Touratech DEFENSA Handguards are engineered tough with a forged aluminum exoskeleton structure and integrated plastic shields designed to provide durable protection for riders and levers.

High-strength aircraft-grade aluminum is forged for strength and maximum impact resistance while having a modern angular design with a textured matte finish. The structure is designed to provide plenty of clearance for stock or aftermarket levers providing an uninhibited range of motion. This aluminum guard is available as ‘Defensa Core’.

Further protection and rider comfort are provided with an optional integrated plastic shield structure that slides over the aluminum and is secured by bolts. This configuration ‘Defensa Expedition’ is ideal for deflecting foliage on a brushy trail or protecting hands from flying rocks or gravel. It also protects riders from rain and cold air which boosts comfort on cooler rides. Additional coverage can be added with the Defensa Spoilers.

All Defensa handguard systems come with bike-specific mounting kits that provide riders with everything needed for clean mounting to the bike. The plastic shields are available in either black or white.

Your adventure motorcycle levers are perhaps the most important controls you have, protect them with Touratech DEFENSA Handguards.

Video Transcript Below:

Hello, I’m Ian with Touratech USA, and this is going to be your installation video for the Touratech Defensa handguards. I’m going to be installing the Defensa Expedition version handguards, and these are going to be going onto a KTM 790 Adventure R that’s one of our shop bikes right now.

This particular kit of Defensa handguards is applicable to basically all of the Husqvarna and KTM Adventure bikes from the 690 to the 1290. There might be a couple of holes in there, but we’ll have it all laid out on the website.

The installation’s pretty straightforward, but I highly recommend printing off the PDF instructions from the website for this, because there are a lot of little pieces and it just makes it a lot easier to be able to visualize them before we get started on the install.

This particular bike that I’m working on had a different older set of Touratech handguards on it, which I’ve already removed. I’m not going to be covering how to remove of your standard handguards from the bike. There’s not much to it, just a few bolts to pop the stock ones off, and then you get started on these.

Without further ado, let’s get to it. I’ve got the parts laid out and we can go through what we’re looking at. Here we have the kit all laid out, and these are the tools that I expect I’m going to be needing to use. Again, print off the instructions here. These are super important, because you see these clamps have a whole bunch of little pieces. So it’ll make our jobs a lot easier to have this visual reference. And then also the hardware, I’ve got it all laid out here and kind of split down the middle. That way I make sure I have one of everything, you know, there’s nothing missing from either side of the box. We should be all ready to start.

The first thing that I like to do on these installations, because this is the expedition kit, is I’m going to install the plastic covers on the crossbars here. The crossbars are identical. There’s no right or left. The right or left is on the actual plastic pieces. So just pick one and slide it together like this. And then we’ll put one screw here in each bar just to hold the plastic piece on until it gets pinched down over here. That’s going to be step one. Use the really course-thread Torx drive screw, install them like this.

All right, next step I like to do is loosely install the connecting arm here. It fits on the backside like this and these ones are pretty easy to line up to because you see we’ve got the logo facing up here and then the connecting arm has its own Touratech logo on the side here. We’ll do it like that and just loosely install the bolts. For this, we’re going to use the two flange head Torx bolts and two of the M6 Nyloc nuts. All right, those two are now ready to go.

To assemble these clamps, you have to actually press these pins right here and you have to get them into the lower part of this clamp. Because of the coating on these, it’s sometimes a little difficult to get these through the clamp so you can either take a pick and just clear out any of the extra coating or what you can do is use a pair of pliers and press it in there gently, and then actually put a nut over the other side so you can squeeze on the pliers and get it centered. You can see I’ve already done that with this one here. I just pressed it in with a pair of pliers. And once you’ve done that, you can take the two clamp pieces and they hold together like this. When you’ve got one clamp ready to go, we’ll head over to the bike.

But before we do that, we want to grab … There’s two Hex head bolts of different lengths in the kit. There’s a small one and a big one, long one short one. So you’re going to take the small head longer bolt, you’re going to drop it through this hole right here, and then assemble a clamp like that. Then we can head over to the bike.

Over here at the bike, we’re just going to really loosely install this, just for it to kind of hold its position here. For the final install, we do want this set up so that this bolt is coming out of the top here. So just slide it over, let it sit like that for now.

All right, when you’re over here on the bike, you’re going to take the clamp piece here and put it down so it locks over like this, and now you take the cone, the conical washer and you take the concave side, put it down like this against the top of that clamp piece. And then you take your acorn nut and screw it down gently here. And again, you want these nice and loose so that you can move things around still as we’re positioning everything. We’ve got a clamp assembled, just resting here on the bike.

