http://www.1tail.com/sa/p/INTUITIVE_FRAME_SLIDER_KAWASAKI_250_NINJA_BLACK.htm

http://www.1tail.com/cartimages/m/71255.JPG

Pic of the sliders on an actual Ninja 250 would be ****! :rolleyes:

Only had my 250 for a couple months. I dont feel bad admitting im a new and only way to learn new things is to ask question. So....what are frame sliders and what do they do? :)

They are hard plastic (or sometimes metal) pieces that you attach securely to the sides of a bike (directly to the frame). The intention is that if the bike goes over on its side, damage is lessened because the sliders take the hit. There's a bunch of strong feelings about them on all sides; some folks think they are completely useless and do more harm than good; others think they are completely necessary and save huge $ if there is an incident.

I think it depends on the type of tip-over or crash to figure out if they'd help or hurt. It also depends on how secure is the mount. Some bikes have great places to mount sliders, other bikes don't. In fact, some sliders can total a bike by bending the frame on the most moderate incident, where the bike may have been repairable without sliders. Some people talk about "cut" or "no-cut" sliders. For some bikes (mainly supersports like R6's and similar machines), the best place to mount a slider is right behind a fairing, so you need to cut a hole in the fairing to put the slider through. The no-cut ones for those bikes mount the slider on a bracket so they can peek out from behind the fairing a few inches away. It's generally believed that the no-cut sliders for those types of bikes are utterly useless, as the bracket will bend in the best case, and if it doesn't it will torque the frame in the worst case.

I have them on my trackbikes, and I feel it did save me quite a bit of cash when I had a 90+ mph on-track crash on a R6 and ended up with only a few hundred $ in damage. I don't put them on my streetbikes, and haven't considered them yet for the ninjette. Though I'd be very interested to see what these look like so I can think about how solid a mount they are using on our bikes.

Give me an hour or two and I'll get some pics of them on my bike up for you... Gray's is on right now, so it will have to wait :o

Gray's is on right now, so it will have to wait :o you need to get your priorities straight... plus you need a DVR. :p

Being a slave to network programming is a drag. :mad:

I have a DVR - it's being recorded as well so I can watch it later - but I was dying to see this episode!

Here are a couple on my black bike

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_V-U-OR3ze94/STihO0ipZGI/AAAAAAAAACM/LqONvojzSP8/s400/100_3997.JPG

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_V-U-OR3ze94/STihXKMrN1I/AAAAAAAAADA/7caBWk7wi7g/s400/100_4008.JPG

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_V-U-OR3ze94/STihVg2oMoI/AAAAAAAAAC4/GDfnHJfdIlk/s400/100_4007.JPG

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_V-U-OR3ze94/STihUiq9MnI/AAAAAAAAACw/W2SGbAcg270/s400/100_4005.JPG

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_V-U-OR3ze94/STihT-nLSEI/AAAAAAAAACo/2PMiqqdn1Dg/s400/100_4002.JPG

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_V-U-OR3ze94/STihSZmkEQI/AAAAAAAAACg/MrFg3w2Db3I/s400/100_3999.JPG

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_V-U-OR3ze94/STihQomNt0I/AAAAAAAAACY/xYxqyj4Qgu4/s400/100_3998.JPG

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_V-U-OR3ze94/STihO0ipZGI/AAAAAAAAACM/LqONvojzSP8/s400/100_3997.JPG

do you have any pics with the fairings off, showing how these mount?

do you have any pics with the fairings off, showing how these mount?

no, but there is a DIY that caligirl did over on KF that has them

Thx for the link, I took a look at that DIY. Personally, I think that these sliders on the 250 are useless for anything other than a parking-lot zero-mph drop, and maybe not even for that. Any lateral torque whatsoever on the slider and it will bend immediately, and will likely rip the engine mount bolt & its mount as well. A bike sliding on its side at even moderate speeds, even one as light as ours, is still 400 lbs of inertia moving at speed, and there's no way that long thin bar stands up to that force without failing one way or another, and hopefully not damaging anything other than itself.

That said, I do like them cosmetically, it is nice to not have to chop up the fairings, and they give the bike a more aggressive look. But I think that we ninjette owners are kind of stuck, as the aggressive fairing design is much wider off of the frame and engine of the bike compared to other supersport bikes, making the distance that a frame slider mount needs to travel longer than on other bikes.

Look at how sliders mount on an R6, for example:

http://www.ciurczak.com/photos/13253224_cdPqG-M.jpg

http://www.ciurczak.com/photos/13253230_rhZEV-M.jpg

No long bolt, the mount of the slider itself snugs up against the frame, holding it in place against lateral torque.

Thanks Alex....that's kind of what I was thinking.