BMW R1200RT/R1250RT Forum

I've been thinking about sensible protection for the cylinders on my new RT lc. A car drove into me and though the damage to the cylinder head is only cosmetic (it looks like the bike had fallen onto its side) the bill for replacing all the bits, including labour, will be £360. Fortunately I'm not paying.
I've looked closely at all the stuff available on the web. I've narrowed the choice to proper old-fashioned crash bars from Wunderlich which look robust, wrap around well and seem to suit the bike. Alternatively the cheaper option is the X-Heads. These would protect the heads at slower speeds or if you just dropped the bike.
I'm new to this. Any advice/observations?

I went for the wunderlich crash bars,  easy to fit and handy for mounting cameras,foot rests etc

Maz12 wrote: I went for the wunderlich crash bars,  easy to fit and handy for mounting cameras,foot rests etc

I to went the whole hog and got the Wunderlich Safety Protection System (front & back). Some will say the rear bars make the bike wide, yes but only by 43mm in total. It gives me piece of mind if the bike rolled of the front bars and onto panniers, no probs now.

I bought Ilium crash bars. When I installed them they were touching the radiator hose on the right side. I spoke to John at Ilium and he said that's OK. Then when I told him I was not comfortable with the metal pipe rubbing against a rubber radiator hose. John said as long as I could fit a business card between the hose and crash bar, it would be OK. Well I couldn't. So I told John that I would drill the mounting bracket out slightly (about 1/16th of an inch). That didn't work so I put my floor jack under it and I still couldn't clear the radiator hose. I finally took them off, hit it with a sledge hammer and reinstalled. Great they don't hit but they are too ugly now to fit on my beautiful bike. Stay away from these crash bars. They don't fit.  >:(

Use what BMW have designed and built.  A perfect fit and they do the job. 

Very happy with these:  http://www.nationalcycle.com/vehicles/m ... z7103.html

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Not much more metal in the Forth road bridge. 

As a dedicated follower of fashion, I got the dealer to throw these zylinderkopfhaubenschutze in when I bought the bike.

Their the ones to have.

X-heads for me.
Have a look here.  http://machineartmoto.com/x-heads-durability/
If I was to get crash bars I would agree with Mr BMW above. I believe the x-heads can be combined with them.

The X heads are just plastic and cover the tops of the cylinder heads that could not touch down unless the bike was upside down.  They could not be incorporated with the BMW cylinder protectors.

pbsrides wrote: Very happy with these:  http://www.nationalcycle.com/vehicles/motorcycle-1/bmw/bmwr1200rt/2014bmwr1200rt/z7103.html

To be fair, compared to some of the scaffolding you can get, these are quite neat.


Still not tempted though.  I'll stick with the BMW head protectors though...

richardbd wrote:
To be fair, compared to some of the scaffolding you can get, these are quite neat.


Still not tempted though.  I'll stick with the BMW head protectors though...

They also provide a closer mounting point for highway pegs.

RTman10 wrote: The X heads are just plastic and cover the tops of the cylinder heads that could not touch down unless the bike was upside down. They could not be incorporated with the BMW cylinder protectors.

Here we go again, if it isn't BMW it must be rubbish blah blah. The x-heads do fit with BMW's crash bars. The x-heads offer far more protection than the BMW ones.