Hepco Becker Crash Bar Install Help

I started to install the Hepco Becker crash bars today and I've run into a problem. I know that some of you have installed them, so hopefully I'm just doing something wrong.

I've got the front under-beak bracket attached but even when in the fully up position it is interfering with steering. When you turn the bars all the way to the right it just barely clears the bracket. When you turn the bars to the left you only get about ½ to ⅔ of the steering travel. The under-beak bracket is interfering with the brake hose and the rubber bumper that connects it to the lower triple clamp. The brake hose clamp doesn't have much room to move.

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

Can you loosely attach the side pieces and determine where the under beak bar should be attached? I haven't installed these but it sounds like the cross bar might not be in the correct place.

Sometimes the instructions are more confusing than just dry fitting everything together and figuring it out that way.

Good luck,
Mike

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure that the side pieces will help since the under-beak bracket when placed in has zero side to side play. I have it loosely installed at the moment to allow movement but you can only rotate it in-line with the direction of the bike from roughly straight down to straight forward. The side pieces will just set the angle the bracket needs to be at. However, even in the most out of the way angle the bracket still reduces the steering travel.

Here's two shots of the under-beak bracket and how it interferes with the brake line - one from below and one from the side. There doesn't seem to be any way to fix this other than rerouting the brake line which seems excessive for a crash bar install.

I've now taken it off and restored everything to stock so that I can ride in to work tomorrow. If nobody sees anything obviously wrong in my install then I'm going to contact MotoMachines the HB distributor.

Ok, I exchanged some mail with MotoMachines (HB importer) through the week and they suggested that I rotate the brake line mount to get it out of the way. Got a chance to try that today and it's better but still not correct. I get more range of steering but still not the full range and on the end of the range the bracket is now squishing the brake line. I think that the Hepco Becker crash bars are just not designed right.

Does anybody have the HB crash bars installed? If so could you send me a picture of the brake line routing that you used and a picture of the brake line area with the handlebars cranked full right? I've moved the line around when I last tried and couldn't get a fit that doesn't impinge the brake line. Any help here would be much appreciated.

It sounds to me like you may have the under the beak bracket installed improperly. I can't tell from your pics. I put these bars on my DCT and didn't have to move anything. I also did not have any steering obstruction. The under the beak bracket should be centered between the forks.
I'll take a look when I get my bike back from the dealer later today (new chain/sprockets). I'll PM you my phone # and maybe we can resolve this.

Craig and I exchanged some messages and it seems that I am putting the bracket on right with the thick spacer/washer in the correct location.

Also, I exchanged some more email with MotoMachines and they sent me pictures of the location of the brake line bracket they used. I got to try it out today (no time through the week) and while the crash bar bracket interferes less with the brake line it still squishes the brake line at the edge of the steering. I rotated the hose bracket through the whole range and there isn't any position that makes it any better than you can see in these pictures. Even if I was to remove the brake hose bracket completely and just zip tie the brake hose to the triple clamp it would still get squished by the Hepco Becker under-beak bracket. This is going to mean just about every time you put it on the side stand that the brake line is going to get squished. That can't be good for the life of the rubber brake hose.

Here are two shots of the latest changes. The first one is the bracket as moved to the location suggested by MotoMachines and the second is the steering turned to the left with the brake hose pinched by the HB under-beak bracket. This isn't a good situation and at this point after trying this quite a number of times I'm not sure there's anything more that I can do except return these.

I installed the HB bars and re-routed the brake line... not a big deal

pm me your email for pics this weekend if you haven't sent them back

they are nice bars other than having to disconnect the brakeline

hozabah, thanks for the offer but it is unfortunately too late. The bars were shipped out yesterday. There was no way to install them without moving the brake line. Even the brake line position suggested by Moto Machines caused the under-beak bracket to squish the brake line.

Hyperborea said:

hozabah, thanks for the offer but it is unfortunately too late. The bars were shipped out yesterday. There was no way to install them without moving the brake line. Even the brake line position suggested by Moto Machines caused the under-beak bracket to squish the brake line.

Click to expand...

I was wondering if there is a different selection of bracketry for non ABS versus ABS equipped bikes.

I've seen pictures on the 'net of these crash bars on the ABS model with triple piston caliper, that has two brake lines coming up. They don't go in between the upper and lower triple clamps, the lines mount to, and go under the bottom triple clamp. Your single line appears to go "up and in" on it's way to the master cylinder. There are no lines to get in the way or be pinched in that spot where yours is shown.

When I installed my Rox risers on my BMW, the front brake line required a rerouting in a similar fashion, from in between the upper and lower triples, to behind the lower one instead. I didn't even have to crack open the line to do it, merely carefully weaseled the complete master cylinder and lever perch through the forks and around.

L.B.S. said:

I was wondering if there is a different selection of bracketry for non ABS versus ABS equipped bikes.

Click to expand...

Interesting hypothesis. Given that Hepco Becker is based out of Europe and that all the NC700's there are ABS equipped they might not have designed their bars for the non-ABS model.

Here is a picture of an ABS (Canadian model, not mine, but mine is the same) and how the hoses route:

Here a few pic's of my XDCT , i hope it will help.

Thanks to both of you for the photos. That is a totally different routing for the brake line as compared to the non-ABS model. I can see the Hepco Becker works fine and has no problem mounting with the stock brake lines on an ABS brake NC700x. It seems pretty obvious that these bars weren't designed for nor do they fit a non-ABS NC700x.

I was thinking about these bars but I might go with the SW-Motech ones. They have been reviewed well by other members here and I don't feel like going through the trouble of messing with the brake lines. Anybody think these bars are worth more work than the other brands?

Just fitted Hepco and Becker Engine bars to my 2013 NC700X, looking down at the bike the right hand side bar sticks out about 20mm further than the left hand side - is that right?

Mine are even on both sides.

hmm, okay ill take them off and try again - i cant see any other way of mounting them though

they look like this






the rhs already has a spacer between the engine and the bike frame on mine which is not mentioned on the instructions?: