Okay, so I decided when I bought my F3 that I was not going to pay the ridiculous price Can Am was asking for their saddlebags. They are very proud of their bags to say the least.
I had a set of Viking bags on the Yamaha Raider I traded in on my F3 and I knew Viking had a universal mount for the unusual ride so I decided to give them a try. The Viking bags came in yesterday. First off, I'd like to say that in hard mounting the Viking bags you will have to do a bit of bag drilling. The bags are made from hard plastic and require the drilling of 3/8" holes for the brackets. When I held the bags up to the F3's mounting points, I found the existing pre-drilled holes in the Viking bags almost fit the F3 perfectly...."Almost". The rear hole was about a 1'4" off. I also found that the bags would not work with the passenger hand rails, which I thought was going to be the case. Lastly, I found that for a really nice tight looking fit, you would have to modify the Viking brackets, grinding them down a bit. All in all, it took me about 1.5 hours to mount the bags.
1. Removed the seats.
2. Removed the hand rails.
3. Positioned the bags and marked the holes for drilling.
4. I used the existing front hole and grommet for the front mounting point and removed the grommet from the last hole which had to be drilled slightly by about 1/4".
5. Once I had the upper mounting holes set, I simply laid the brackets on the bag and marked the lower holes. Due to the bag size and the design of the F3, clearance was not an issue.
6. For a clean look and to avoid the purchase of longer bolts, I removed about 1/4" of material from the upper end of the mounting bracket with a cut off grinder then smoothed it on my shop grinder.
After fabrication, I simply bolted the brackets on the bag then bolted the bags to the F3.
I think they turned out very nicely and I saved around $1,200 over the cost of a set of Can Am bags.
Chris :ani29::doorag:
Are the bags low enough or far enough out of the way so that your passenger can mount easily and also have enough leg room. I warned you that it was a dumb question. Thanks!
