After a week of replacing nuts and bolts I have about had enough of that. It is time to turn my attention to some other part of the bike that doesn't require so many iterations with a wrench. As I said earlier, I am trying to keep the blacked out parts black and replace the other parts with chrome to get the bike to stand out. Today though I decided to deviate from that theme slightly. On the 2005 Night Train the hand controls are black on the chrome handlebars. Initially I planned on leaving them black but the more I look at them I think I want to move to a set of chrome controls.
Early on I replaced the stock grips with a set of black and chrome flamed grips. I continued the flame theme by replacing the brake and shifter pegs and the foot pegs. I don't want too many flames but enough to catch your eye. The black trim on the air cleaner just didn't do anything for me. The vivid black ring on the wrinkle black cover always bothered me from aesthetic perspective. So on a trip down to Chandler Harley-Davidson I decided to pick up a chrome flames air cleaner insert. I also bought a flamed console insert to go on the tank console. Those were trivial changes compared to what I did next. I bought a chrome master cylinder and controls kit. I also bought a set of chrome hand levers with engraved flames. I like the feel of them so much better than the stock levers. My gloves grip them a little better and they just plain look cool. Of course when I did that the black mirrors looked really out of place. So I bought a set of chrome Aluminator mirrors. I like the hollowed out look of the Aluminator series and it looks good with the Aluminator rear break lever and shifter levers. So much for going down and picking up a couple of things. Trina bought me a handlebar mount clock and thermometer. At first I thought they would be really cheesy looking and I really didn't need to know what time it was. After installing them though I kind of like it. They are fairly unobtrusive and are more functional than I had first imagined. I am not sure what is going to happen this summer though. The thermometer only goes to 120 degrees and I am not sure that won't get pegged in the Phoenix heat. It will be interesting to see I guess. It might just be depressing to know how stinking hot it gets in the summer.
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