I installed the sport bars, but same concept. I used an allen socket to tighten them and that's fine. I'd recomend the socket rather than a normal allen key cause it can get it tighter. The sport bar instructions recommended blue loctite. I plan on putting it on eventually, but it will be fine without it. I'm no mechanic and I've never replaced them and it was easy. The bar ends had red loctite which is the permanent kind on them and I gave up after trying to crack it with an allen key for 20 minutes. I had to get an allen socket. That's the only problem I ran into.

 

Loctite is cheap and should always be used, especially on our torquey 650r's. You will be suprised at just how easy it is for bolts to be vibrated loose and you don't want to find out the hard way. One other piece of advice is that when you take off the stock bars, only loosen the throttle housing just enough to clear the pin inside from the hole in the bar and slide it off that way. If you loosen it too much, you will have to completely reassemble it and that is an annoying and tricky job to say the least. You can also used a can of compressed air or air compressor to quickly take off the grips. Just stick the nozzle in between the grip and the bar, pinch it off and when you shoot the air in, start pulling like crazy. One other thing to remember is to put a towel over the fairings by the handlebars so that when you remove the old bars, the hanging parts dont scratch up the fairings.

Good luck!

 

the left handle grip can be a pain to get off. I think I used a type of silicone lubricant. Not sure about that handlebar in particular but when I installed my handlebar I had to drill a hole on the right and left sides where the little electronic boxes are (ie. left side=horn/blinkers; right side=ignition). good luck

 

I got the bars from Ninja650shop for like $60 I think. On sale maybe? Anyway they drilled the hole for me for nothing extra which was nice.
I installed them tonight and have only 1 complaint. I'm not sure if they drilled the hole a tiny bit bigger, or if the electronic bits were always slightly loose, but they are now. Just a couple of millimeters of play but I'm not thrilled about it. I didn't want to over torque the screws in the plastic on the throttle control piece by over tightening it so I left it with just a tiny amount of movement. Like I said, I'm not sure if it's from the hole maybe being drilled a tiny amount too big or if there was always movement.
Any thoughts?
Everything else was simple to do.

 

Are you talking about the hole in the bar that the kill switch housing goes on? If it's as tight as it will go then idk that might be the problem.

 

I think I recall a small amount of play in the original configuration. I re-checked it a little while ago and it moves about 2mm back and forth. I'm not concerned too much but I am doing a ton more riding now that the season has hit. Finally! But that being said I don't want any unhappy surprises. It all seems tight and good aside from that. I didn't completely dismantle the throttle control box as recommended and slid it off after the pin was safely able to clear the hole. And it sat nicely in the new hole, but had some wiggle room. But both sides have it. Both electronic control boxes, left and right are just a little wiggly. We'll see tomorrow.

 

My only issue its that the brake fluid box hitting the panel just a lil bit !

 

I was ok with clearance, mainly because I have no fairings. But I did have to move around the brake line - softly with the bars loose - so that it didn't have any big angles with the new lower positioning.