Chopper Floorboards

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Floorboards

  Floorboards have been mounted on motorcycles for well over 100 years now, first appearing on Harley's in 1914 and they continue to be popular even among the custom cycle and chopper crowd. Like everything however trends come and go and what's in today will be out tomorrow only to have the cycle repeat itself every few decades.

For long distance riding foot pegs simply can't compare to the comfort of boards and many riders who thought they wanted to run mid-controls are now switching over to floorboards paired with conservative forward controls.

I install the old-style weld-on floorboard mounts on all of my frames even if I don't end up mounting the boards because sooner or later some future owner will want to install a set. When I do use floorboards, I prefer the old semi-elliptical style since they don't tend to get in the way of my feet when maneuvering from feet on pavement to feet on the boards and vice versa.

Floorboards are available from a variety of aftermarket part outlets, but you generally have to order the mounting brackets and weld-on tabs separately. A typical set of parts is shown below.

In this snapshot we have the mounting brackets, the tabs and the floorboards themselves.

You can try to measure for locating the tabs, but the foolproof method involves using the front mounting holes in the stock controls as part of a fixture system that uses the floorboard to set the location for the rear tabs to be welded in place.

The majority of the tab is concealed under the frame rail in this picture so you have to tack the top edge pretty good so the tab doesn't get knocked out of position while you disassemble the bike so you can weld the bottom section.

I personally think that floorboards look perfectly at home on what I call old school bikes that use a lot of stock parts and components.

When welding the mounting tabs into position keep in mind that the drive-side tab is positioned so that the upper face slopes 36-degrees downward from horizontal and that the brake side tab slopes downward at an 18-degree angle as shown in the diagram below.

We'll come back to this section as the build progresses.