Here is the beginning of the Santa sleigh / Harley
Summary
When I created the idea of Santa on a Harley, it started out a 1982 Harley Flt.
Today it is a special 2000 Road King that has been painted in Imron Viper Red to stand out.
As you review my photo album, you can see where I started out decorating the sleigh.
I used candy canes on the front and rear.
Then came the custom reindeer horns made with a 3-D printer.
The rear candy canes were replaced with tubular or hollow candy canes and mounted to the rear saddlebag guard rails utilizing two adjustable flag pole mounting brackets where the candy canes were made to fit in the flag pole holder.
In an effort to make it better I added LED lights to the reindeer horns and candy canes.
Then came the flasher with the remote for on / off, flash and fade.
I had issues with the 3-D printed reindeer horns cracking at the mounting system on the windshield due to vibrations of mounting the 3-D printed reindeer horns from the mounting system on the windshield bolts of the Harley.
I tried purchasing real boned caribou horns in velvet ( a cousin of the reindeer ) and an improved mounting system was created. It had to be modified and tested a couple of times to get this right.
The problem with using reindeer horns in velvet and putting LED lights on them as like putting the LED lights on a sponge. Water soaked the velvet and the lights began to short out. We tried again this time grinding the velvet with a die grinder and using Flex past to glue the LED lights.
I missed the symmetric s of the 3-D printed horns and had the mounting system reinforced with fiberglass. Then a new and improved rubber mounting system.
After a few issues trying to mount a Christmas tree to the top luggage rack of the tour pack, I had a custom Christmas tree made in the form of a triangle t-pee with aluminum bands around the tree. Then we lit it up with different colored LED lights. Red and blue lights are a no no unless you are an emergency vehicle.
A heavy duty fiberglass tour pack and custom hinges replaced the ABS plastic Harley tour pack to handle the stress cracks from carrying the Christmas tree.
I had to find a way to add sleigh bells to the Harley too. Sleigh bells were mounted on leather straps with aluminum plates to bolt to the saddlebag side guard rails.
Later I added an 800 watt sound system under my tour pack for cooling and placed the speakers in a special aluminum casing under the front highway / crash bars
Although you can see where the early speakers were mounted in the tour pack, moving them to special vibration resistant buckets and placing them under the crash / highway bear worked a lot better.
