No, nothing too serious, my previous post reminded me of a lil' project that came through the 749R low side crash with flying colours and I'd forgotten to mention it previously. Super easy, good bang for buck and you could apply it to just about any sportsbike.
I had some Fast By Ferracci clip-on's on the 749R, absolutely nothing wrong with them, I just had the feeling they suited an earlier era, looking a little out of place and time against the more modern looking machined triple clamp on the 749R:
I'd heard about and seen carbon fibre handlebar tubes, but they seemed pretty expensive for something that I wasn't totally convinced about and they wouldn't suit the pinned rather than clamped arrangement on the FBF 'bars. So I just sorta filed it away....
.....but when I saw these pop up, for cheap minus the tubes, well why wouldn't you?
Next up was some 22mm carbon tube with a 2mm wall thickness, 500mm long, I picked up 2 lengths for approx $60AUD delivered (still have 1 length spare):
After cutting to length (500mm is perfect length to simply cut in half) it was just a case of potting up the clamped end with epoxy resin:
While that was curing I machined (or you could just buy) some HDPE bar ends to suit:
And just wack 'em together:
And on the bike:
But just how strong are they? My exhaustive 2-stage NATA certified testing program consisted of:
- lifting the front of the bike completely off the ground by each handlebar in turn -> no problem, in fact I was quietly amazed at just how stiff they felt.
- conducting a low side crash (the things I do in the name of research) -> bent/ground down the gear lever, rashed clutch lever, broke a peg, so a decent impact....but the only damage to the 'bar was a rashed bar end easily replaced.
All up they're simple, cheap, strong, and 290grams (total) lighter than the FBF 'bars. Not bad for the minor investment and literally just a few minutes work.
