Repairing Motorcycle Saddlebags

Harley-Davidson® motorcycles are built for optimal convenience. Everything from the ergonomic controls to the responsive throttle make your life easier on the road, but there’s one feature that serves a special purpose, although we don’t tend to give it much thought: the saddlebag. Saddlebags on a motorcycle let you carry all your necessities anywhere you go, and with a powerful bike like the Heritage Softail® Classic, you won’t even feel weighed down when transporting all that extra cargo. When performing simple maintenance on a hog, you probably don’t worry too much about the condition of these storage devices, but just like everything else, they wear out over time. With exposure to sun and the elements, the plastic materials give way to cracking, while leather can lose its shape.

Keeping these in good condition is very important if you don’t want to replace them every few years, so we laid out some instructions in this guide for how to repair and restore your saddlebags. Of course, if you want to make sure they get professional quality service, don’t hesitate to make an appointment at our repair shop. You can also check out our selection of Harley-Davidson® touring bikes at Biggs HD®, near Carlsbad, Encinitas, Oceanside, and San Diego, CA.

Reshaping and Restoring the Bags

When you notice the saddlebags on your Heritage Softail® Classic or other motorcycle starting to cave in and lose their form, you’ll need to follow a basic maintenance procedure to get them back to their original condition. To simply reshape them, all you’ll need is some water and newspaper.

While repair kits are available, a many riders use this handy trick to get their saddlebags back to normal. To start, simply soak each bag in a bucket or tub of hot water for about 30 seconds. This makes the leather more malleable, so you can reform it into whatever shape you need. Then, stuff the bag full of newspapers enough so that it stretches out. While it’s still wet, reshape the top so that it doesn’t form into a weird shape, and then set it to dry for about a day. After 24 hours, remove all the newspaper, and it will have dried in the desired shape.

Repairing Cracks

While leather presents issues with shape, motorcycle ABS Saddlebags, which are made of plastic, can crack and break over time if you don’t take care of them. Thankfully, they’re also quite simple to fix up with some glue. Start by applying some ABS plastic pipe glue, which you can find at just about any hardware or home improvement store, to the cracks on your saddlebag. We advice putting tape on the inside of the bag, that way the glue gets locked in the crack and doesn’t drip out through to the interior. This glue will dry without heat, so if you leave it in place for a few minutes, it will be ready to use again.

If you want a more resilient repair, you can try something a little more ambitious with an ABS plastic dowel. Just grate this into a glass jar so that it fills up with the shavings, then add a methylene chloride product and let it melt them melt down for about five or ten minutes. Once this is done, mix it with a thin wooden stick (chop sticks work great), and use the same stick to apply it to the crack. Once again, make sure you set something like duct tape, to prevent the mixture from leaking through. Let it sit for a couple hours in a well ventilated room, then use sandpaper to smooth out any areas that might have dried awkwardly. The finished product will be an ABS saddlebag on your Heritage Softail® Classic that’s as good as new, with all those annoying cracks filled with the same material the original saddlebag was made from.

While all of these tricks will work well if you do them properly, we always recommend bringing your saddlebags into our service department when they need to be restored or repaired. We have all the necessary tools and materials for performing quality repairs, so if you need assistance, come on into Biggs HD®, near Oceanside, Poway, Rancho, Santa Fe, and San Luis Rey, California.