Multibar’s
Lindby Custom, Inc.
www.lindbycustom.com
714.528.0085
The good old Geezer Glide—a 2004 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Standard—is a bagger that has appeared in Thunder Press since she was a pup. She just rolled the old odometer over the 70k mark, having hauled me and all my photography and other gear hither and yon over several states and even over a U.S. border or two. Now she needs a nip here and tuck there.
And why not? Baggers are all the rage these days. To paraphrase the old Kinks song, “You see them here, you see them there,” baggers—a.k.a. touring bikes—are everywhere. But how, pray tell, do they stay forever young?
Firstly, we start with a basic theme and stick to it when considering any updates and facelifts. Back when, the FLHT came in one color and one color only: Vivid Black. So, some 65,000 miles ago when we wanted to change out the cluttered-up stock front fender for the “clean” Street Glide-type design, we had only to go to the local Harley shop and plunk down the dough-ray-me for a black one. Fast forward to today. In keeping with that basic black idea, we decided that, if a little black is good, more black is, well, potentially beautiful.
The blacked-out Lindby Customs Multibar filled two or, perhaps, three wishes. First, it’s… well, black. That was part of our move to cool out the old Geezer Glide by giving it some down-and-dirty street cred. And everybody knows that black is the, ahem, “new chrome” and, hence, the new cool (but the Multibar does come in chrome as well).
OK, moving on: In the second case, we wanted to retain the Glide’s engine guards. True, some call them “crash bars” but we believe that is negative thinking. Who is gonna crash anyway? But, yes, most of us have tipped our baggers over in the garage, driveway or—in our case—while parking on a steep hill. The bagger bars do protect your bike. And, thirdly, but not lastly, the Multibar has a special cutaway design that also provides the rider with an alternate foot position without those pesky highway pegs hanging off the engine guards (but more on this later).
Up to this point in what can roughly be called the continuing Geezer Glide makeover, we’ve relied on expert installation of new parts. That was true again with the Lindby Multibar and we turned to My Evil Twin Choppers in Lodi, California. Shop owner JP has won a number of awards for his custom bike builds, but his shop also carries parts and apparel, and services virtually any V-twin motorcycle. (More information is available at www.myeviltwinchoppers.com or by calling 209.369.8529.)
The Lindby Customs Multibar is literally an unbolt the-old, bolt-up-the-new operation. Once the stock chrome (slightly scraped up) engine guard was off, the Lindby Customs Multibar went right on. In this instance, we wanted the rear bag guards to match the blacked-out motif so we scooted down to the local Harley shop and picked out a pair of black H-D bag guards. We had to drop the Glide’s hard bags and sidepieces in order to first remove the stock rear guards and bolt up the new black brackets. Once complete, the matched set looked great.
But in what was becoming a theme, the new parts—particularly the Lindby Customs Multibar—proved more than just a pretty face; it provided value-added use as well. Not a highway pegs kind of chap, I was nonetheless eager to try out the Multibar’s built-in alternate foot position. Instead of bowing out in an arc like the stock engine guard, the Multibar contour cuts down and into the frame, providing a level area with a rubber footplate.
A few miles down the road from My Evil Twin Choppers, I put my feet up and found the distance from floorboard to the Multibar to be pleasantly short. Feet up and legs stretched, I could see that it would provide some relief on longer rides. If there was a glitch, it was a minor one. Having previously installed an oversized brake pedal and shift lever, I could see that my heel could, if not careful, contact the mechanisms on either side when my boots were up on the Multibar.
Lindby Customs, Inc. offers several different engine guard designs, including the Twinbar and the Linbar, as well as other upgrade items like choke covers, weather guards, and footpegs.
