It all started back in 1999 when my wife's (Tammy) best friend (Marie) had a Sporty. Tammy had ridden with Marie's stepfather a couple of times and decided she wanted her own and the search started. She found a 1986 883 Sporty for sale by another women that had only ridden 400 miles in the 4 years. After talking with her and agreeing on a price, she picked it up on New Years Eve. The bike was in dire need of some maintenance and care and Tammy started doing what she could herself. I didn't know Tammy at the time. Tammy got as far as she could go and then took the bike to a small Indy shop to have it lowered. Tammy is a petite girl, standing only 5' 1" tall. She had it lowered 2 inches in the front and 2-inch shorter shocks in the rear, plus a 1-inch lowering kit in the rear.

She discovered this was not a good combination. It could as well have been a rigid. She took the 1-inch lowering kit out of the rear and decided it was time to learn how to ride it. She had no one to teach her how to ride so she jumped on and figured it out......so to speak. She rode around her neighborhood practicing for several weeks.

Marie and the group she rode with decided it was time to get her out of the neighborhood and go for a ride. As it turned out some of her people knew some of my people. We met that faithful day. As time went by and more rides whistled under our belts, we started dating and eventually got married.

Riding together, I watched her having troubles with various maneuvers. I told her we needed to build the bike to fit her better. As luck would have it, I am a bike mechanic. The first thing I did was to change the handlebars to some buckhorn style with a taller riser. Just the bars eliminated severe reaching during turns. She didn't like the fact that she only had a 2-gallon fuel tank and was always worried about running out. We replaced it with a 3.9 gallon aftermarket tank and gave it a new paint job. Other minor things were done also, mostly cosmetic.

Her learning permit expired, and she needed to take the riding test to obtain her MC endorsement, so bike building was put on the backburner. We practiced the elements she needed to improve to pass the test. Needless to say you shouldn't teach your wife....... I quickly learned she knew words and street vocabulary I wasn't previously aware of.

Anyway, she went to the DMV, took the test and passed it on her second try. We logged a lot of miles since then. You'll like this, my wife would just as soon purchase parts for her bike more than almost anything else. Makes it easier on me. So, for Christmas of '02 I decided to do a 1200 conversion to her Sporty. Nothing too radical, just something to give her some power and change the gearing for highway cruising.

As time went by we bought her an '01 1200 Sportster Custom. She did not want to sell the '86 because it was her first bike. After riding the two of them she decided she liked the '86 better. She thought it handled better and fit her better. I have a '99 FXSTC, with a 124-inch S&S motor. Fun for around town and the shorter rides but as with everyone, I am getting older and decided I wanted more comfort for the longer hauls. I bought a '99 FLHTCUI and we started taking trips on it. Now we have three bikes crowding the garage not being ridden a lot. We would still ride them some, on the shorter runs, but after the Ultra Classic the comfort wasn't there.

Then came November '07, and we decided to scramble through a 250 mile ride. She decided she was gonna ride the '86 Sporty, so I decided I would ride the Softail. When I went to back the Softail out of the garage, she looked at me and asked, "You're not gonna take the Ultra?"

I replied, "No, if your are not riding with me, then I am taking the Softail."

"Well," she said, "I was gonna put my stuff in you saddlebags. Now what do I do with my stuff?" I told her she would have to tie it on the bike like she did before I got the bagger.

"I wish I was bigger so I could have my own bagger to ride," she said. Well, after everything was tied on the bikes away we went. It was a comfortable ride up into the mountains, and we stopped for a bite to eat at a the Mongrel Cafe. We then stopped and fueled up figuring this would give us enough fuel to complete the ride. We were wrong.

The aftermarket tank she had cracked open a couple of times and was repaired. Well, about half way into the ride the tank cracked again and started leaking fuel. She smelled it and started pointing at the tank. We pulled over and checked it out. It was more of a seeping down the bottom side to the tank back by her seat. We stuffed a shop rag in there and decided bite our nails and roll on, since we were in the middle of nowhere. She kept checking to make sure it didn't start leaking worse. We made it almost back to town when she ran out of gas.

We grabbed more gas for it and survived the trip home. I told her that I didn't care how good she thought that tank looked, it was coming off the bike. Three times it cracked open, and it was damn unsafe. I put it on the lift table at home and started draining the tank, what was left.

As it was draining I grabbed the Drag book and started looking at fuel tanks. At one point I looked over at the bike, and then past the bike at a shelf. There was a 5-gallon bagger tank perched on a wooden shelf collecting dust. I wondered to myself what that would look like on the Sportster, so I yanked the old tank off and set bagger tank in place. I knew I would have to make a bracket, but I would worry about that later. Just wanted to see how she looked. As I stood back looking at the bagger tank, the light came on and the wheels started turning..........

I had to stall some though, it was almost Christmas, and she needed girlie presents. I started tearing the bike down about a week before Christmas and got it done for her birthday in the beginning of March, about 10 weeks total. I did everything myself except the paint which a friend Kurt handled.

I used a 5-gallon FLHX fuel tank and dash. Then I used a FLHT rear fender and modified it to fit. I took saddlebag guards, supports and rails for a bagger and made brackets which were welded to the frame to bolt everything to the bike solid. The rear of the frame was the toughest part, connecting the bagger frame to the Sporty frame. I had to relocated the rear shocks to fit the shock grooves in the saddlebags, which gave the bike a real nice smooth ride.

I also used an outer fairing and modified fairing brackets to attach it to the Sporty front end. Since I put the bagger apes on mine, I had my stock bars, that I used for the handlebars. We put forward controls on also.

I have this thing about baggers. There should be a pipe under each saddlebag, and I don't like the false mufflers, so I custom made header pipes so the rear cylinder actually crosses over and accommodates a pair of Rinehart Slip-ons.

I made sure when I built it I can install the quick disconnect hardware so we can install a chopped tour-pack in the solo position. After painting the lower legs and the primary, cam, and sprocket covers black to make the chrome stand out, I think I'm done with it....for a while anyways. I gotta say, not bad looking for a 22-year-old Sporty!

She is one very happy girl now, she has her own bagger...........BABY BGGR................as she calls it.