Posts
427
Joined
3/18/2015
Location
Hurricane, WV
US
Edited Date/Time
8/28/2020 4:07am
With all the talk about proper mud set up this and set up that, I am genuinely surprised how many riders elected to not run hand guards. I figured it would be a no brainer to keep mud off the grips and levers as much as possible. Am I missing a reason to not run them in the mud??
The Shop
Obviously for Moto, different story.
I’ve always liked the MX handguards look, I grew up loving TP199 so I think that’s what started it.
I built these out of “flag style” hand guards for my son at a mud race a few years ago. Worked darn good!👍
Once, before a winter time hare scrambles that was forecast to be wet, I sewed a set of elephant ears, copying the style the Craig Vetter marketed for street bikes. They worked amazing. For two hours my hands were warm and dry. My grips and levers clean.
I use bark busters these days. My hands/ levers/ grips all last longer because of them. Even a 1" sapling that looks like it would bend like a ski gate, can upset ones plans.
If "not supposed to...." was the rule, I suppose we would not wear helmets, pads, or boots either?
I’m only half joking.
But, I can understand the riders not being familiar with them and them being off putting.
Because I have precisely the opposite thing - the couple of club MX events I did early this year, I had the bark busters off - as far as I know, they are banned for MX use here, so I set my bike up to the rules. But after so many years of BBs, with full plastic surrounds, it really threw me to Not have them on. So, a set of 'flags' were promptly found and fitted. Bummer is, in a simple topple over, I tore my first grip and bent my first front brake lever, in decades, I think.
As a side note, I recently found in one of my book magazine rooms during a clean out, a set of the original Moto X Fox 'Elephant Ears - plus their first nylons and jerseys ( none of which have a hope in hell of fitting me), all inside their first gear bag. I worked at Competition Development in the 70s and early 80s, the first OZ distributors of Fox .
And yes, utside US nobody runs barkbusters, they have a goon stamp here in europe and we all prefere to run flag types.
And the grips tend to start slipping easier even if you have them wired when you cut them in the outer ends and run barkbusters.
This is important to me.
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