The majority of drop accidents occur from a standstill getting on or off a bike, or at low speeds trying to maneuver in a tight space. To demonstrate the benefit of our wide coverage design and tough polycarbonate material, we installed X-head cylinder head guards on one of our GS's and then dropped the bike - repeatedly.
Click to watch a video of the X-Head hitting a concrete floor.
Oooops...
The lower front corner of the guard takes the hit first. The material flexes as it absorbs the force of impact.
The bike rolls over onto the face of the cylinder head cover before coming to a stop.
Here you can see how far up the face of the cover the scuffs appear. X-Head protects both the valve cover and the spark plug cover.
To make it look reasonably good again and not betray the fact that the bike got away from you, a permanent black marker works well to cover up the scrapes.
X-Head is designed to provide protection during standstill and low speed tipovers, and glancing impacts with rocks and trees. If dropped at speed on a paved surface, all cylinder head guard materials, polycarbonate, aluminum, steel, and carbon fiber included, will wear down at the points of friction. Whether these materials wear through or depends on the duration of a slide. Polycarbonate, otherwise known as Lexan, is a tough engineering plastic that provides an excellent cost/performance benefit.
