mounting happy trails cans

[Rick]

Blah, blah, blah on riders getting their ankles caught. Sounds to me like the ability of the rider. I have mounted two set of HT boxes on my wife's and my KLR's. With the aforementioned boxes we have ridden to Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and back for 3 months,7400 miles. We plan on going south again late this year for another 6 months ( if the economy allows us to save money). We are not young but in our 50's, so riders beware, anytime you hang something off the side of your bike you take the risk of something happening if you are not aware 'All The Time'. I mounted our boxes back far enough so that if we had to ride 2up for some reason, a second rider could get on. And I mounted them pretty much in line with the top of the seat. We use dry bags as our daily bags that come on and off every day. The dry bag generally rests on the seat and part of the HT boxes. We did spend 31 days(6400 miles) riding the NW USA and Canada before we went south. We had the Wolfman saddle bags for this trip and found them unacceptable to our way of traveling and camping. They didn't hold our stuff the way we would have liked and, for us, were hard to pack. Keys words to remember, I travel with my wife and she brings everything but the kitchen sink on her bike. In fact, I'm trying to figure out how to ship the kitchen sink south for our next trip. Anyway, we both agreed, the Wolfman didn't work for us and I bought the HT boxes. South of the border, we were very happy we had them. We left them on the bikes most of the time with just puny, tiny combo locks and never had an issue. With the soft saddle bags, we would have needed/wanted to take them off every night. Plus, as KLR's tend to do when loaded, our bikes fell over, mainly stopped or parked and the hard boxes always protected our tequila bottle from breaking.

--- In DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com, "Tim" wrote: > > A buddy of mine just got his Happy Trails Side boxes, but he didn't get them pre-drilled. Is there any rule of thumb for height or positioning of the cans for drilling and mounting? I'm someone, or many someones have done this, or perhaps there is even something written somewhere about doing this? > > Thanks in Advance, > Tp > Knoxville TN >