Nomad Rider Crash Bars Broke / Cracked

When riding off road, your off-road or dual-sport motorcycle is bound to sustain some damage. We call this the carnage report. During my recent dual sport rally, I fell once on each side, whacked into a few trees and waded through thick, razor-sharp, gear tearing brush. Carnage: Seat pan cracked, right mirror bent, rear tail light has come undone...

...AND my two month old Nomad Rider Crash Bars broke.

Of all things that should not break it's the expensive crash bars that I purchased to protect my motorcycle during falls, especially on soft, sandy forest surfaces such as was this case.

As I mentioned in my post, KLR650 Crash Bar Options, the Nomad Rider Crash Bar Guards had an early history of welds cracking, breaking and fracturing. However, the tube thickness was increased and welds improved, which I was told by the company corrected those problems. However, it was a weld fracture that I experienced, and it was at the front down tube mount as shown in the photos below.

This first photo is from the front. The downtube is along the right side of the photo and the red arrow marks the fracture point.

This second photo is from the back. That big black thing on the left side of the photo is one of the radiator hoses. Again, the red arrow marks the fracture point.

Somewhat on the side of good news, Nomad Rider was quick to ship out a replacement bar. I don't have it in hand, but tracking indicates a five day turn around between the time I reported the problem and when Fedex indicates delivery. I have to give props to Nomad Rider's Customer Service.

However, I'm more than a little concerned about these bars now. Many (I'll say most) people purchased their KLRs with limited off road plans and, accordingly, no intention of dropping them. While I don't "intend" to drop my KLR, I purchased it for serious dual sport riding...and where there's serious dual sport riding there are going to be falls and tumbles. In the immortal words of John Penton:

"If you don't fall down, you're not trying hard enough."

I purchased the Nomads because they seemed like the set up that would withstand the punishment of the trails. Stating their advertisement, "There is no thicker bar on the market." Given my recent experience, I'm now more than just a little concerned about this product and it's ability to effectively provide the protection that I'd expected. Certainly, if it breaks again, I'm heading for a set of SWMotechs.

UPDATE:

I received the Nomad replacement Crash Bar in five days and installed it this morning. Removal of the broken crash bar gave me a different angel and I could see exactly where the fracture was. It was actually the 7mm metal plate that serves as the mounting point to the down tube.

Here's a picture of the new bar and its mounting point. That is, what it's supposed to look like.

Here's the damaged bar that I removed. The plate snapped. It wasn't the weld at all that I'd originally thought.

Here's how the forward mount works. There's an interesting gap between the plate that snapped and the down tube. It makes me wonder if the plate can flex in that gap and snap. However, I took a quick look at the SWMotech bar and it's the same set up at the down tube mount. I don't know. Maybe it was just a bad batch of metal. All I can hope is that it doesn't happen again.