Monday, May 20, 2013
Should I be concerned that motorcycle crash bars came in a box marked fragile and surrounded by the heaviest duty bubble wrap I’ve ever seen?
Fragile?
Lots of thick bubble wrap
Bars and hardware
I like the Hepco & Becker bars that I had on my ‘05 GS enough that when it came time or order bars for the new GS they were one of my first choices. It helped that that bars are minimal… they don’t stick out a bunch and they don’t hide the cylinder behind a cage of metal. The bars on my old GS survived deer, low sides on the street, and too many dirt/rock naps to count. I expect these will hold up at least as well.
Tuesday, July 23 2013 [706 miles]
I got back from having the 600 mile service done a little while ago. The engine is cool enough that I won’t burn my fingers mounting the crashbars.
Upper crashbar mount
Lower crashbar mounts
Left side mounted
The case has a threaded hole at the lower front for crashbar mounting. I was most careful around this hole making sure that the bar was aligned so the screw wouldn’t cross thread. It took several tries to get the left side started. The hardest part is that the instructions call for a washer on both sides of the crashbar and there is not much room for fingers. I was too lazy to drop the bash plate.
Right side mounted
front view
rear view
Hepco & Becker provide new screws for the lower rear mounts. All of the hardware they provide is allen head. I’d prefer torx like the rest of the bike. I put the original (obsolete, in H&B talk) screws in a marked ziplock bag in case I ever decide to remove the crashbars.
The M10 at the lower rear is torqued to 40 N-m. The other hardware is M8. Per the H&B instructions I torqued them to 25 N-m. I used blue loctite on all fasteners.