Engine crash bars

Wasn't going to go for these as I didn't want to add too much extra weight. However, on a ride out to Loomies cafe I met another CRF250 rider who said his fairing had "exploded" the first time he dropped it off road. He had reinforced the fairing with some sort of kevlar mesh and added a set of GPKompozit crash bars/skid plate. The bars looked good; so after some research, I narrowed the (limited) choice to the GPKompozit (from Turkey) and the Motoskills (from Thailand). The Thai ones were slightly cheaper, but the Turkish ones were a couple of kilos lighter. 

The small engine bars on my XT definitely saved the water pump in an off in Mongolia; so I decided it was probably wise to get a set for the CRF. I’ve seen many examples of over the top crash protection; the XT has integrated “crash panels” which work pretty well, but many people seem to think they also need crash bars to protect the crash panels giving the full scaffolding look; superfluous and heavy......madness!

Anyway, I digress.........

Didn’t need the integrated bash plate on the GPKompozit as I already had the stand-alone one from Thailand. The fitting of the bars was another opportunity to showcase my incompetence. Took me a while to work out how they fitted (which included the removal of an engine bolt). I had to zip tie a spanner in place on the engine bolt on one side of the bike before I could tackle the nut on the other side. It would have been much easier with a second pair of hands and a functioning brain, but you can only work with what you have....!

Soundtrack: “Space Monkey” - John Prine