Nifty Footwork

When I bought it I found the standard riding position on my Triumph a bit cramped on long journeys, and I was disappointed to find that you couldn’t adjust either the standard handlebars or the footpegs.  I did buy some very expensive handlebar risers about a year or so ago and these have made a tremendous difference, but I still get a bit of cramp in my legs, mainly due to a knackered left knee.

I recently decided to bite the bullet and get myself some adjustable footpegs as well to see if these helped. I found a set of Vario alloy footpegs from a company in Germany which were advertised as being fully adjustable. I ordered them online from Germany, they were paid for using PayPal and I received the parcel within a week of placing the order. Isn’t modern technology wonderful? Remember looking for stuff before the internet?

Here’s the three-piece kit I received. From the left: pair alloy Touring footpegs, pair alloy ‘hinges’ & pair 30mm alloy spacer-arms. 

The basic idea is that you fit a spacer-arm between the original mounting point on the frame and the new alloy peg (you can see the difference in these two 'pics). The peg has teeth cut into it which line up with similar teeth in the spacer-arm. This then allows you to move the position of the footpeg to best suit you, and the length of the spacer-arm determines how much travel you now have to play around with. 

I decided to fit them this afternoon. The instructions were straight-forward enough, if a bit on the strange side; it looked like someone used babelfish translation software. Essentially, you take the old pegs off and fit the new pegs using the existing bolts and circlips. The whole thing only took about 15 minutes. If only everything were this easy.

I do have one complaint, though. The kit was advertised as being designed specifically for my particular machine so I didn’t expect any problems with the fit. However, the ‘hinges’ are a bit smaller than the ones on the standard pegs, which leaves the new pegs sitting at a bit of an downward angle. While this doesn’t pose a problem while you’re actually riding the bike it is annoying and detracts from the look of the bike and from what is otherwise a quality product.