The picture on MC's website was the very first model built for the 2010 Concours. After using them on the Police bikes and having agencies have hard spills with them, there was a need to make them a little stronger. The inside vertical bar was lengthened and welded to the outside bar at the bottom bend for more rigidity. This was the new bar for quite a while. Then after even harder crashes the bars would flex and the bar would dent the bodywork so the very lower part of the bar was shortened to give more clearance to the lower fairing. The final product for this bar, and I believe the current production, are the bars in Joncon11's photo. These will be the bars you get for the 2010-12 bikes now.
It is a better design than the original that came about from alot of police bikes testing the strength of the bars. Props to MC for working with our company and Kawasaki in answering the demands that the Agencies were putting on them as far as durability was concerned. No matter how you slice it, the price of these bars will pay for themselves the first time the bike hits the ground whether by mistake or by accident. Money well spent.
Precisely this.
We went through a few different designs before we found the one that really worked well and satisfied our customers high expectations. Interestingly enough, we made an even
beefier version for one of our customers at one point. However, the extra work proved to be unnecessary as the current design worked great without the added weight of thicker steel plates, gussets, etc.
Thanks for answering, by the way. I don't mind people joining in on the conversation and answering questions as long as they know what they're talking about, as you clearly do!
