Heli Multi-Tour Sport handlebars installation

Discussion in '6th Generation 2002-2013' started by Cherryriver, Feb 2, 2022.

  1. Cherryriver

    Cherryriver New Member

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    I need to raise the handlebars on just about any bike I have sportier than a V-Strom due to an old neck injury from decades ago (pro tip: don't fall through a roof you are framing).
    Doing this modification has become second nature for me, and the results are always good. I rode my Kawasaki ZX1100E well past 100,000 miles with Heli Multi-Tour Sport handlebars in a Storz mount swiped from my preceding Concours 1000.
    Heli no longer makes these bars, which is a shame since they are so versatile. Their only real flaw is that it's maddeningly hard to set both side identically as there are no factory indexing marks to guide you.
    Still, there's nothing else that can work on a bike with tight clearances so well. And the VFRs in my experience have surprisingly tight clearances for bike that aren't all-out track bikes.
    So when I picked up a slightly dinged, 40K-miler '03 to store at a family member's house in Florida, far from Illinois' winters, the bars were the first non-maintenance item to get worked on.
    I purchased an ABM brand mount plate but I also had an old Heli kit for a ZZR1200, my last grail bike that wasn't built in England before 1971, and the fork tube size for those was also 43mm.
    I needed some altitude so I added some aluminum blocks for risers to elevate the mounts another 1.25" and give clearance for the fork adjusters and the swing of the Heli center bar, as well as clearing the nose of the fuel tank when it's being raised for service.
    I added one 8mm bolt to cinch down each side by drilling a hole in the top triple clamp. I'm not too concerned with this bike being returned to original condition and leaving holes. It's not a Velocette, for Heavens' sake.
    Here's the rider's point of view photo of the completed installation. I chose to run the throttle cables like this, a routing I saw on some fellow's YouTube video doing a similar conversion. I ordered custom extra-length throttle cables from Motion Pro, as I have done many a time, but they weren't going to be done in time to take the bike to the Sunshine State. This hokey-looking adaptation has been working just fine for hundreds of miles and saved me $170 on a tight-budget bike.
    I can go all day now without the screwed-up neckbones causing paralysis. A wonderful thing.

    VFR controls 1-20-22.jpg
     
    One Ida 31 and mello dude like this.
  2. Camp

    Camp New Member

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    Your cable routing bothers me.
     
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  3. Cherryriver

    Cherryriver New Member

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    2000 miles so far and no issues. It's not pretty but it works fine.
     

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