I really like my 2022 Tiger 900 Rally Pro and am glad to have Triumphrat.net as a go-to forum. This is my first post and a rather lengthy one at that. I went with Hepco & Becker (H&B) when I upgraded the OEM engine guards and skid plate as well as adding tank guards. I’m posting this only to offer some food for thought with regard to the H&B guards in general, specifically their engine guards, as well as the OEM mount points on the Tiger crank case.
The installation of the Hepco & Becker (H&B) skid plate and tank guards seemed solid from the start and have performed as expected. I did not, however, have the same warm-and-fuzzy during the installation of the H&B engine guards. I thought that the inward-pointing end of engine guard tube was unsupported; the polymer center connector may have been designed to transfer some force from side to side but seemed to only offer an aesthetic alignment (it’s not bolted in place); and the H&B M8 20mm mounting bolts were 5mm shorter than all but one of the OEM 25mm bolts.
Dropping the bike from a slow-turn stall in a hay field was without consequence, but as I later found out on the Wyoming BDR, a minor left-sided tip-over around a sandy-silty curve was entirely a different matter. Although technically the tip-over was a “moving violation” on my part (mea culpa) I wasn’t at all prepared to see the extent of damage to the left guard and my Rally Pro afterwards. Seemingly, the left engine guard failed but I can’t say what the sequence of the events were. Here’s a postmortem of the left guard: a cracked/collapsed weld joint at the “Y” of the left guard's smaller secondary mounting arm; separation of the main tube from the center connector resulting in the left tube impacting and denting an exhaust pipe; and collapse of the engine guard onto the alternator cover resulting in a crack and oil weep. In addition, and most critically, it seemed that the bending, flexing and collapse of the guard resulted in too much torque on the lower left OEM mounting point on the crank case. This OEM mounting point broke like a fractured tooth and exposed a bent H&B M8 bolt hanging on by a few threads. I guess it’s possible that the crank case aluminum was in some way defective and weak at this point, or perhaps the casting design left something to be desired as for strength but I doubt it.
The installation of the Hepco & Becker (H&B) skid plate and tank guards seemed solid from the start and have performed as expected. I did not, however, have the same warm-and-fuzzy during the installation of the H&B engine guards. I thought that the inward-pointing end of engine guard tube was unsupported; the polymer center connector may have been designed to transfer some force from side to side but seemed to only offer an aesthetic alignment (it’s not bolted in place); and the H&B M8 20mm mounting bolts were 5mm shorter than all but one of the OEM 25mm bolts.
Dropping the bike from a slow-turn stall in a hay field was without consequence, but as I later found out on the Wyoming BDR, a minor left-sided tip-over around a sandy-silty curve was entirely a different matter. Although technically the tip-over was a “moving violation” on my part (mea culpa) I wasn’t at all prepared to see the extent of damage to the left guard and my Rally Pro afterwards. Seemingly, the left engine guard failed but I can’t say what the sequence of the events were. Here’s a postmortem of the left guard: a cracked/collapsed weld joint at the “Y” of the left guard's smaller secondary mounting arm; separation of the main tube from the center connector resulting in the left tube impacting and denting an exhaust pipe; and collapse of the engine guard onto the alternator cover resulting in a crack and oil weep. In addition, and most critically, it seemed that the bending, flexing and collapse of the guard resulted in too much torque on the lower left OEM mounting point on the crank case. This OEM mounting point broke like a fractured tooth and exposed a bent H&B M8 bolt hanging on by a few threads. I guess it’s possible that the crank case aluminum was in some way defective and weak at this point, or perhaps the casting design left something to be desired as for strength but I doubt it.
