Touring Harley Davidson Hand Grips
This page is the unheated grip: feel, vibration, diameter, security and looks. What most of the 98 listings here will not tell you from the title alone is which throttle system they are built for, and that is the detail that decides whether a grip goes on your bike at all.
Hand grips for sale here run from plain cable-throttle originals to Kahuna, Empire, Willie G Skull and Redline styles, at 10% off RRP with free UK delivery available.
Which throttle does your bike take?
Harley-Davidson has fitted two different throttle systems over the years: a cable that pulls a drum, and an electronic throttle that reads a sensor. The grip built for one will not fit the other. Full stop. Which one a particular bike has depends on the model line and roughly when it was built, and the changeover happened at a different point for Touring, Softail and Dyna. There is no single year that covers the whole range.
Of the 98 hand grips live on this page, only eight say so in the title: 56100364 and 56100356 are marked Cable, and 56100361, 56100378, 56100231, 56100234, 56740-08 and 56100428 are marked for electronic or TPS throttle. The other 90, including every Kahuna, Empire, Adversary, Switchback and Redline listing, do not say either way. The tags on this page split by model family (Touring, Softail, Dyna, Road Glide, Street Glide), not by throttle type. Checking the tag alone will not settle it. Check what is already on your bike, or ask the parts desk before you order.
Grips also come in more than one diameter
The style name is not the only variable. The same Willie G Skull design ships in at least two bar diameters, 56751-04 at 1.33in and 56741-04 at 1.66in. Other listings are marked small (56100355) or large (56100478) diameter. Measure the bar you are fitting to, not just the finish you want.
What goes wrong with a fitted grip
A recurring complaint on rider forums on both sides of the Atlantic, going back more than a decade, is a hand grip working loose on the bar even though it was glued, sometimes by a dealer, with the adhesive supplied in the kit. What actually fixes it is genuinely disputed: threads recommend hairspray, superglue, Gorilla Glue, contact cement, weatherstrip adhesive and even a shaped zip-tie packed against the switch housing, and no single answer comes up as reliably solving it. Check the fitting instructions that come with the grip. If one is moving on the bar, that is a job for a workshop, not another tube of glue from the shed.
Why a loose grip is more than an annoyance
The DVSA's MOT inspection manual for motorcycles classifies "Grip insecure to handlebar" as a Dangerous defect, its most serious category, and "Handlebar grip missing" as Major, one grade down. That is a government roadworthiness test, not a sales pitch. It treats a grip that moves on the bar as more than cosmetic, whatever caused it to come loose.
What else the job needs
There is no wiring or extra harness to buy for an unheated grip; that only applies to the heated versions on the Harley-Davidson heated grips page. The cost that catches people out here is not a part at all. It is a second visit: more than one rider forum describes going back to a garage because the first glue job did not hold, so paying for a proper fit once is usually cheaper than doing the job twice.
Everything sold here sits within the wider Harley-Davidson parts range, so if what your bike needs is not on this page, that is the next place to look.