Okay. We are working on the brake lever side first, so we’ll grab the brake lever side handguards. You can tell because the logo is up and the logo is up. We can assemble the outer end by taking the long socket-cap bolt and this kind of shouldered washer, drop that through. Then it drops in here into the end of the handguard. Then you take this quill spacer and the expanding nut. I just like to thread them down until they’re just about touching like that. And then we can drop it onto the bike just by sliding it into the end of the handguard here, into the handlebar. Now we can start assembling here on the inner end.

For the inner clamp, we’ve got these two brackets and they are obviously left and right. If you look at the diagram here, you can see that this one is for the clutch lever side and this is opposite. So, this is for the brake lever side. We’ll take this and the remaining large socket-cap bolt, shorter flange head bolt, and the last large acorn nut and then carry them over to the bike.

We’ll use the Hex head bolt and put it through here to the top clamp where it swivels. Just start that one real loose, lots of room to work with. And then on the inner end of the handguard here, we use the flange head bolt and the acorn nut goes on the inside. All right, this is all very loosely installed.

Now we can start tightening everything up here to get it all situated. I personally like to start with the outer side of the handguard just because that’s a fixed position and we want it popped in all the way there. So we’ll start that with the Allen wrench. And this is a 6mm Allen wrench. Now I’m going to move to these two bolts right here. Those are going to use Torx t30s.

Now we move to the inner clamp and we just get everything lined up. There’s obviously a lot of swiveling here that we can do. And the idea is you want to have as much clearance as possible with all the break lines and wires before we tighten anything down hard. The next one I’m going to do is going to be the top hat here. Now the next one. The next one I’m going to do here is going to be the 10mm Hex head bolt that is at the inner surface of this clamp right here.

Now I’m going to tighten up this bolt here at the inner part of the clamp. You’re going to need your 10mm wrench and your Torx t30. Now, we’re going to work on the inner clamp since we’ve got all the other things pretty much tight. First thing is tighten this main clamp here to lock down the position of the inner clamp. It does not take much torque because it’s just a friction fit here. And then when you’re happy with all the angles, we’re going to tighten up the acorn nut on the top of this here with the 8mm. And last thing we’re going to come through and tighten up this 6mm bolt on the handlebar clamp end.

Now, everything on this side is locked down. So we will get to work on the clutch side. Everything is exactly the same, just a mirror operation so I’m not really going to talk through it.

Okay, thanks for watching. That’s the install of the Defensa Expedition handguards on our KTM 790 Adventure R. Hope you learned something. The install’s not too bad and the things look fantastic when they’re mounted on the motorcycle.

As you can see, there’s tons of clearance for both of the levers. Throttle works perfectly smooth. And you’ve got decent weather protection afforded at the front end there.

We do also make an additional set of spoilers that extend the weather protection up about an inch and a half on the top. I haven’t done an install video on those, but it’s just two screws that go right on.

If you’ve got any more questions about parts we make for your motorcycle, please visit our website, touratech-usa.com. And if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more just like it. (silence)

Find everything you need to upgrade your KTM HERE!

Touratech-USA

This video will walk you through the installation of your Touratech Defensa Handguards. Touratech DEFENSA Handguards are engineered tough with a forged aluminum exoskeleton structure and integrated plastic shields designed to provide durable protection for riders and levers. High-strength aircraft-grade aluminum is forged for strength and maximum impact resistance while having a modern angular design with a textured matte finish. The structure is designed to provide plenty of clearance for stock or aftermarket levers providing an uninhibited range of motion.

This aluminum guard is available as ‘Defensa Core’. Further protection and rider comfort are provided with an optional integrated plastic shield structure that slides over the aluminum and is secured by bolts. This configuration ‘Defensa Expedition’ is ideal for deflecting foliage on a brushy trail or protecting hands from flying rocks or gravel. It also protects riders from rain and cold air which boosts comfort on cooler rides.

Additional coverage can be added with the Defensa Spoilers. All Defensa handguard systems come with bike-specific mounting kits that provide riders with everything needed for clean mounting to the bike.

The plastic shields are available in either black or white. Your adventure motorcycle levers are perhaps the most important controls you have, protect them with Touratech DEFENSA Handguards.

TRANSCRIPT:  

Hello, Ian here, with Touratech USA. And today we’re going to be installing the Touratech Defensa Expedition Handguards along with the extension spoilers onto this R 1250 GS. These instructions will work for all of the R 1200 and R 1250 GS and GS Adventure motorcycles. If you’re going to be installing either the Core or Expedition Defensa Handguards.

So let’s head over to the table, look at the tools, look at the parts and get started with the installation. At the beginning of every installation, I like to lay out the tools and the product that we’re going to be installing. So here’s an example of one side of the handguard kit. Over here are the tools that we’re going to use to install this.

Let’s break down the tools first. I have a 17mm wrench because our bike has folding Touratech mirrors on it and this is what I need to pull off the Touratech mirror. These are the Cruztools 3/8″ Drive Torx Wrenches. And these are the Cruztools 3/8″ drive Allen Wrenches. This is an 8mm combination wrench and extension, a ratchet tool, and a #1 Phillips screwdriver.

