Frame Sliders

[jeremy556]

I just wanted to get others' opinions on frame sliders.

I recently spent a bundle on the ones from the UK that come with a smaller coolant reservoir. On the UK VFR board a number of people have complained about these causing more serious damage to the bike than not having them, specifically bent frames and cracked engine blocks.

Is this a case of a of those 1 in a 1000 that have a bad experience with a product and voice it loudly, while many others have been spared damage, or is this common? I know they are not specifically meant to protect body work, but I just replaced every piece of plastic on the bike, as well as radiators, stays, etc and it seems to be frame sliders may have prevented a lot of the damage.

[Rice]

Since there is no absolutely right answer to this question, I approach this like risk managers do - I calculate risk based on the most common situation.

The most common situation is laying the bike down in the driveway or low-siding at relatively slow speed. This type of accident seems to occur more often that a more catastrophic one. Otherwise, there'd be a lot less of us wasting company bandwidth on this site

In this case, frame sliders definitely help to protect not only the frame, but the plastics as well. So, $200 slider will protect $1000 worth of plastic - Pretty good ROI, IMHO.

In the case of a more catastrophic crash, your bike will be toast no matter what.

An event when sliders catch on something and cause the bike to flip in the air is extremely rare and I would not even consider it in this equation. The fact that it happened to Jeremy really has no impact on this quasi-statistical analysis because it is so rare and because there is no real evidence that it really was the slider that caught on something and caused the bike to flip over. Frankly, I have trouble believing that something that sticks out about 2 inches in the middle of the bike can have enough leverage to flip the entire bike over (not dissing your opinion, Jeremy - Just sayin...). Just picture taking a length of 2x4 and put a nail through the middle of it, letting it stick out about 3MM on one side. Then push/kick this highly scientific representation of your bike with a slider down the road. I don't think that it will cause the 2x4 to flip over as it snags on the stuff in the road. It is much more likely that the tire or the handlebar or any other extremity with enough leverage was the culprit.

[jeremy556]

In the case of a more catastrophic crash, your bike will be toast no matter what.

An event when sliders catch on something and cause the bike to flip in the air is extremely rare and I would not even consider it in this equation. The fact that it happened to Jeremy really has no impact on this quasi-statistical analysis because it is so rare and because there is no real evidence that it really was the slider that caught on something and caused the bike to flip over. Frankly, I have trouble believing that something that sticks out about 2 inches in the middle of the bike can have enough leverage to flip the entire bike over (not dissing your opinion, Jeremy - Just sayin...). Just picture taking a length of 2x4 and put a nail through the middle of it, letting it stick out about 3MM on one side. Then push/kick this highly scientific representation of your bike with a slider down the road. I don't think that it will cause the 2x4 to flip over as it snags on the stuff in the road. It is much more likely that the tire or the handlebar or any other extremity with enough leverage was the culprit.

This post is a couple years old and just got bumped this morning. Since 05 I have used my frame sliders a number of times, including in more catastrophic crashes.

Actually, in the more catastrophic crashes, the frame sliders were much more valuable than in tip overs. I had a few crashes that were worse than the one I posted about in 05 that totaled my bike, and those had a fraction of the damage because damage was limited to fairings and other cheaper parts while the radiators and frame were protected.

I didn't have any damage caused or contributed to by frame sliders, I was just concerned at the time because of others who claimed to. I will agree that they should not send the bike tumbling, as in one of my crashes the frame slider and engine bolt both bent, so it seems they will fail with much less force than is needed to send a bike tumbling.