VTX Side Mount experience

Preface
This page is in response to those who asked for my experiences with the "Biker's Choice" sidemount license frame on a 2002 VTX 1800c:

I purchased mine from www.meancycles.com.
Please "bare" with me as this page was thrown together quickly to get this info out.

This is a smooth looking mount and in my opinion is an example of excellent craftsmanship. It's only been on my bike for a few months, but it seems to be holding up well and I believe it will remain that way. Installation was another story entirely...

Installation
For starters my license plate itself would not fit into the mount without doing some grinding, flattening, etc of the edges - but depending on your state your mileage may vary. This was not a difficult process, just throwing it out there so you're not surprised if it happens to you. Once I got the plate into the mount it was held in by 2 tiny set screws, easy enough.
After this was where it became more of a trial. The unit itself is designed to mount on HD axle bolts, so the mount hole is 1" across. The unit comes with a 3/4" bushing but even with this my lower shock bolt would fall through the 3/4" hole. Rather than just use a washer I wanted to come up with a way to fill in all the extra space around the bolt. This is where I owe SilverVTX as he was kind enough to machine this bushing and mail it to me (please forgive the rough drawing):

That bushing makes up for the space between the bolt and the mount, and with a big washer (1 1/2") and longer shock bolt I was able to catch the entire mount with the lower shock bolt. With that said let me explain this - IT ONLY FIT BECAUSE I HAVE PROGRESSIVE 440 SHOCKS. I was in the process of taking off my stock shocks when I was putting this on so I know that with this bushing the mount would have hit the bottom of the stock shocks and not fit. The easiest possible solution I can think of to remedy this would be to drill the bolt hole in the bushing OFF-CENTER thus allowing you to set the thin side of the bushing towards the shock, giving you more clearance for the mount (hope you follow that).
Since you can only torque this lower shock bolt to 20 ft/lbs I had a bit of a dilemma... At 20 ft/lbs I could still rotate the unit without much pressure from my hand on it. I bought some 1 1/2" rubber washers in an attempt to help prevent it from spinning on the bolt, that actually made the situation worse so I pulled the rubber washers back off.
When all was said and done I ended up with a "sandwich" that goes like this:
Longer (35mm) stainless shock bolt, 1 1/2" stainless washer, plate mount w/ bushing, 1 1/2" stainless washer, STOCK shock bolt washer, shock bushing, shock, and then the bike.

The longer 35mm bolt I replaced the stock bolt with needed to be shaved down to about 32mm in length to prevent it from bottoming out in it's hole. It's not a pretty thought overall, but it gets the job done with little hassle or visual "blemishes".

Wiring
The mounting was far and away the HARD part of this install, after this was done it just took some wiring. Since the mount came with no wire schematic I used a 12V DC supply to test my leads and what I found was this:

Black = ground
Red = running lights
Blue = brake lights

It was easy enough to run these wires under the side panel and tie them in with my existing tail light wires.

Green = ground
Green w/ yellow stripe = brakes
Brown = running lights

Lighting
I thought it would be important to mention that before I bought this plate I inquired as to how much light would actually illuminate the plate itself, especially given the radius design that would tend to block light from the lower plate. I was told that the LED light had a slot cut in the bottom that would allow LED light to "trickle" down and illuminate the plate. Now that I have the plate mounted and wired I'll say that using the word "trickle" to describe the light on the plate is about as accurate as saying giving anal birth to a flaming porcupine might be a "little" uncomfortable. To lend credibility to this (and to take your mind off that thought!) here are some pics taken in my garage at night with the lights off. It was hard to block all the light from the headlight, but I think this will give you a decent idea of what I'm saying.

It's probably not a bad idea to tuck an aftermarket LED cluster somewhere around there to help out if the police in your area are real hardasses about plate illumination.

Afterthoughts
After all was said and done I had initially said I would not recommend this mount to others because of the difficulty I had getting mine to work how I liked it. After having it on the bike for a few months with relatively no trouble I'd say that if you're willing to have a bushing made for it, and you can understand and accept the need to make a few simple mods to get it to work out - then go for it. I'm certain there are better ways out there to do this as I'm not really much of a metal-worker/machinist (and I welcome suggestions!) but this seemed to work OK for me without much trouble. The hardest part of all this for me was the trial and error to finally get it to work.

Pics