch hits the steel I become a bit more proficient with the angle grinder 🙂 That’s OK though, it’ll hold.

Here is what the fender strut and lower sissy bar section looks like mocked up on the bike.

I won a Hypnic Jerk Customs tail light in the raffle at the Peanut City Chop and Swap.

It’s going to look great once it is all mounted up.

Still a bit more work to do on it. Hope to have everything welded up this weekend… Stay tuned for Part II…