This weekend I will mostly be fitting Renthal Twinwalls

I'm getting rather annoyed by the amount of rearward sweep on the standard 1200 handlebars. This manifests itself in pain on the outer palms of my hands because the bars are angled back so far that, with my hands in a natural position, all the pressure is on the outside of my palms. If I change the position of my hands to even thre pressure out, it puts stress on my elbows which get sore after an hour or so.

So, Renthal Twinwall's it is. They are rather lovely. Will they fit? No idea but I'm going to have a go.



You can see in the shot below the different sweep angle of the Renthal's -v- the standard bars.


I'll add to this thread as I go along.....

PS - I'm using Mouse's very detailed guide here: http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33590&highlight=handlebar

OOOoohooooh!!!!

I'll be following this with great interest!

Go Tobers, Go Tobers, Go Tobers, Go Tobers!!!!

Oh well, that didn't take long then.

Bars stripped and removed in about 30 minutes. It's much simpler than the 1150 bars as there are no awkward heated grip wires threaded through the bars. Just very nice (well made) connecters behind the switchgear as Mouse pointed out earlier.

Note use of non-bodgetastic correctly sized torx bit to remove the diddy screws holding the switchgear on:



This is all the hardware removed. Note that the bar end bolts are loctited in so quite tough to remove. Note non-bodgetastic array of various sized torx bits and torx sockets



Removing the bars is quite easy. The left grip slides off once the hidden screws are removed. The right one wont come off straight away as the throttle cable doesn't stretch far enough. You need to remove the clamps and take the bar off to get enough slack to remove the throttle grip.

Make sure you have lots of cable ties ready for when you put it all back together.



This is what it looks like without the bars. Make sure you keep the brake & clutch fluid reservoirs upright so you dont get air in the lines.



You can see clearly here the bizarre angle of the standard bars (the ones without the crossbar). How anyone thought these would be comfortable is beyond me.

Also note the cross-hatched area on the clutch lever side of the Renthal bars - this will come into play later....



Refitting is pretty much the reverse of removal. Make sure that you measure up the amount of room you need to fit the lever/mirror assembly - if you push the grips all the way on, then there wont be space to fit the lever/mirror bracket.

Because of the cross-hatched section on the clutch side, the fit with the clutch grip is very snug - quite a lot of effort is required to get the grip on - I used a twisting motion. However, once on it is v.secure. Therefore I have not had to drill and tap holes for the securing screws, though I may do this later when I am totally happy with everything.

As Mouse said, the standard fitment of grips has them sticking out beyond the bars, with the very large bar ends inserted into the remaining area under the grips. As the BMW bar ends dont fit the Renthals, I have simply pushed the grips in so they are just slightly protruding from the bars - just enough to have space to mount the lever/mirror assembly.





And here's the (nearly) finished item.



You'll notice that the handguards are not fitted. This is because, now the bars are effectively 3cm narrower on each side, they wont fit without spacers on the ends of the bars. Not sure if I can be arsed with creating some spacers yet - we'll see.

Also, I haven't put bar ends on yet. This is because I was waiting to get everything set up before buying some. I did however confirm that pink anodised Motrax bar ends will fit quite nicely (that was all they had in the handlebar shop, hopefully you can see why I didn't buy them). I'll get a set of sensible coloured ones or similar this weekend and fit them on.

Total fitting time - about 1.5 hours including a can of beer and some pottering about. Excellent result - well chuffed.

I took it out for a spin just now to make sure everything worked OK and check the riding position. Superb - pressure on my hands is now evenly distributed across the width of each hand and no longer on the outer palms. The riding position is slightly more canted forward as you might expect, with about 7cm less rearward rake on the bars. I'm not sure if I like this or not, but I'll try it for a week or so and see how I get on. If not the solution is pretty simple - some risers from Nippy Norman should put the bars back to the same height & reach as before, but much more comfy:



Overall, very pleased indeed. Fitting was much easier than I expected. Just make sure you have the right tools - I have a set of Halfords Professional torx sockets (you'll need them for the bar clamps) and an array of torx bits for my screwdriver - you'll need a small one for the screws holding the grips on.

The bars cost £79.99 by the way.

Andy

Forgot to mention that the bike feels much more compact with the Renthal bars on. This is no doubt due to them being narrower, but the whole bike feels tighter. I experienced the same with my 1150 when I put narrower R1150R bars on that. Should enable faster filtering

Oh yes...do note that Renthal Twinwalls come in many different variations of sweep angle, rise etc etc. The ones in the shop I went into just so happened to be right for me so I bought them on the spot. I recommend trying a few to see what you think.

For the record, mine say Sebastian Tortelli 998 on them. They are really well made - lovely, yum yum. Never thought I'd have a thing about handlebars.

Tortelli is pretty cool, but Ricky Carmichael is the man. Have you seen him on Supercross - amazingly fast. And now James Stewart is out with a broken arm - damn - cant wait to see them go head to head.

Talking about Ricky Carmichael, you can also get a set of Renthal Fatbars that are called Ricky Carmichael models. These too are the larger diameter needed for the 1200 clamps so would fit as well, and they are also about £18 cheaper. They would do the job just as well as the Twinwalls, but in my opinion didn't look as cool and dont have the crossbar (though I think you can buy one separately).

