I've been searching eBay; Dennis Kirk; & JCWhitney for a good chrome sissy bar & luggage rack to bolt on to my '82 XJ650 Maxim. Just wondering if anyone has some suggestions. I've seen a few on eBay but having bought other used, rusted out junk, would think that I could get something new or close to it without reinventing the wheel. I've seen quite a few bikes with what I'm looking for, but I'm not having much luck finding one myself.

Is there anything out there that would replace the existing grab bar? I guess chrome & that dull metalic color of the grab bar can go together, but I think it looks odd.

Any suggestions would be much appreicated.

Unless you get real lucky and find an NOS part on E-bay, I've never seen these advertised on Dennis Kirk or Bike Bandit so new is out of the question. If you could get a used one that is structurally sound, but looks like crap, you could always rechrome it.

As for the grab bar, it is made of aluminum so with some 800-1000 grit wet/dry sandpaper, some Tripoli and a buffing wheel you can polish it to a near chrome finish if you want to spend the time and effort. I've done some other parts for other bikes this way and it is amazing the shine you can get if you just work at it long enough. Otherwise, you could just rechrome it when you do the sissy bar. Good luck. Cary.

Forget the sandpaper and Tripoli. It takes waaaaay too long. Take the bar off the bike, and use Mothers' Billet Polish. NOT regular Mothers' (that won't do anything). This stuff comes in a little tiny 4oz jar, and it's like $13 for each jar, but MAN does it work! You can use it to shine all of the alloy parts to mirror finish. Use a 2" buffing wheel in a drill, and have plenty of clean terry towels. Smear the polish generously on the part, and use the buffing wheel to break up all the clearcoat and oxide. The wheel will quickly turn black. This is good! Don't try to clean the wheel. Keep adding polish as necessary to keep the black residue wet - don't let it dry on the part. Once you have broken through to the metal, use the terry towels to buff it to a mirror shine. This will shine all of the alloy parts - grab bar, handlebars, lower fork legs, side covers, rear peg mounts, and all of the engine/gear covers. It WON'T work on the chrome parts, so don't even waste your time trying.

You CAN do this with just elbow grease, you don't NEED the buffing wheel. In fact, I did the grab rail, side covers, and peg mounts by hand in about 3 hours. The engine, handlebars and fork legs proved tedious without the help of power, but it could be done.


And in case you're wondering, the text around the cap reads: "Look no further! This product is unconditionally guaranteed to be the best metal polish you have ever used on billet, forged, and finely cast aluminum, brass, gold, and any other polishable metal!" They are NOT kidding!

I haven't tried the Mothers', but how does it work for removing scratches, nicks, pitting and gouges? If you are restoring bikes to "like-new" or 100-point condition, just having shiny nicks, scratches and pits won't do.

Has anyone ever used this stuff to work aluminum to a smooth finish PRIOR to polishing and if so is it really easier/faster than wet/dry sandpaper? If so, it would have to be awfully abrasive, so I don't think I would be using it on gold as they claim. Thanks for any input.

I'm still in search of that sissy bar & rack, so back to eBay.... However.... I must agree that Mothers Billet did the trick with some assistance.

I decided to try it out on one of my side pedal bars which was much worse than the grab bar. After buffing for about 45min, I was just starting to cut through the clear coat. Just plain got tired.... I decided to try a shortcut. I had some stuff called "Peeler" which removes hard coats. That cleaned off the hard coat in about 5min, I was able to scrap it off with a puddy knife. Thought I was on to something....!

Well, the bad news is that it took out most of the black stripe as well. As Homer Simpson would say.... "Doh".

After I cleaned that off, I put Mothers to work. WOW what a nice shine! WOOHOO!

So, I'm not sure how I'm going to get the stripe back in place. More suggestions are welcome. Hopefully if I tape off the stripe on the grab bar, it will preserve it.

So if you see a bike with a 1 shinny side bar, that would be me. Don't laugh.