I ended up going with the SW-Motech, which seemed a good value for my needs. Altrider makes bulletproof gear, but bars have to come off for every valve adjust. I ordered them before reading Chiba's post - that bike has certainly given the bars some good testing opportunities!
As I did my searching, I read some cautions about mixing crash bars with the plastic valve cover protectors, on the theory that in a tipover the bars could flex into the protectors leading to damage from the very things you've installed for protection. these both installed pretty close to my BMW aluminum protectors, but I'm confident that the Aluminum protectors can come off for maintenance without needing to remove the crash bars. To my eyes, it looks as if any deflection of crash bars into the BMW protectors will apply force where the protectors have potential to flex, so I'm not really worried about that. It's a bit of a belt-and-suspenders setup.
They nicely attach to the engine and frame and the cross-bar between the two and in front of the engine should help (and shouldn't be an excessive impediment to wrenching).
- Left
- Left Installed 400.jpg (77.53 KiB) Viewed 11432 times
- Right
- Right installed 400.jpg (41.93 KiB) Viewed 11432 times
The added benefit of having crash bars is that they provide a nice handhold for when I want to bend over to check the oil sight gauge without kneeling down on the garage floor.
Twisted Throttle had a good price and very promptly responded to my compatibility question, including their having a quick back and forth with SW-Motech.
The marketing copy said that the grey color goes well with the 1200GS frame, and that's correct - being a bit darker and a bit less silver in tone, they go fine with the bike but don't match. But they are crash bars, after all.