Home • Guest Book • Forum • Chat • Contact • Members • Rule Book •
Member Guide • Schedules • Clubs • Scores • Gallery • Articles

Handguard Safety and Selection

By Norman Buckley

Handguards are essential equipment for the protection of your hands and fingers while riding the trails. Even though we value this essential equipment, or any safety equipment for that matter, if the equipment is not engineered, selected, or mounted correctly, the equipment provides a false sense of safety.

Interesting enough, in Florida Trail Riders (FTR) events alone, several riders have suffered serious injuries as a result of handguards. When compared to the number of handguards purchased throughout the country, FTR has a small populous of handguard users. Statistically, this is a high number of injuries, and it warrants further investigation. With no known educational information provided from the manufacturers, except for their marketing ploys, research to uncover and expose credible information on the proper use, selection, and mounting has proven to be a slow and tedious. My main focus for this article is to try and fill the information gap so that you can evaluate the level of safety that your handguards are currently providing and make the proper adjustments.

As the word handguard implies, how do yours measure (and mount) up? The first question for evaluation that must be asked is, why did or why do you intend to purchase a set of handguards? The word handguard implies that these products are designed for the protection of your hands. The amount of protection varies greatly and can be quite misleading.

After reviewing some of the high volume production line handguard paper work, one company stated that their handguard gives you the next (updated) step in extra protection for Enduro and other off road events. The same company’s magazine advertisement states that their product protects hands from brush, trees, rocks, etc. Yet another company that sells the exact looking handguard provided a warning statement; “These hand guards will not prevent injury in the event of a crash. They are designed to protect hands from cold weather and impact with smaller branches you might hit and flying debris”. Only one manufacturer, that I could find, had this warning statement, and they weren’t consistently labeling all of their products with this warning. As you can see, manufacturers are putting out conflicting information for very similar products (direct copy I’m told). So what are the manufacturers telling us? Are we purchasing handguards or cold weather protection? Again, unfortunately for the unsuspecting consumer, the manufacturers aren’t stepping up to the plate and providing sound education in an area that should be looked upon to promote safe use of their products.

This brings us to the next area of evaluation, the engineering aspect of handguards. We need to ask, engineered to what standard? Are manufacturers engineering their products for high volume production? Are the products engineered just to fit the bike, good looks, impact resistant, and to what specification, and/or safety of the rider? I would hope that companies design, test, and build to some type of realistic safety standard.

Selection

Most good working designs from companies truly interested in rider safety develop their products through actual racing and testing, failure analysis, redesign, testing, etc. So what should you look for when selecting hand protection? First, the type of riding you intend to do will help you in your selection decision. There are two main groups to base your decision, roost protection and the heavier reinforced hand protection or handguard.

The focus of this article is on the heavier reinforced hand protection, but a lot of the information presented can be used to evaluate both types. Second, proper fit is extremely important. One size does not fit all and selection should never be based on immediate availability. High volume production line products are commonplace in the motorcycle shops. This limited availability of other products leads you to believe that these common on the shelf products are the main products on the market. This makes comparison shopping for the right hand protection difficult.

There are a couple of easy ways to evaluate which manufacturer provides the best hand protection for you. Proper fit starts with understanding how much room your hands need for maximum extension without allowing a pinch point. Start by placing your hands on the grips in the normal hand and riding position. Extend your fingers as far forward as you can in the seated and standing riding positions. Notice how some handguards are designed for natural finger to side extension and some don’t.

Now try to see if you can extend your fingers underneath or above the handguard plastics.

If you can expose any part of your finger(s) outside of the protection area, then you are a likely candidate for an injury. Also look at the end points where your hands are positioned. Some riders don’t want the feeling that in an impact that their hands will become trapped. Billet Racing Products (BRP) has designed their product for those concerned riders. Per BRP, Pro Bend was designed to keep the rider from trapping their hand in the event of a fall. It appears that KTM and Fastway have similar products.

