2007 Road Star
Bad Dad has been making a wide range of bagger parts for Harley's Touring models for several years. The company has always received a lot of great exposure from sources such as Hot Bike and Hot Bike Baggers, and it routinely received questions about building a metric bagger. While Derk always wanted to build custom metric parts, the timing never worked out for him to devote the required attention. Luckily for him, he came across a great deal on an '07 Star Road Star. Aside from an aftermarket 2-into-1 exhaust system and a few bumps-and-bruises from a lay down, the bike was completely stock with less than 2,000 miles on the odometer. Derk rolled the bike into storage until he had a chance to give his time to it.
Last year the stars aligned themselves in such a way that he finally had time to focus on the Road Star project with a few goals in mind. The biggest goal was to build a classic looking bagger that flowed well from the front of the bike to the rear. Another goal was to do this without spending thousands of dollars on custom wheels, brakes, handlebars, etc. Rather, Derk wanted to see what he could build by only focusing on the Road Star's sheetmetal. To do this, Derk planned to use most of the parts from his current line of American bagger parts and adapt them to fit the Road Star chassis.
Since Derk was building a metric bagger, he naturally started by adding a set of Bad Dad Stretched Saddlebags to the bike and fabricated a set of brackets that would allow mounting the bags onto the Road Star's frame. The bags were finished off with a set of OEM H-D saddlebag lids as well as the matching latch assembly.
With the bags mounted, attention was turned to building a custom rear fender that would allow the back of the bike to flow seamlessly between the two Stretched Saddlebags. Derk started with one of the Bagger Rear Fenders he makes for Harleys and chopped it into 18 different pieces, and then pieced it back together so that it was a perfect fit for the back of the Road Star. Next up was building a set of flush mount taillights into the rear fender and bags. Derk used the traditional Yamaha logo in the fender, and added Yamaha's tuning forks to the saddlebags. The license plate was recessed into the back of the fender.
Moving to the frontend, Derk wanted to build a beefier looking headlight assembly in order to create a real "freight train" appearance on the front of the bike. To do this, he again used some donor parts from the H-D parts line and added fabricated a stretched headlight nacelle, and then mounted an H-D headlamp assembly and trim ring. The nacelle was modified to use the stock Road Star spotlight bar and turn signals. For the front fender, Derk wanted to keep a classic look. Since he was keeping the stock 16-inch wheel with white wall tire, Derk used one of his custom FL Front Fenders modified to fit the bolt pattern of the Road Star's fork legs, and outfitted with a set of chrome mounting spacers.
With the Road Star project now in the "Frankenstein" stage with all of Bad Dad's standard bagger parts chopped, hacked, and modified to fit the Road Star frame, the bike was ripped apart one final time to throw the parts into the spray booth. During final assembly, the bike was lowered 1 1/2 inches in the front and 2 inches in the rear with a Baron kit. Derk then bolted on a set of Baron Hellbent pipes, and fit a Mustang Daytripper seat to the bike. Aside from these four aftermarket options and the custom Bad Dad Road Star Bagger Kit, the '07 Road Star is a completely stock bike.
All of the parts needed to convert a Road Star into the Bagger shown here are now available from Bad Dad. Each of these parts can be purchased individually to build your own bagger. These parts fit all Road Star models made from 1999 to the current model year. Not only was Bad Dad able to remove a huge goal from its Bagger Bucket List with the completion of this bike, but it also hit a goal that it set with all of its custom baggers: to build a clean, classic motorcycle that people love to stop and look at.