The infamous "before" picture.

TBM Racing provided us their innovative steering system to replace the plastic factory neck as well as their own billet throttle, a Star Bar handlebar, and ODI grips. Unlike UMI's steering system that replaces the factory steering knuckle, the TBM unit retains the stock bushing.

Removing the factory padding is easy, requiring only a Phillip's head screwdriver. Once the rubberized shroud is removed, the internal Styrofoam padding is extracted revealing the bars and plastic housing. The bars are removed with a socket wrench.

Both the stock throttle and ignition box are removed with the same Phillips driver. The ignition box features a raised nub that impedes installation on aftermarket bars, so we used a scroll sander and ground it off. A hole can be drilled into the replacement handlebars, but if you choose to do so, make sure to drill your hole in the exact spot you want the box.

A second rubberized shroud is found around the neck. It is removed by merely pulling the shroud upwards, threading the retaining plugs through the elastic holes.

With the handlebars removed and the head and neck uncovered and disassembled, the rest of the steering neck can be removed from the factory bushing. We boxed up all of the parts incase we ever wanted to return the factory steering system at a future date.

The TBM neck mounts directly to the factory holes. We used blue Loc-Tite when mounting.

The factory wire loom is zip tied and sheathed in a clear plastic sleeve. We cut the sleeve off so that we could separate the throttle control cable from the ignition wiring and thermostat.

Making sure to coat each bolt in blue Loc-Tite, we secured our handlebars in place. These bars are fully adjustable, allowing us to move the pre-bent bars forward or backwards as well as dropping the handlebar head up and down a total of nearly 2-inches.

In our final configuration, we found that narrowing the bars a total of 2-inches and dropping the neck 1-inch made for a much more comfortable ride. The angle of the bars were dropped back slightly too.