If you don’t have handguards yet, and are looking for a set, I suggest that you walk around and evaluate other types at the FTR events. I’ve found people to be very friendly and accommodating when asked about their equipment and set-up. The other recommendation is to see if the motorcycle shops will allow you to open the packaging on their products to evaluate them on the showroom.

Plastics

Next, plastic or no plastic, what’s your poison? Whether you choose to run the plastic shields covering the reinforcement metal bar or not, you first need to understand the definition of pinch point. According the National Safety Council; “A pinch point is any place where a body part can be caught between two or more moving mechanical parts”. A tree and your handguard could be those two mechanical parts. Plastics or not, both have risks. Without the plastic protection, you will greatly increase your risk of a crushing injury or amputation. Don’t be foolish; depending on the severity of the crushing injury, the physician might have no other alternative but to amputate. If you run the plastic protection without proper selection, your fingers, depending on the impact, can protrude underneath the handguard, exposing the finger(s) to a pinch point. The momentum carried by the weight of the bike and rider, even at slow speeds, is enough to cause a crushing injury or amputation. With proper selection, plastics are designed to have a large enough space to contain your fingers at full extension during a frontal impact and help dissipate the energy of that impact by allowing the object encountered to roll around the outside of your hand and fingers. Without plastics, your fingers, knuckles, or hand will perform that function.

Handmade

Fabrication of your hand protection might be for you. There are many talented machinist and metal fabricators that can produce nice results. If you are not one of these craftsmen, and/or are not familiar with how thicknesses and types of metals react upon impact, like a material/structural engineer, then please purchase the correct hand protection. Inadequate engineering can cause a structural failure and can collapse on your hand.

Preventative Maintenance and Replacement

Perform a regular inspection on your handguards prior to every ride. Check the torque on every bolt; look for deformed, cracked, or damaged material. Know when to replace your handguards. Don’t wait until they become so bad that they are a danger to you or another rider.

Mounting

Don’t just settle on the high volume handlebar clamps offered by most of the manufacturers. They all seem to have the standard outer bar end expansion bolts (near your pinky), but mounting the inboard hand protection to the handlebars, spells disaster. Think of it, with two points that can, will, and have rotated on riders, this type of hand protection mounting has the potential to come around and crush your hand. Have you ever had your handle bars move, even when the bolts were torqued to specifications? There are better mounting options available. Billet Racing Products (Cycra), MSR, and ego offer brackets that bolt to each side of the triple tree. They use the existing fork tube bolts.

erider produces a triple tree mount that attaches to the front of the triple tree. Fast Way offers a specific model and a universal model that mounts to the handlebar top bolt bracket. Solid mounting the inboard side will provide superior protection. The typical handlebar mounts are substandard engineering.

All manufacturers seem to provide assembly instructions. I have not seen any handguard products that demonstrate proper positioning and torque specifications with the handlebar mounts. The manufacturers that produce the triple tree and fixed bracket mounts refer you to the manufacturer’s torque specifications. With these fixed solid mounts, there isn’t any guessing on the proper positioning of the handguards. It seems logical that these fixed mounts will provide extra bracing and support in the event of an impact. Be careful not to under or over torque the bolts. This will reduce the strength of the product upon impact. Find the proper torque specifications for the bolt type and use a thread lock product to keep the bolt in place. Some riders like using tamper dots. Tamper dots are great for a quick visual to see if the bolt has moved, but never rely 100% on the tamper dot, re-torque to specification.

Future Purchases

Being a consumer, I now realize that I put too much trust in the companies that produce these products, along with the product safety regulations. My rationalization is, and still will be, that if the product will keep me riding by reducing or eliminating the possibility of injury, and it makes good sense, then I’ll buy it. I would also like to think that these companies that are designing products are doing so to make our sport safer. Remember, selection should never be based on immediate availability, take the time to investigate the correct product for your needs and ride safe.

Home • Guest Book • Forum • Chat • Contact • Members • Rule Book •
Member Guide • Schedules • Clubs • Scores • Gallery • Articles

© 2003 – 2005 Florida Trail Riders