So I’ve had a lot of people ask me what frame sliders are and what their purpose is. Even the guys that are repairing my bike didn’t know exactly what they were or how to fit them. They seem to be seriously under rated and unknown in this country; goto the US and every second bike will have them fitted.

So here’s my explanation:
Frame sliders bolt onto the sides of the bike, straight onto the engine mount. This means that on 99% of bikes you will need to cut the plastics in order to fit them. Basically what they do is save your frame in the event of an accident. Frame damage is pretty bad on a bike and can cost thousands to repair if it’s bent badly. With sliders fitted when the bike lands on its side the first point of contact will be straight onto the sliders (3 points of contact with the tyres included), this often has the added benefit of saving your plastics, so in a uniform drop where you low-side and end up dropping the bike on its side it’s quite likely that your fairing will only get scratched. A new paint job is *much* cheaper than new plastics (not unreasonable to expect to pay in excess of R20 000 for a full set of OEM plastics — I do believe my uppers and lowers cost R2800 in fibre glass).

Now onto the next point which might not be so obvious. Frame sliders are made out of high durability plastic (mine in particular are thermoplastic – derlin) the reason being as that — as their name suggests — they are for sliding, so they must slide along the ground and grind down. With steel sliders there’s a high possibility of the sliders catching something on the ground — bad… the bike will more than likely flip causing more damage than if you didn’t even have the sliders in the first place.

There are other benefits for having sliders. For instance, you park your bike at a shopping centre or something and come back to find your bike on its side. Yes this happens, far more often than it should. The obvious conclusions are that some toss didn’t see your bike and knocked it over (which is why I *never* park in bays); or some little kiddy saw your bike, thought it looked cool and wanted to sit on it (how would you like it if I came and sat in your car?) meanwhile he’s never sat on a bike before, so he straightens it up promptly loses his balance and drops the thing… at which point the git usually vanishes.

There are various other types of mishaps which plague bikers. Coming to a stop street, you put your foot down… straight into a pothole, and over go you and your bike. Same thing at robots then, with every second car dumping oil on the road at a robot, bikes tend to ride on the sides of the lane so guess where your foot goes? Straight into a nicely laid patch of oil, and over you go. We don’t have this problem in ZA but it seems that kickstands on bikes like to sink into hot asphalt since the stuff is pretty much a liquid, with a rapidly sinking kickstand your bike will fall over all on its own; which is why you never park your bike on grass without pucking the kickstand (stick something under it, plank of wood, piece of metal, empty coke can, etc.). There are plenty other mishaps that happen and having frame sliders can minimise damage quite a lot, so for R340 I consider them to be quite a bargain — I’ve almost dropped my bike a few times just pushing it around in the drive way.

Update on my bike: the reason the bike looks matt black in the pics, is because that was the primer. They’ve fitted my sliders, which apparently was quite a chore, so it had better still look decent. Otherwise I wouldn’t mind throttling the guy that didn’t buy my mirrors, because those will only be arriving next Friday (which I doubt). I was told there’s no problems with the brake disc… I assume that means they have it. I didn’t notice a front fender on my bike, so I damn well hope they didn’t forget that thing, I reminded the guy that’s fixing my bike so hopefully he’ll check up on it for me. So… at a stretch I guess I will have my bike back for next weekend; buuuuuuuuuuut, I somehow recall saying the same thing for the last 4 weeks running now :/.