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For those not familiar with this, the Quick-Lock mounting system by SW-Motech bolts to the top of many motorcycle gas tanks and provides a hard mount to mount various items (mostly tank bags). Here's a picture that explains it well enough:
This seemed like an excellent idea, as the tank bag kind of 'hovers' over the gas tank so that the opportunity to scratch the tank is limited. They are pricey though. The nicest feature (I think) is that you can get an electrified ring, which you tap into your electrical system and the ring that attaches to your bag gets electrical current for whatever (GPS, cell phone, OGG player, etc). So I bought one, and they don't work out as well as one would hope. The main thing is that the 'stiffening' they use seems to have a problem with heat. I've had to stiffen my bad with aluminum angle, and I've still got a side that droops and can't seem to get it to stay up.
First off, the product is made pretty well... however it is rather expensive. The ring mounted nicely, but connection between the mount and tank bag is a tad sloppy. I ended up adding thin rubber to the ring so that it wouldn't shift around. The shifting isn't noticeable, however It does cause the electrical contacts to wear a bit more than I'd like. The one problem I did have is pretty well shown by this picture: You can see that the left side of the bag is rather a bit off kilter/droopy. It was bad enough that the zipper (you can see in the pic at the left) was very close to my tank. Originally the zipper had a large rubber 'cover' which DID rub against my tank until I removed it. I contacted Twisted Throttle (about the only place to get these in the U.S.) and they said that it's soft luggage so 'deforming' isn't covered under warranty. As the entire purpose of this mounting system it to protect your tank I thought that's pretty much bullshit. Figuring I'd never get any results from them (or likely SW-Motech, although I contact them via email...no answer yet), I took a heat gun to the side that was drooping, got it up to about 150F and blocked it using wood, a 16# sledge hammer and a pneumatic impact driver (it fit). The results were pretty damned good, problem solved and after cooling it's as hard as new. I contacted SW-Motech again and suggested a more heat stable plastic or what have you would be a good thing. 150F isn't all that hot. And sadly the fix wasn't permanent. I'm thinking my next step will be to stiffen up the material with the liberal application of resin....that should help out. UPDATE: used some aluminum angle to stiffen things up front to back..that helped a bunch.. it still tends to sag over time.
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