Review of Wunderlich Handguards for C 400 GT: MEH.
Would love a ride report from you in due course.
Okay, I did about 150 miles with the handguards yesterday (see
https://www.bmw-scooters.com/threads/2-x-c-400-gt-lunch-in-lee-ma.3303/), in temps from about 62°F to 75°F, mostly riding around 50-60mph, but with a max speed for the day at 82.5mph.
Executive Summary: these may be more beneficial to, more appreciated by, some riders, but I will be taking them off, i.e., going back to a stock condition on my C 400 GT.
Pros:
==> They really do deflect the wind around your hands.
They are large to begin with, and the curved lips on all sides add to the wind-deflection effect -- I moved my hands around the outside areas, and was impressed by the pushed-aside windflow.
Cons:
==> They really do deflect the wind around your hands.
This means that if they are using up even, say, 1 of the 34 HP (that's at the crank -- even less at the rear wheel itself) of the C 400 GT when pushing all that air aside, that's a not-insignificant portion.
Don't forget that air resistance is proportional to velocity squared. So at higher speeds, I actually felt that the bike was a tiny bit sluggish, compared to normal. This is hard for me to verify, of course, and it was a breezy day. But I was on all sorts of back roads with varying directions, and that's how it felt to me.
The bottom line here is that if you want to deflect a lot of air, you're also giving up some oomph, especially as your speed increases.
==> That alignment issue, or something, that I had with the left side came into play. I had the left side assembly -- the whole thing: handguard, lever, mirror stem -- rotate during some bumps in the ride.
I don't fully understand what the deal is here. Recall that I had a tough time getting the two holes in the left bracket aligned for the two bolts (the bottom mirror-stem holding piece, and the longer replacement bolt for the clamp). And then I kept tightening, while experimenting with lever angle. I kept tightening and tightening that replacement clamp bolt; I didn't use a torque wrench, but I've tightened a lot of bolts, and I felt I was getting too close to the point of snapping it. And the stock clamp bolt (with a deep Allen head, not a shallow Torx head) wasn't in all that tightly, based on how much effort it took for me to remove it.
My point here is that I never had this problem with the stock clamp setup, which didn't seem to need all that tightness. I don't know what's going on, but I don't want to snap a bolt, and I don't want the whole assembly to rotate when I hit bumps, let alone with I try to adjust the mirrors themselves.
==> As I also mentioned, Wunderlich's entire setup seems over-engineered to me.
I think that a simple bar-end setup would be fine, like the links I posted for the Royal Enfield. I ordered the Barkbuster version; they're possibly the premier vendor of handguards, and they think, for that application, that a bar-end-only mount is sufficient. Keep in mind that we're talking wind-deflection only here, not to keep tree branches off of our hands. That is, Barkbusters and others make two-point mounts for their handguards that are designed for off-road protection of your hands and the levers, but that is not the case here.
So if a single-point mount, by Barkbusters and others, works on many bikes for simple wind-deflection, why not on the C 400 GT, too, by Wunderlich? "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should," as the saying goes. And besides Wunderlich, I'm talking to BMW, too, as they learned as a result of their power-assist-brake fiasco, and as they
should have heeded regarding the Schrader valve placement on the C 400 GT.
Summary:
==> Note that I have nothing against Wunderlich, as I have a bunch of their products. I rate their sidestand enlarger at 5/5, their Marathon windscreen 4/5; their front crashbars 4/5; and their throttle lock at 2/5.
==> If you ride a lot in pretty cold weather, don't ride much near the top end of the C 400 GT, and have the stock windscreen, or you don't wear gloves, you will probably find more value in these handguards.
I don't ride much in cold weather. Around here, around this time of the year, the leaves start to accumulate not just on the side of the back roads I frequent but in the roads themselves. When they get wet during a rainstorm, they stay wet for days, and one thing you don't want to do when riding is lean during a curve with wet leaves underfoot (or, more accurately, "undertire"). And pretty soon they will start salting the roads, I don't want salt on the bike, even on freakishly warm days.
I have the Meteor 350 for smelling the roses on back roads; it tops out around 72mph. By contrast, I do my higher speed runs, and certainly my out-of-town multi-day highway runs on the C 400 GT. I don't want to give up any of the top end on that bike.
And speaking of windscreens, as I just noted I have Wunderlich's Marathon. That is already much wider at the bottom than the stock C 400 GT windscreen (and about the same height). Thus, I already get some extra wind protection, including a bit on the hands, from that. And, yes, I already pay a slight HP penalty for having that.
(And speaking of windscreens, I have a pretty small windscreen on the Meteor -- it came stock with no windscreen at all. So I think I may actually find the handguards for that useful that bike, and also given how I use it, despite its puny 20 HP output.)
The bottom line here may be that given the weather I ride in and my current configuration, I don't need the handguards, and they may be a detriment.
For all my riding, I have settled on two pairs of gloves over the last few years (and have a box of perhaps 20 other pairs), a version with a slight airflow (Rev'it Cayenne:
https://www.revitsport.com/us_en/motorcycles-gloves-cayenne-2-black-sand, which run small, if you're interested in them), and a pair with some minor insulation and which are also rainproof (Reax Ridge WP:
https://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/reax-ridge-wp-gloves). (And me, I won't ride around the block without gloves on.)
I took both of these, and only those, for my Alps tour last year -- on a stock C 400 X -- and they worked fine. More to the point, they work fine for me at home. I hardly ever use the heated grips function on the bike. And if I feel that there's too much air getting up my jacket sleeves, I just cinch down the velcro cuff straps.
The absolute bottom line here is that I gave them a try, and they're not for me. I plan on removing them -- putting the bike back to stock, in this respect (and hoping the stock left clamp setup returns to its steadfast self) -- sometime this weekend, and putting the handguards on the shelf.
