We already knew the short term results by drop and torture testing our 1200/1250GS lower crash bars. The long term results have been a question mark though.
Photo credit: @pere.gracia on Instagram
Not until recently! One of our customers from Spain kept appearing on Instagram doing all sorts of wild things on his BMW R1250GS. Plenty of those wild things ended with crashes. It’s a big bike and gravity is not on its side!
It’s a relief to say that our drop/torture test results carry on and work in the long run too. 
The idea was always to create a set of crash bars which feature integrated steel plates to shield the most exposed part of the vulnerable boxer engine: valve covers. It’s still a one of a kind solution on the market!
The rest is not so revolutionary but instead of adding a ton of tubing to reinforce the lower crash bars, we simply added triangular braces. This saves some weight and allows only so much movement to the structure during a significant impact. Some movement is necessary to absorb impact.
We know how much it (our crash bars) can take more or less. Our development period was likely the longest ever in the history of Outback Motortek and we performed drop tests at 4 different phases!
That’s why our friend and customer, Pere can safely use it for different applications. Parking it against logs or dropping it on nasty rocks!
Grass and mud: a simple task for our crash bars.
Although this bike is equipped with a set of aftermarket plastic valve covers (for additional protection), we did carry out our tests without using one. Have you seen the video, yet? It’s nearing 100,000 views now!
Finally, one crash is not like another one. There are countless different scenarios, however we’re gaining more and more proof that we’ve nailed a solid design resulting in a reliable armour for GS boxer engines.
