First I determined that the Hondaline rack I removed from my Valkyrie wouldn’t bolt up to the Magna. Since those racks cost in the neighborhood of $160 (USD) I wasn’t enthusiastic about drilling holes in a part I may want to use, or sell, later. The Magna version costs about the same so I began looking for a "Plan B".
While doing an Internet search, I came across a Cobra luggage rack for a much better price. The mounting brackets are different from OEM, of course, but a wise man once told me, “Anything is possible with the right adaptor kit”. The lack of a pre-made adaptor kit freed me up to create my own using the Empirical Method, as I sometime call “trial and error”.
The challenge was to fit the curved, wider-than-OEM, Cobra rack to the flat sides of the backrest (sissy bar). The boltholes at the top were separated by a space small enough to be filled with a thick washer. The Cobra rack was pretty close in shape, as well, so I dug through my washer collection and found a couple that were suitable.
The space between the bottom boltholes is much larger and the Cobra rack’s mounting surface curves. I used a nylon spacer (½ x .257 x ¼ ) to fill said space.
I found some metric Button Head bolts and acorn nuts to snazzy up the appearance of the mounting system.
All the fasteners tightened, the Cobra luggage rack is secure and sits right angle to the backrest. I’m calling the exercise an unqualified success.
