I did the BARKBUSTERS. They are a PITA since you need to drill out the bar ends to get it to work. Ain't they Perty?

 

Good on ya! Toughest piece of kit you'll ever put on your bike. Mine just smashed their way through 400 km of Australian bush with no worries whatsoever. Great product. You won't be disappointed.

 

Yes sirree! I finally did some serious enduro trails after a big rain, so it there was standing water and lots of mud! I fell off once and the barkbusters have proven themselves to be everything busters as they performed great...they even have the battle scars to prove it!

 

I bought Moose guards to go on my 07'. I just ride mild woods off road stuff, no need for protection beyond what the moose offers. I originally tapped my stock bars (which took ages and was a royal PITA) and planned to try to fit them up after tapping thinking I could adjust them one way or another to work it , then began to realize what looked like a close fit was TOO close to impossible because the mounts wanted to be immediately on top of where the cross bar meets the main bar. After looking at a variety of deviations and possible mods, I just decided the right way to do it was to use this as an excuse to upgrade my bars to larger diameter Moose bars (without a crossbar) rather than hacking it together. This worked out well, with a basic oversize midrise bar the only mods I had to make was removing the clip that attached the front brake cable to the speedo IIRC and making a small cutout in the inside edge of the plastic by the front brake reservoir so it could clear the hose. Otherwise it was a nice tidy fit with matching green handgrips and plastics. Sorry too lazy to take a pic atm and don't recall how to actually post them on here. The front brake slides slightly on the inner edge of the left grip but it's on the heavy coated part that's meant to slide in the guides so it doesn't worry me and hasn't caused a problem at all.

 

Hi everyone. I'm new to this forum. Just picked up my '09 KLX250SF a couple weeks ago w/ 180 miles on the ODO.

I realize I am a little late to this conversation. May need to start another thread??

Anyway, I bought some Cycra hand guards and went to install them today only to find out what LCubanaso said in post #2 about the bar ends being plugged.
...Wondering why the hell Kawi would do that knowing that people are going to want to install hand guards?

I don't really want to get new bars at this point and am wondering about the tapping procedure although that sounds like a bit of a pain. I would love to hear other peoples' experiences working around those welded bar end plugs.

Cheers,
Evan

 

Use a dremel and cut the welds holding the weights.
Mixed results: some have managed to drill and tap the weights (YMMV).

 

Moose Countours on a 2007 KLX, stock bars. Work great.

 

Watch that front brake line. Make sure it can move under full suspension compression. After my first ride in the dirt it took me a few minutes to figure out why my front wheel kept locking up. The PO didn't do a very good job of installing the guards. I see some problems like I had in some of the pics in this thread.



I shaved down one of the mounts, routed the brake line in front of the guard, and with a little fiddling the brake line moves up freely. I also needed to add the prerequisite electrical tape.

 

I agree the bungs in the OEM bars are aggravating. Not sure what Kawasaki was going for there...

Best solution that I found was to just replace the bars with aftermarket aluminum bars. Even if you cut the bungs out of the OEM bars, you still are stuck with crappy bars and the awkwardly placed crossbar which impairs mounting a lot of handguards.

I looked around and found a set of used Cycra barkbusters with the "U" inner bar mounts. These installed very easily, since the clutch cable and other wiring runs through the channel in the "U" and doesn't have to strain against a standard straight inner bar mount like with most other brands.

Re: the brake hose, on two different KLX250 installations, I have just removed the top brake hose guide. It's not really necessary, and with the addition of barkbusters, the top guide causes the brake hose to rub. Lose the top guide and the retaining slip that goes on the crossbar and there is no more rubbing.

 

I had a similar problem with mine, I had since covered the brake line in electrical tape since it rubs the mount during suspension articulation, and also re-routed the clutch cables to go above the guard.