Skyking Billet Mirrors
Skyking Billet Mirrors
CW EVALUATION
Rakish rear-viewers
A NECESSARY EVIL, MIRRORS. NOTHING mucks up the lines of a sleek sportbike or radical custom more than a pair of backwards-looking periscopes sticking up into the airstream.
John King, main man at Skyking Products, small-scale maker of sportbike bits, has a solution. His stylish Billet Aluminum Mirrors are basically 3-inch convex lenses on short polished aluminum stalks that plug into the ends of 7/8-inch handlebars. The Skyking mirrors tuck in tightly, doing away with the Snidely Whiplash effect of larger bar-enders, which can add 15 inches to handlebar span-not exactly ideal for lane-splitting.
We mounted a set on the Editor’s 1967 Norton Atlas cafe-racer, and they look just the part, far better than the period J.C. Whitney piece the bike came with. For adjustment, the lenses can be pivoted back-and-to on their mounts. This, and the fisheye view to the rear, means that there’s no such thing as a blind spot. In fact, unless you’re into symmetry, you could get by with just one mirror, that’s how wide-angle the coverage is.
Skyking Products
www.skykingproducts.com
A When was the last time you thought a mirror looked cool? A Quality workmanship A Expensive? Try pricing a set of OEM stalks
Downs v Objects in mirror waaay closer than they appear v Not sized for Harley bars (you're missin' a huge market here, John)
Downside is that at first it’s tough to judge just how close objects in the mirror actually are, nor is it easy to estimate their closing rate. You adapt, but it takes a few rides and a lot of glances over the shoulder.
A small price to pay, though, to keep both the DMV and your sense of style happy.
