The only guys that run levers without ball ends have bark busters. The only guys I've seen with levers stuck in thier legs had bark busters.

 

Lol female levers.

So if a tree knocks your bar sideways and you proceed to fly over the bars with high bark busters and low levers, then they might go through your leg.

Just make the lever extra short so it can't penetrate any vital organs. Extra sharp too, better to go in clean than a blunt stab!

 

explain how it penetrates my leg when i have barkbusters on?

 

Many guys run the guards straight out and the levers at an angle. Guards have been known to move in a hard crash. I hope nobody here ever has a problem with them and, it's your option to run sharp pointed blades on your handle bars. I have been hurt many times in my fifty seven years of racing and, I will do what I can to keep from getting hurt any more. At my age I just don't heal as fast as I once did. I wish you "all the best."

 

If you are going to compete in any AMA sanctioned event, the ball-ends on the levers are required by the rulebook. They are safety devices, as stated previously. Barkbusters make a lever-stabbing much less likely, but it can still happen. Remember Murphy's Law.

 

Boy, must have had twigs for legs. I couldn't fit my leg up there between the lever and the steel bar of the bark buster.

I guess I'm still not going to buy a set of the levers. If my leg gets up there in far enough to get stabbed I'm gonna be more worried about the compound fractures that would be needed to get it in there.

 

Not that it really means anything in this argument other than to qualify the AMA for its expertise, the AMA used to have brakes banned from flat track bikes as being dangerous.

 

I started racing in the fifties and the flat track bikes had no brakes. For the time and machinery it was thought to be a safer to race without brakes. Its safer to have ball ends on your levers. Your choice. I don't give a s___ what you do with your bike. I'm just offering advise. After what I've seen I run ball ends. Foot pegs, levers, bar ends, cross bars, muffler ends, they all cause ouchies from time to time. As motorcycle riders we all take chances. "You pays your money and you takes your chances." Good riding and good luck to all of us.

 

So, you are familiar with the wisdom of the AMA... I figured someone would remember it.

It would be interesting to see just how many people get gored by levers. In about 40 years of riding I haven't actually talked to anyone who had. Not to say it doesn't happen, just that I've never had anyone I've spoken to have it happen. And I worked 7 years full time and another 15 years part time in a bike shop. Kind of surprising. I've known a lot of people who've raked up skin with the sharp tooth pegs though. But I'm not recommending rubber peg covers, like the AMA does on flat trackers. I think that one is probably good on flat track though, much better than no brakes.

 

Ohh boy look what I started with just a simple comparison picture