If you ride your bike hard, there's a good chance you'll be picking it up out of a ditch sooner or later. And while we applaud you for going the extra mile to entertain your buddies, we'd hate to see you without wheels. Even a low-speed crash can cause thousands of dollars in damage or can leave you without a running bike at all. But there is a defense.
The Ultimate
Learning to ride? Then you need the appropriate protection, which is to say a full-on crash cage bolted onto your frame. It'll protect your engine cases from pretty much anything short of an Abrams tank driving over your bike, saving your motor from destruction.
A full cage isn't for everyone though; they look ugly and some need holes drilled in the bodywork to fit. They add a lot of weight too, and some designs cut ground clearance so they're not ideal for trackdays or canyon carving.
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Freestyle Ingenuity was the first outfit to properly produce cages and has lots of good products to choose from. FI's full cages add tough plastic sliders to the mix to help your bike slide along rather than grippin' and a-flippin' down the road, which can increase the damage. There's also a mini-cage that gives more protection than frame sliders alone, but less than a full cage.
$339.95
freestyleingenuity.com
Better than Nothing
If you're going on the track you're liable to fall off. The traditional circuit setup is a pair (or more) of hard plastic (usually nylon) cylinders bolted onto the side of your frame. These pucks (or sliders, bungs or mushrooms) are designed to absorb some of the impact of a spill, keep vulnerable components off the deck and help your bike slide gracefully to a halt rather than cart wheeling into the distance.
Vortex frame sliders come in two parts with a replaceable puck. If you have a crash and wear out a slider you can just replace that and keep your old mounting. This saves bucks and makes sense.
$38.95
vortexracing.com
Dare to Go Bare
Most low-speed drops cause cosmetic damage to fairings and body panels. That's bad enough-an upper fairing or tail section for a Japanese sportbike can set you back well over $500. But if you're unlucky, you can bag some serious mechanical damage from even a minor drop. Slide into a curb at 10 mph and you can bend forks, buckle a wheel or dent a frame spar. Even worse, you can smash the end of your crankcase, spilling out oil and coolant and generally ruining your day. A hard smack can even bend the crankshaft end-meaning an entire engine rebuild or an eBay replacement. Don't risk it.
Sixty61
$59-99.99
six...
A1A
$69-75.99
a1aspor...
Racing 905 Race Armor
$169.95...