Triumph Tiger 800 XRx | Heed Crash bars

The problem with farkle is that it is expensive! Unfortunately for my wallet it is also super fun to trick out your bike.

This is where the Heed crash bars come in. On a search for some crash bars I found that many manufacturers like SW-MOTECH, Altrider, Adventure Spec, Happy Trails, and even Triumph produce crash or engine protection bars for around ~$250. These usually only protect either the engine or the tank, with the exception of the Adventure Spec's which does a little bit of both. It seemed like if I wanted to protect the engine and the tank I would have to buy engine crash protection bars and crash bars. Not wanting to spend a total of $500 for what essentially is some heavy duty bars welded together, I kept looking for an alternative.

To the rescue come the folks over at ADVRider. The user 'stinkyfeet' wrote up a nice review of some crash bars made by a company in Poland named HEED. They cover both the tank and the engine for $250! Thinking this was too good to be true I did some more research and ran across a video where a guy had installed them on two different bikes.

Filled with confidence that these were the right crash protection bars to get I ordered some on ebay. 2 weeks later they arrived, well packed with some poorly written instructions. After a run to the hardware store to pick up a very large torx bit to remove some bolts that attach the engine to the frame and some trial and error I was able to get the bars installed.

Even if all the bolts are loosened it seems like the bars will not fit just right. Based on some other comments in the advrider thread and the youtube review, mentioned above, this is normal. I ended up tightening all the main bolts on the sides and forced the midsection that joins each side together and tightened those bolts last. This proved to be effective as all my other trials of leaving all bolts loose had failed.