SW-Motech Hand Guards & Handguard Kits
SW-Motech hand guards for nineteen marques, from adventure tourers to naked roadsters. Two designs cover most of the shelf, Sport and Adventure, built for road weather or for off-road knocks, and roughly a third of the range comes in both for the same bike. Fit is only half the decision. Kobra and Bbstorm are separate systems with their own mounting hardware, and none of it is cut for a Harley-Davidson.
Sport or Adventure
The bigger decision on this shelf usually isn't which bike it's for. By our count, 34 bike groupings here carry both a Sport and an Adventure kit for the same model. Fitment settled, there's often still a style to choose.
Sport keeps a slim shape that doesn't wrap the sides. SW-Motech build it for wind, cold and rain on the road. Adventure closes fully around the sides, adding cover against stone chips and branches off-road. How a kit mounts comes down to the bracket, not the style: SW-Motech's own pages describe every bike-specific bracket, Sport or Adventure, as a two-point fit. Only the generic Multi-Fit and Universal clamps, in either style, mount at a single point.
| Sport | Adventure | |
|---|---|---|
| Mount | two-point on bike-specific brackets, single-point on Multi-Fit / Universal | two-point on bike-specific brackets, single-point on Multi-Fit / Universal |
| Shape | slim, open sides | closed, wraps the sides |
| Built for | wind, cold and rain on the road | road use, plus stone chips and branches off-road |
| Extension set | for Sport shells only | for Adventure shells only |
Kobra and Bbstorm are their own systems
Kobra and Bbstorm sit apart from the Sport and Adventure range, with a different bracket design. SW-Motech are explicit that the two don't cross over: the standard aluminium bracket used on Sport and Adventure "is not compatible with KOBRA or BBSTORM handguard shells." A cracked shell or a bent bracket has to be replaced with its own matching system. No swapping between them. We stock two Kobra kits, built around their own aluminium bar, and three Bbstorm kits, whose large shells SW-Motech pitch at all-weather riding.
Fitment across nineteen marques
The filter on this page does the real work. Pick a make and model and it shows only what's confirmed for it. Triumph, BMW, Yamaha and Honda carry the most kits between them, with Ducati, Kawasaki, KTM, Suzuki, Royal Enfield and Moto Guzzi also well represented. Harley-Davidson isn't part of this range.
A handful of kits are titled Multi-Fit instead of to a named bike. These fit the handlebar's own internal thread, 6mm or 8mm, not a bracket cut for one model. They're the ones to check if your bike isn't listed under its own name.
What a kit doesn't include
Sport and Adventure shells are also sold on their own, with no mounting kit, for anyone whose bracket survived a drop but the shell didn't. SW-Motech say so plainly on the shell listing itself: "does not include mounting kit." There are two extension sets, and each fits only its own shell. SW-Motech's page for the Adventure one rules out Sport, Kobra and Bbstorm shells in the same sentence. The Sport one is listed for existing Sport shells only.
Fitting either kit starts with taking the bike's own bar-end weight off. The guard's hardware goes on in its place. Some owners report the factory weight is stuck fast when they get to it. SW-Motech say neither kit needs special tools to fit.
Anyone running a bar-end mirror should check it against Kobra's own weight before ordering one. US owners have reported for several years that theirs, at around 35mm across, is too wide for mirrors built to clamp up to about 30mm. Check the clamp range on any bar-end mirror before pairing the two. One UK buyer's review also noted a guard's bar-end mount didn't clear a raised aftermarket screen on their bike. That's a single report, but worth checking if your screen sits higher than standard.
SW-Motech describe hand guards as more than cosmetic: their own words are that they're "essential safety components for any rider" that "help prevent injuries in a fall," and on the Kobra kit specifically, that the aluminium bar protects "handlebars and drivers alike" in a fall. Check what any specific kit actually covers before you rely on it for more than wind and knocks.
Wind, and where it stops helping
Guards cut a lot of wind, but not all of it. UK riders who use them through winter say the air curls back over the top and bottom of the shell, so a guard alone won't fully keep hands warm in the cold. The common UK fix is fitting muffs, or bar mitts, over the guard, not instead of it. A UK forum thread describes the same reasoning. The guard's frame holds the muff in place and stops the wind pushing it back onto the levers. That happens easily when a muff is worn on its own.
Every kit, shell and Multi-Fit guard here is for sale at 10% off RRP, with free UK delivery available. If the bike itself needs protecting as well as the levers, our crash bars and sliders cover the engine and frame instead.