Rear Carrier and Givi Adapter Plate

My rear carrier finally arrived today so I decided to mount it up. It's a nice unit... heavy and sturdy-looking. The only problem is that it's a proprietary design and not really meant to carry anything other than the genuine Honda accessory top trunk. I decided to go with a bigger Givi trunk so I had to buy a Givi universal mounting plate and figure out a way to make it fit. The brackets that come with the adapter plate are designed to mount it to tubular luggage racks. The Honda rear carrier is an odd-shaped triangular cast aluminum design so I had to improvise.

The instructions said max load of 6 pounds! Is that a joke? I suppose the lawyers force them to publish a low weight to absolve themselves of any liability if someone overloads it and has an accident. It's a heavy, sturdy rack which bolts up to a heavy, sturdy subframe. It looks like it will be fine with much more than 6 lbs.

The carrier ships in 3 pieces. I used a bit of red loctite to help secure the bolts that hold it together. It came with all of the neccessary hardware and a good set of instructions.

The old grab handles need to come off

Rack goes on... 4 big bolts plus the 2 little cowling bolts:

Next I mounted the Givi adaptor plate. It's a bit of a kludge but it's secure.

And with the little Givi cover to tidy it up:

My panniers and tank bag recently shipped out from David Silver Spares in the UK and should be here in a couple of days. The Givi box will be here from the US soon as well. I'm excited to load the big bitch up and see how she performs as a tourer.