Over here for the parts we have the two main components of the Defensa handguards. Actually, I should say this here is what you would get in the core kit, but because we have the expedition kit, we also have the main shield, and we’ve added this additional spoiler that’s sold separately. So this right here is the clamp componentry, these three main pieces. You have the small dowel, a socket cap bolt, and a nyloc nut as well as a hex bolt and a flange head M6 bolt and then this spacer and then another M5 lock nut. This is the bar end hardware. You’ve got a long bolt with a big button head and the black anodized bar end cap. Here we have two M6 flange head bolts, two M6 nuts. And then this one coarse thread flange head bolt, and then these two small coarse thread screws, these come with the additional spoiler. So if you don’t have spoilers, you’re not going to have those two screws.

So to get started, I’m going to place the expedition spoiler onto the aluminum guard and then put the spoiler onto the shield. So the shield is really easy to install onto the guard. All you have to do is place the tip of the guard through the slot in this shield, and then slide it down. Slide it down here until this end matches up and on the inside the screw hole lines up right here.

Now we’re going to take the coarse thread screw here and screw it in. This one we can run all the way in tight, this uses a Torx T20 driver. Now that I have the plastic shield mounted on the aluminum bar, I’m going to install the additional spoiler. You’ll notice I’ve already drilled the holes here, it’s actually really easy to do because this shield has two dimpled holes molded into it. All you need to do is just grab a drill and just poke those two holes through. The holes are also molded into the spoiler and that makes it really easy to get the screws to thread in. So the way I like to do this is just take the coarse thread screws and my screwdriver and screw both of the screws all the way into the plastic shield here. And then I will line up the spoiler after that.

Now we just line the spoiler up with the molded lines. I like to start with the front screw, screw it in, tighten it up about halfway. And then move to the back screw, you can kind of flex the plastic just a little bit to get it to line up, and then we can tighten the front screw the rest of the way. Now it’s time to install the side support onto the main aluminum bar and this goes onto the back here. It actually has a molded detent into it that engages right here, just like that. And on the inside of this, you can see it has these molded shapes into it and that’s actually to hold the nyloc nuts in place. So you don’t need a wrench on the backside.

So we’re going to use the two longer flange head bolts and these take a Torx T30 driver to screw them in. These two bolts do not need to be very tight. All they need to do is engage the nyloc on the backside and make sure that nothing’s going to vibrate once it’s assembled. Now we can loosely assemble the front clamp piece. There’s a bunch of moving parts on this one, so it’s good to practice it here on the table first.

So grab the bottom piece. You’ll know this one because it has that big hex molded into it. Take the M5 hex screw, drop it through like that. Now you’re going to take this little end piece right here, and you’ll notice it has a concave side and a convex side, take the convex side and set it right, just like that, over the end of the bottom piece of the clamp. Now you take this washer and again, you’ll notice that it has a concave side and a flat side. And so you’re going to put the concave side against the convex side of this piece here, and this allows it to rotate while still having a nice flat surface for the M5 nyloc nut.

So just leave that one finger tight, so everything can move around here plenty. Now for the upper piece of the clamp, you’ll see this is where you use the dowel. The dowel just drops right through this open hole, it’s a little bit of a friction fit, but it can slide through freely, so make sure you don’t drop it. And the way that works is it actually hooks like this into the end of the clamp. So that’s cool, that way you only need a fastener on one side here. So then you take the socket cap screw, drop it through the side with the recess and then the matching nyloc nut screws in there. And it also has a matching hex recess so that you don’t need to put a wrench on it like that.

So when you’re mounting this all on the bike, the socket cap screw here is going to be facing up. And we can imagine if it fits on the bike like this, here’s my hand grip, here’s the levers, it’s going to fit on the motorcycle this way. So the socket cap screw is up, the swivel portion is down and it fits in just like this. So I’ll take the last shorter M6 flange head bolt and I will just screw it in loosely up here at the front.

So we want to make sure there’s a lot of play in all of this because we’re going to need to adjust that fit when we get over to the motorcycle. Lastly, we have the bar end piece and the large bolt, just drops together and it’ll slide in under the handguard here, but we’re not going to worry about that too much right yet. Now it’s time to head over to the motorcycle and remove the stock handguard. Over here at the motorcycle, the first thing we need to do is remove the handguard. So the first step on that is removing the mirror. In our case, we have the Touratech folding mirrors. So all I need is a 17mm wrench. The stock one might use a different size, but I don’t have that here to confirm the removal process will be really similar though.

