I Could See Six Screws Behind My Tri Glide Fender. I Could Not Get a Wrench on One of Them.
I Could See Six Screws Behind My Tri Glide Fender. I Could Not Get a Wrench on One of Them.
June 24, 2026 · 9 min read
I added the third wheel so my wife and I could keep riding. I did not think it would lock me out of my own back fender.
There is a thing nobody warns you about when you go from two wheels to three. It is not the surgery and it is not learning to lean into a corner that does not lean back. It is the first time you go to do a job you have done your whole life and find out they built the back of the machine so you cannot.
My name is Ray. I am sixty seven. I spent thirty five years as a union pipefitter in Toledo, Ohio, and I rode two wheels for fifty of them, until my left knee finally quit on me at a stop sign with my wife on the back. I traded my Road King for a Tri Glide Ultra so the two of us could keep rolling out with our chapter on Sunday mornings.
I am writing this for every rider who switched to three wheels to stay in the wind, then ended up on his own garage floor feeling like the dealer had reached in and taken the wrench right out of his hand. A man they call Burt handed me the way out at a rally, and he asked me to pass it on. So here it is.
Why the back of a Tri Glide has you over a barrel, in plain English
The first time it got me was a lighting problem. A tail light and a turn signal acting up, and I wanted to get into the rear fender to check the harness and clean up what I could reach. So I looked up what it takes. The manual does not treat it like a quick reach-in. The rear wheel comes off. The tail and turn signal connectors get unplugged. The lighting harness gets released from its clips. Then you are into six rear fender screws with flat washers, Torx heads, Loctite on the threads, and a torque spec when it all goes back together.
Six screws. That sounds like nothing until you are down there with a Torx bit in your hand and your bad knee on the concrete, and you find out the fender lip, the bodywork, and the back side of every fastener are all fighting you at once. The screw is not the problem. The screw is just a screw. The problem is that there is no room to swing anything that will hold torque, and on the back side there is a nut you have to reach around and hold blind while you turn. It is the same story all over the back of these trikes. The reach is the whole job.
I tried everything in the box. Here is what each one did.
- A standard three eighths ratchet. The handle hit the bodywork before the bit ever seated flat.
- A stubby ratchet. It got the Torx bit on, then gave me about ten degrees of swing before it jammed on the fender lip.
- A flex-head ratchet. Seated fine, then folded at the joint the second I leaned on it.
- A universal joint on an extension. It kicked sideways, loaded the bit crooked, and started walking the head like it wanted to round it off.
- Reaching around blind to hold the back side nut with one hand while turning the front with the other. A man on the trike forum called the rear fender a bear to get off and said it takes a lot of force. He was being kind.
A twenty minute job that turns into a week in the shop
Here is the part that put a knot in my stomach. I called the dealer, and the service writer would not even quote me the six screws. He quoted me the access. He said it goes on the ticket as body work, and they were a week out before they could even take it in. For six screws on my own motorcycle. It is the same logic that turns a simple grease job into a front end teardown everywhere else on these trikes. The work is twenty minutes. The reach is the whole bill.
So I sat on the concrete that afternoon with screws I could touch with my fingertips and could not get a tool around, looking at a photo taped to my toolbox of a kid with hair to his shoulders on a 1972 Shovelhead. That kid did all his own wrenching with a coffee can of sockets. Fifty years later a machine I paid good money for had me beat in my own garage. My wife Sharon brought a sandwich out to the bench and did not say a word. She knows what it does to me to be told I cannot do a thing I have always done. The sandwich went cold next to that photo.
Six screws I could see and touch, and not one of them I could swing a tool on.
Then a retired Harley wrench at the rally handed me a bar
That weekend my chapter rode down to the fall rally, and I went, because that is where the old riders are. There is a man up there everybody calls Burt. Seventy four years old, thirty years a master tech at a Harley store before his back made him hang it up. He does side work out of his garage for half the chapter now. I told him about the fender, the six screws, the dealer wanting a week and a body work ticket. He did not laugh at me. He just nodded the way old wrenches nod when they have heard a story a hundred times.
He went to his own trike and came back with a slim flat steel bar, about a foot and a half long, square drives on both ends, a fixed bend in the middle. I told him I had a drawer full of bent bars and every one of them folded under load. He had me press my thumb against the drive end. Something moved inside it. A roller chain, running the whole length of a sealed steel body.
"The bend gets you in there. The chain carries the pull."
The thin body slides flat into the gap where nothing else fits. The chain carries the torque around the bend, dead square on the fastener, so it never folds like a flex-head or walks like a u-joint. Burt told me he has done fender, bag and guard hardware on half the trikes in his chapter with a bar like this, and has not handed one of them to the dealer since.
The sealed chain is the trick
A roller chain inside the steel body carries torque around the bend, so it never folds like a flex-head or walks like a u-joint.
Slides in at the bad angle
A slim bar a little over half an inch thick reaches the fender screws and the back side nut from an angle a normal ratchet can never swing to.
Your own sockets and bits
Square drive on both ends takes the sockets and Torx bits already in your box. No proprietary tool, ever.
Holds real torque
Carries the turn straight to the bolt, up to about seventy newton metres, a hair past fifty foot pounds, without folding at a joint.
I will be straight with you, the way Burt was with me. This bar does not turn the trike into a bare frame. The manual is still the manual. Some jobs back there still want the wheel off and the connectors unplugged, and your knees still want a pad on the floor. But for the screws you can see, can touch, and cannot get a clean pull on, it took the job back from the dealer and handed it to me on a Saturday morning.
It only comes from one place
You will not find it at the parts counter and you will not find it on Amazon. The maker sells direct from their own site only. Eighty nine dollars, shipped to your door. That is less than what the shop charges just to look at the back of your trike, for the one tool that hands you back the buried jobs on your own machine.
What happened next
Other riders who stopped paying for access
"Had to get behind the rear fender to chase a bad ground. The bit sat flat on the first try and broke every screw loose without chewing a head. First job back there in three years of owning the trike that did not end with me calling the dealer."
"Dealer wanted to book the whole back end as body work just to get behind the fender. Did it myself in an afternoon with this bar. The reach was the whole job, just like the man said."
"Bought a cheap one off Amazon first. It folded behind the bodywork just like my flex-head did. The real one with the chain does not flex. Should have started with it."
Burt learned it from an old hand years ago. Now he keeps a count, and he is passing it on.
Get yours before your next service bill
If you ride three wheels, and a Harley dealer has ever told you it is a week and a body work ticket to get behind your own fender for a job you used to do yourself, you already know exactly what this is worth.
American Iron Field Notes is a reader-supported publication. This is a first-person account from a rider and reflects his personal experience. The Savary offset extension wrench is a hand tool designed to reach fasteners in tight, blind locations. It improves access; it is not represented as a remedy for parts that are stripped, seized, or worn beyond normal service. Always follow proper service procedures and torque specifications. Results vary by motorcycle and condition.
