MXA TEAM TESTED: LUXON FOUR-POST, RUBBER-ISOLATED, KX450 BAR MOUNTS

WHAT IS IT? Luxon is best known for its triple clamps and ultra-detailed blog posts about torque specs and tolerances in motocross. We love Billy and the guys at Luxon for their engineering mindset. Billy doesn’t just make stuff that’s shiny; he dissects performance parts to figure out how and why they work, and then finds out ways to improve them. If you’ve ever owned a Kawasaki, you know how fragile the bar mounts are. Luxon MX makes multiple types of bar mounts for all the major brands, but Kawasaki is the brand that needs aftermarket mounts the most. 

WHAT’S IT COST? $239.95

CONTACT? www.luxonmx.com or (858) 586-1100. 

WHAT STANDS OUT? Here’s a list of things that stand out with Luxon MX’s four-post, rubber-isolated bar mounts for the Kawasaki KX450.

(1) Concept. Luxon MX’s four-post-style bar mount is rubber-isolated and designed to reduce vibration felt from the engine, eliminate twisting in small crashes and tip-overs, and absorbs hard hits and track roughness without compromising steering precision. The bars come with three different rubber-bushing hardness options, which can fine-tune the hand feel you get on the track. The Luxon mounts are lighter than stock yet resist twisting in crashes, thanks to the four-post design.

(2) Fitment. These bar mounts fit Kawasaki motorcycles with triple clamps using a rubber-cone interface—yes, they work on the stock triple clamps. They will work in both the forward and rearward triple-clamp mount-hole locations and have the same bar-position geometry as stock (height and offset). There are two options for handlebar size: standard 1-1/8-inch or Renthal’s 36mm bars.

(3) Performance. The typical fix for Kawasaki’s weak bar mounts would be replacing them with a solid mount. Solid mounts are stronger and less likely to twist in a small tip-over; however, with that option comes more vibration and a harsher feel at your hands. Luxon comes to the rescue with its double-rubber setup. Luxon utilizes the stock rubber bumpers (from your OEM bar mounts) and adds four mini dampers in the mounts themselves. The mounts come with yellow (medium) dampers, which are recommended for motocross, but you can install the green (soft) if you’re a lighter rider, Vet rider or if you have wrist issues. They also come with red (hard) dampers, which are recommended for “aggressive motocross use.” Compared to stock, our testers felt the yellow dampers offered 10 percent more comfort. The green mounts were softer, but the difference was negligible.

As for durability, we loved them. We’ve joked that the KX bar mounts will bend if you just look at them wrong. That might be a little harsh, but it’s true that the KX front end gets twisted even in the smallest crashes. We appreciate that the mounts bend before the handlebars, but it’s still a pain. Our test riders liked the fact that the Luxon MX mounts offer the same handlebar height and offset as the stock bar mounts, which means you can utilize both the front and rear holes, and turn the eccentric mounts forward and backward to customize the cockpit.

WHAT’S THE SQUAWK? We wish the mounts would’ve damped more of the Kawasaki’s vibration. 

MXA RATING: The new-generation Kawasaki KX450 has the worst “hand feel” in the class. It vibrates a lot through the handlebars. These mounts didn’t eliminate that flaw like we hoped, but they did fix our twisting problem, which is by far the more important issue. We don’t race without these anymore.