SoftDash By Hells Foundry - Dash-in, Dash-Out

Gray SoftDash installed on a denim silver Street Glide

This past February while attending the V-Twin expo in Cincinnati, I ran into Derik Jones of Hells Foundry. THe V-Twin expo is the place for manufacturers to show off their new parts and that's exactly what Derik was doing, with his newest piece the SoftDash. Currently available for FLH models, the SoftDash is a colored, coated and textured, inner fairing that replaces the stock dull, black plastic inner fairing. Similar to the dashboard on may cars, the SoftDash features a soft textured finish that gives your bike a more finished and custom look.

Sure there are other options for dressing up your inner fairing such as having it painted, but that means you'll have to wait for the painter to finish the job, which means you no ridey the bikey. And most likely if you get your inner fairing painted you'll get it color-mathced to the rest of your bike--high gloss finish and all right? Well there's a reason why the stock inner fairings come with flat black finish, to reduce glare and prevent the sun from reflecting into your eyes as you ride. The other downfall to having your inner fairing custom painted is that over time and after miles of riding you're bound to get chips, nicks and scratches.

Close up on the texture of the Gray SoftDash

Rather than follow the trends of what everyone else was doing with color matched, inner fairings, Derik decided to be a leader, not a follower and came up with the idea to create inner fairings in color complimenting choices that not only would make your bike look good, but is also very durable and would last a long time, the SoftDash comes with a ten year warranty. Made from a low gloss/low reflective, marine-rated, engineered leather material, Derik put his SoftDash through extensive testing in a 168 degree heat chamber for two weeks and the dash passed with no boils, bubbles, splits, or cracks.

Currently Derik has dashes available for the FLH models but he informed us that he is working on a dash for the Road Glide models as well. he also stated that while he currently offers three colors charcoal, black and tan, more colors may become available, he's going to wait and see what the market wants.

Derik recently sent us a couple dashes to install for an upcoming article so we thought we'd throw you quick bone here a let you catch a glimpse of them before the article hits the newsstands.