Some experience with engine crash bars for R1200 GS WC?

Altrider gear is really well designed and thought out. Super tough. You need to beyond looks unless you are building a tarts handbag.
 
My 08 Hexhead adventure has the standard crash bars. When I tested the RHS at 15mph the bar bent back and bent the Touratech head protector. That was also scraped so no biggie. But any more rearward bend in the crash bar would have mashed the rocker cover.
I now intend to junk or modify the engine bars and fit carbon fibre rocker cover protectors complete with wear pads.
As the lower bars carry the petrol tank protectors it needs some thought
So don't assume crash bars are automatically a good idea. Some sort of cosmetic protection certainly. But otherwise....
 
I have the bmw bars fitted and they took a heavy hit, enough to bend them,
No damage to the engine or frame,
Simon paveys off road school do have them fitted, a mate sent video and was there today,,
I intend to add the x heads as personal preference, the twin cam head covers took a lot of the bikes weight in an off,
 
I need to choose between Altrider and Touratech. I'll be in London commuting and still want to be filtering between cars and raised pavement / traffic islands. I don't want the bars to catch! The altrider ones look fairly wide? Wider than the touratech?
 
Altrider in black for me.

Width in this head on shot...
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Side profile-
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I've got standard BMW bars on my GSA and I dropped/fell off four times in one day fully loaded off roading in Morocco and not a scratch on the paint work.
 

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I also have the BMW bars on my LC and they survived, more or less invisibly, a silly low speed drop.
They are not that much wider than the cylinder heads, easy to fit, available via any BMW motorrad dealer.
So I think this represents a good solution for protection.
 
Those thinking of upper crash bars. Pls note that they directly transmit vibration from the engine to the sterring head and thence to your bars
 
I have tried out my touratech ones and have to say I was impressed, although I was hardly moving when i tested them out.

These are mine......

 
roundincircles said:
One point to remember is that contacts with the frame transfer load which can damage the frame......this is why the off road school does not use engine protection bars (they wreck the frame) and consider it cheaper to repair damaged items.
Click to expand...

i can vouch for transferring load to frame. during recent crash, altrider crash bars transferred energy to frame and bent frame of 2013 gsw. as a result insurance totaled gsw. the same thing happened to another colleague: altrider bar bent frame and insurance totaled his gsw. i will not again purchase bars that attach to frame. you can read more here and see photos:
http://goo.gl/Bjx27N

bent_frame.jpg


cheers.
 
Theres a lot to be said for the OEM crash bars which are designed to bend, absorbing the forces and transferring manageable loads to the frame.

I wouldn't use non-OEM bars because of this.
 
I think there's a lot to be learnt from this thread. There are so many accessories available which seem to concentrate mainly on aesthetics, all of these things need to be designed
to work effectively from an engineering point of view. I wouldn't want a bent frame to result from a fairly minor off! It may also be worth considering insurance companies may use the fitment of non
BMW approved accessories as a way of avoiding paying out in the event of a tumble, it's definitely something I consider, call me old fashioned or just over cautious!
 
The only trouble I have found with the BMW bars is that you cannot change the spark plugs unless you loosen off the engine bars. A pain in the butt when you are at the side of the road in Mongolia.
 
I did go for the Touratech crash bars. After installing the crashbars, I had drops two times. First time when I just had stopped to take some pictures at Hardangervidda. My right foot suddenly started to sink into the road shoulder because of very wet soil. Didn't manage to keep bike in balance and it dropped. No harm, thanks to the crashbar. Next time it happened at off-road training. No harm thanks to the crachbar. The event documented in this video at 10:30 :

Later I also installed the Touratech upper crash bars extension. Here is some photos:

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wildoat said:
I think there's a lot to be learnt from this thread. There are so many accessories available which seem to concentrate mainly on aesthetics, all of these things need to be designed
to work effectively from an engineering point of view. I wouldn't want a bent frame to result from a fairly minor off! It may also be worth considering insurance companies may use the fitment of non
BMW approved accessories as a way of avoiding paying out in the event of a tumble, it's definitely something I consider, call me old fashioned or just over cautious!
Click to expand...

<sigh> I don't own altrider bars, but there is nothing wrong with the design. No crash bar is going to prevent damage in all circumstances. damytzeus' crash was not minor by any definition, he pitched the bike into a field of boulders. If you look at the pics and the thread on advrider, you'll see that the bike was likely totalled regardless of which bars he had on, or no bars at all.

I've read of a number of times the bmw bars bent back to/past the cover in minor tipovers, and the unlucky ones ended up paying for both the valve cover and a new crash bar in some cases, so ymmv with regard to which bars you use. Its all going to depend on what kind of crashes you get into.
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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