Nomad Rider Crash Bars

Back in late December, I reviewed 9 different crash bars for my 2016 Kawasaki KLR650 in my post entitled KLR650 Crash Bar Options. I landed on a set of Nomad Rider Guards for the front protection.

At $209.99 + shipping of $43.10 = $243.09, the Nomad bars were certainly not the cheapest bars that I looked at, but they had some characteristics that made them attractive.

The bars are 1 1/8 inch (28.6mm) in diameter with a metal thickness of 2.5mm. That makes them some of the meatiest available. The other characteristic was that they rise higher than many competing models and have a cross member for better protection.

The bars are powder coated high-gloss black and were packaged well to avoid marring the surface. That's for me to do. :)

The guards came with replacement hardware for each of the three mount points, which are down tube engine mount, foot pegs and upper subframe.

Installation was simple and intuitive. There were no instructions, but there was a good install video on YouTube (Link).

This is a good photo of the total side coverage of the Nomads, one of the positive characteristics that led me to buy them.

Here's a good photo (stock photo) to make a comparison of side coverage between the Nomad and the Givi guards. The Givi's are so much lower; more like street guards for lowsiding. There's so much more to run into out on the trails that I think a little more protection is needed than what the Givi offers.

Below is a photo (stock photo) for comparison of my second choice, the SW Motech Guards. These are very popular bars; perhaps the most popular. They have the height that I was looking for and a great design with the same three-point install, but the Nomads had the height and width, plus a cross member. Again, it just came down to better protection for a few extra bucks.

Hmmm, I may want to paint my Nomads. Not bright orange like that ^. Maybe the same color green as the stripe on the side fairing.

During my research, I found several comments about welds cracking on the Nomads. Those experiences seemed to be during the early years of development when Nomad apparently used a 1.8mm material thickness. The material thickness of the current bar is 2.5 mm, which is the same as the gold standard SW Motechs. Hopefully, I don't run into any problem. If I do though, I'll just weld it back together.

Each of the sides of the Nomads has a bracket for accessory lighting should I decide to do that. I suppose those brackets could be used for highway pegs, too.

The company's website represents that the bars are 10 pounds. They actually rung up 7.5 pounds per side on my scale, so I have them at 15 pounds. Hardware was a swapout, so I'm not including that.

Now let's see how they do on the trails.

UPDATE:

During the Devils Creek Rally in March, the right Nomad side bar cracked at the down tube mount and had to be replaced. See the write up HERE.