There is a washer that rests here on top of the handle bar underneath the mirror, set this aside you will not need it when you are reinstalling the Touratech guards. Next, we need to remove the bar end of the handguard, this uses a Torx T50 wrench. You’re going to need to reuse the stock bar end weight, so be sure to keep that. The rest of the stuff just lifts off like this, and you can put it all in a Ziploc bag, make sure you don’t lose these pieces. One handy thing to note is the black washer fits right over the bolt there. So it makes it easier not to lose it. Okay, now I have the Touratech Defensa Handguard, and I’m back here at the motorcycle. So I like to start on the bar end, so I grabbed the stock bar end weight and the Touratech anodized bar end with the Touratech bolt.

I’ll drop that through the Defensa Handguard and then put the bar end weight right through it like that. And now we’re going to screw this in, not even close to hand tight, just nice and loose. The idea is we just want this to hold everything in place on the motorcycle while we work on the inner clamp. So on the inner clamp, I’m going to use a 4mm Allen and I’m putting it on an extension just to make it easier to reach. And you can see here how it’s going to be oriented. Again, we’ve got the Allen bolt facing up and everything else just bolted to the handguard very loosely.

So the only tricky part here is you want to make sure that you don’t lose this nyloc nut or that dowel in this process. So I like to just hold my finger on the bottom, so the nut doesn’t go away. Then I can take this bolt out and set it on the seat. And then the clamp I actually remove and so long as you keep it vertical, that dowel is not going to slide out. So you just put the clamp underneath the handlebar like that, get the dowel engaged and now she’s roughly in place. So I’ll take the bolt that I had set aside and just screw it down a few turns, just so that the nut doesn’t fall out.

Okay, the inner clamp is on loosely and the bar end is on loosely as well. So now it’s time to start lining things up. To line this up, I start on the bar end, so we’re going to use the same Torx T55 that we used to remove the stock bar end bolt. And we’re going to screw this one in, and no we’re not going to try and make this really tight right now, but we are going to get it tight enough that it just holds things in place so we can work on this inner clamp. Now, I personally like the aluminum, the main bar of the handguard here, I like that to be level with my levers. So I’m just going to hold it right here, tighten this thing up just enough so it doesn’t fall out of position.

Now I can work on the inner clamp. At this point, we’ve got the outer bolt tightened, not fully tight, but just enough to hold everything in place. We’ve got the hand guard lined up where we want it. Now, I like to just give the inner clamp a jiggle to make sure that everything’s loose and not binding anywhere. And now I’m going to tighten up this small nut down here that controls the swiveling part first. To do that I’m going to use an 8mm ratcheting wrench. All right, now that that swivel is tight, it’s taken up some of the slop up there. Now I’m going to tighten up the bolt at the front of the handguard here that uses a Torx T30.

Now that the swivel nut is tightened and the T30 bolt at the front is tightened, this clamp is in its final place. You can see that the top is still loose, because we haven’t tightened it, that’s exactly what we want. Nothing’s bound up, it’s not jammed sideways. Now we’re just going to tighten this bolt using our 4mm Allen tool. And this bolt especially does not need to be very tight because this is a clamp and all it needs to do is just create enough friction with the handlebar that it’s not going to spin. Now, the last step is just to crank down the torque on the bar end bolt.

Now that we have the Touratech Defensa Handguard installed, we need to just check the lever clearance, make sure it’s not hitting anything, which it absolutely isn’t because these are designed specifically for adventure bikes. And then we got to install the one on the opposite side, take it for a ride. Okay, the Touratech Defensa Handguards are now installed on this R 1250 GS. I really liked the installation it goes together really well and they fit perfectly on this motorcycle. I’m really excited to get it out for a ride and see how they handle. Not that I plan to drop the bike, but it’s been known to happen from time to time. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you’d like to see more products that we make for your adventure bike, don’t forget to visit our website touratech-usa.com.

Motorcycle handguards are taken for granted by the majority of riders…Until you find yourself in a situation where a simple upgrade would have saved your hands or levers. Whether it’s a drop, a fall, an errant piece of freeway or low hanging branches, handguards play an important role.

Using the same engineering techniques that are used in aircraft construction Touratech has developed the Defensa Handguard System. Its exoskeleton structure is made from high-strength, forged aluminum which leaves no doubt to the strength and quality of its design and is available as ‘Defensa Core.’

Protection and rider comfort are always at the forefront in the Touratech design process with Defensa’s optional integrated plastic shield structure they’ve got you covered. It slides over the aluminum and is secured with bolts. This configuration ‘Defensa Expedition’ is ideal for deflecting foliage on a brushy trail or protecting hands from flying rocks or gravel.

All Defensa handguard systems come with bike-specific mounting kits that provide riders with everything needed for clean mounting to the bike and the plastic shields are available in either black or white.

Your adventure motorcycle levers are perhaps the most important controls you have, protect them with Touratech Defensa Handguards.

Find out more!