Any other Renthal bars WONT fit the 1200 as their diameter at the clamp will be too small.

Tobers said:

Note use of non-bodgetastic correctly sized torx bit to remove the diddy screws holding the switchgear on:

Click to expand...

Bloody show off

Seriously, I gotta get myself a decent set of torx bits!

Tobers, you been watchin to much Holby City.

how clean is your garage floor.........awesome!
the handlebar thing was interesting too

Gotta keep it tidy & clean else Mrs Tobers gets upset. Before I made it nice she never bothered. Since I've done it up (white painted walls & ceiling, sealed floor, diamond-pattern alloy treadplate, lots of light etc) she thinks its part of the house so wants it kept clean.

Bizarre.

Seeing as the handlebars were done so fast, I've posted an update on my SmartPhone GPS solution here with more shots of the garage floor for those who are really interested.

gosh.... the garage floor and a mille with twin sp cans in the same pic....


we are not worthy

Just focus on the handlebar mod dammit

What can i say...

This Tobers bloke is a bit of a whizz and a small genius. he Helped me (or should that read i fumbled about?) whist he installed 2 sets of Hellas on my 1150 last weekend. That only took 4 hours.

And yes his garage IS like a surgery. Bloody jealous. And even stranger, his head does go up and down like in his avtar!!!!

Active cooling for the brain!

Cracking write up tobers, very practical and informative, good pics as well, i'll find this very helpful in the near future.
Thanks a lot.

Splendid!

Tobers,

Excellent, truly excellent! I'm now much more confident after having you and Mr Mouse have been guinea piggin' this

One thing tho - brush guards - what are your ideas about them? I guess you'll know after a good bit of riding. I think that they're quite needed during the cold times of the year.
My local off-road dealer said that the easiest deal would probably be to put some "proper" brush-guards on, you know those with the alumumulumlumlum bar in them... But they're ca £60 too... *sigh*
And they're usually smaller too, which means they don't provide that much wind/weather protection...

Time will tell?!!

PS, I know why you didn't get those bar ends... A man of your statue would never go for pink motrax bar ends...

Again, thanks for the write up!

Dunno yet about the handguards. I'll be riding the bike every day next week (as usual) and I'll see if the lack of them makes any difference to my hands getting cold.

Also, because the bars are now further forward, I think any hand guards will hit the screen on moderate lock. I suspect I will go for a pair of rear-angled risers like in the pic earlier in my post which will sort that out.

Bought some bar ends from Infinity - they are Oxford jobs - a bit naff but will do for now. They are much much lighter than the standard ones so it'll be interesting to see if I get more vibes or not.

A brief update:

I've fitted Nippy's bar risers (ta for the fast next day service Normski).



As a result, the bars are now in precisely the correct position for me. The Renthals are less upswept and backswept than the original BMW items so without the risers I ended up stretching to reach the bars a bit. The risers put them in more or less the original position, but without the painful rearward sweep angle of the originals. Result

I can confirm that running without handguards makes your fingers jolly cold, even with heated grips on full. I've fitted some noddy bar-ends temporarily but am looking at ways to refit the hand guards. The main problem is that I need bar ends that extend out beyond the bars by about 30mm otherwise the handguards will foul the brake & clutch levers.

Also, I've not replaced the Touratech floppy handlebar bag thing with a much better Hein Gericke Toerag crossbar bag.

Andy

Sweet, Tobers!

If you know anyone who could use a lathe or something to turn out those bar-ends, I'd be interested in a set. (I.e renthal bars + oem brush-guards)

Anyhoo, would it be possible to get a piccie? Maybe a sideways one with you on the bike, so we can see your seating position?

Thanks for the update!

I'll get the tripod out

I do know a man with a few CNC machines as it happens, but I reckon there should be some bar ends on the market somewhere - will check around and if not will get some made.

Tobers said:

I'll get the tripod out

I do know a man with a few CNC machines as it happens, but I reckon there should be some bar ends on the market somewhere - will check around and if not will get some made.

Click to expand...

Get something to put the camera on too!




You're a true gem Tobers!

A quick update to the bar-end situation.

Having scoured the planet for suitable bar ends, and failed badly to find any (even Renthal's ones dont fit Twinwalls), I had the standard BMW ones machined down a bit so they'd fit inside the Renthal bars.

Once this was done and a snug fit was achieved, I used a bastard mix of an Oxford bar end rubber expanding plug thingy, long bolt, and a curious threaded rubber insert found at my local bolt shop to construct a totally new sort of bar end attachment mechanism.

Basically, the rubber plug expands widthways when the bolt through it is tightened, thus keeping the bar end in the bar. The bolt through it is only 6mm but the hole in the OE bar ends is larger (10mm or so), so the threaded rubber insert sits inside the hole in the bar end to keep the long bolt that goes through it in place.

Now all the bits are back on - proper bar ends and the hand guards. Looks top. Photo of curious bar end construction to follow.

If there is enough demand, I'd be able to manufacture some proper style bar ends with proper sized holes and proper expansion bits to keep them in the bar. Nippy Norm is pondering selling a Renthal bars/risers/bar-ends combo so if you want something like this, let him know & he & I can work out solving the bar end problem.

Andy