That was the one and only question for months. The only way to find out is to round up an Adventure Sports Africa Twin.
It makes it challenge number 1. So, we began digging through our resources to somehow and as fast as possible get a new anniversary edition Honda Africa Twin named “Adventure Sports CRF1000L2“.
After making minor modifications to our crash bars to fit 2018 CRF1000L regular models, we thought we could not be too far off of successfully outfitting an Adventure Sports model. There were lots of “buts” though.
The first “but” was: where to find one. A couple of emails and some thinking had solved this problem. Our friends at Zweirad Hentschl (Honda dealer in Austria) came to the rescue.
One thing off the list. Next: what products should we install?
Since our Ultimate Protection Combo is the best selling combo, we thought that it should be the one. Quickly and neatly a set of crash bars, manual engine guards and a heavy-duty skid plate got packed into a large shipping box and off it went to Austria!
Now the waiting game had begun and hours felt like days and days felt like weeks due the continuous pressure built upon us by our potential customers who insisted only on Outback Motortek protection for the newly purchased Adventure Sports.
Fair enough.
Thanks to the express delivery, the parcel arrived at the Hentschl’s. This was going to be the big countdown.
Not a whole lot later, the first email came through via one of their Honda technicians that things were not looking good. I was about to give into gravity and drop to the ground to soak the carpet with my tears. Kid you not! Instead, I decided to look for a solution. See, Honda sells their Adventure Sports with that… well… “crash bars” which qualify for a decent decoration only and it comes with a mounting tab on either side of the frame sandwiched between the exhaust headers. The fun game is that in order to remove the tabs, you’ll have to remove the two long through bolts.
So what to do now? We were at crossroads. Give up and redesign our crash bars and engine guards or just keep at it and rid the poor Adventure Sports of that flimsy, thin little set of mounting tabs. We decided on the latter.
The key to this was to remove the exhaust header bolts. It allowed the exhaust header to move just enough to be able to pull out the through bolts and ditch the Honda crash bars’ lower mounting tabs.
Success seemed to be en route! But not just, yet. Who knows what other hurdles those talented Honda engineers would throw at us.
The Honda technician at Hentschl continued to move forward and just a bit later an email came that gave me a huge relief: the crash bars fit! Those almost-teary eyes turned into glowing eyes.
The rest seemed to be a walk in the park as the final email rolled in:
“Lorry! We’re pleased to tell you that the Ultimate Protection combo has been successfully mounted on our Adventure Sports model. Photos and a video to follow shortly”.
Well, I’m happy to present the video that confirms the fitment officially and now we’re happy to answer such emails: “Are your products compatible with my Adventure Sports Africa Twin?”
Yes!
Below, I present you the video: