which crash bars?

[frankfrank]

Hi,

I've just bought a 1100gs and am slowly preparing my bike for that big trip.
I'm thinking about fitting crash bars but am unsure whether go for the Touratech or BMW ones.
Does anyone have good or bad experiences with either of them?
Any advice greatly appreciated.
Happy riding!

Frank

[Steve Pickford]

BMW & TT crashbars are expensive, try the Hepco & Becker bars. Easy to fit & provide good protection. Wunderlich bars are cheaper but a pain in the arse to fit & don't provide as much protection as the H&B's IMO.

There's also Stanton Headguards to consider? I use these in conjunction with Wunderlich bars, girlfriends 1150 has H&B's fitted.

[frankfrank]

Originally posted by Steve Pickford:
BMW & TT crashbars are expensive, try the Hepco & Becker bars. Easy to fit & provide good protection. Wunderlich bars are cheaper but a pain in the arse to fit & don't provide as much protection as the H&B's IMO.

There's also Stanton Headguards to consider? I use these in conjunction with Wunderlich bars, girlfriends 1150 has H&B's fitted.

[frankfrank]

Thanks for the info!
Is it still easy to work on the bike with these crashbars fitted or do they have to be dismantled?
I will have a look at their prices.
Cheers!

Frank

[Steve Pickford]

I only have experience of working on oilheads fitted with Wunderlich and H&B bars.

No problems with either, I think the same applies to TT & BMW's own bars.

Note that some dealers in the UK automatically remove any bars fitted when servicing a bike. They charge their normal hourly rate for removal & re-fitting, which can be an hours work in total. Not cheap at all...........

[frankfrank]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the info,I had a look on the H&B website,crasbars look okay and are indeed quite a bit cheaper so more money for petrol ;-).
Cheers,

Frank

[Roboyobo]

Warning! I had a fairly new set of H&P bars on an F650. They actually snapped whilst riding at high speed on a motorway. The bike had not been dropped with them on, so i guess that a weak weld had been broken by the engine vibrations.

[Steve Pickford]

Update on H&B bars:

I had to loosen them right off at all mounting points to remove the valve cover & more importantly, to be able to re-fit the valve cover square to the head as failure to do so leads to oil leaks around the spark plug tunnel. Complete PITA IMO. The plastic pulley cover was also hard to remove.

In addition, the grommet on the flywheel inspection hole that allows you to see the TDC mark was hard to remove (& harder to re-fit), so I didn't bother, found TDC by feel & a long thin screwdriver.