Review: Houser Racing's Wristrester

BY Gabe Ellett
Technical Editor HondaEX.com

We received our Wristrester from Houser Racing today.  We'll be installing it on our 400EX.

For those not familiar with what the Wristrester is, it's a device that takes place of your fixed mount steering stem bushing and replaces it with a unit that is capable of allowing the stem to travel 5/8" forward.  It's spring loaded and has an adjustable shock absorber for damping the movement.

You can break down the Wristrester into 4 individual main parts - the machined billet aluminum housing, a cool little adjustable shock absorber, a spring & slug washer, and the nylon bushing.

Installation is pretty straight forward.  It took us a total of about 30 minutes from start to finish.  The first step is to remove your front fenders, this is easily accomplished by removing the 4 mounting bolts with a 10mm socket or wrench.  

Next remove the black plastic push-pin clips, then the simply unplug the headlight and ignition switch wiring.

You should then have easy access to the steering stem bushing and mounting brackets.  These will be completely removed & discarded.  Loosen the two 10mm head bolts, as well as the 8mm head bolt that fastens the brake line to the bracket.

Once the original stem bushing & brackets are removed, you then simply put the split nylon bushing included with the Wristrester around the steering shaft.

Now slide the aluminum housing over the bushing with the spring in place.

One small problem we ran into was that when tightened down, the back side of the Wristrester lacks about 1/4" of fitting flush with the frame which allows the stem a little free play before it puts pressure on the spring.  This gives you a "sloppy" sensation at the handlebars.  We corrected this by cutting a small piece of 1/4" thick wood to the correct length and placing it under the wristrester assembly, between it and the frame.

Once this is all done, you simply tighten the assembly down with the two 12mm head bolts provided by Houser, plug the headlight and ignition wiring back in, remount the fenders and you're done.

The test ride:

We took the quad out for a quick test ride through a favorite rocky section with some steep ledgerock climbs and downhill sections.  We noticed right away that the Wristrester was working and taking away some of the harshness of the trail, especially when hitting square edge rocks and roots.  We also especially noticed this effect when turning with pressure on the bars, or going downhill (which stands to reason)...

One thing we didn't like was that since there is no spring or damping on the return side, sometimes when it returned to it's normal position it did so with a "thunk".  This may have been somewhat compounded by that piece of 1/4" wood we mounted under the unit - but if we hadn't put it there the stem would have had a sloppy feeling - choose your poison.  Maybe some dense foam, neoprene or the like would work better...

Pros:
A quality piece of equipment that fits well.
Seems to do what it's advertised to do.
Steering effort is less on our quad - this may be due to our original stem bushing needing to be replaced in the first place.
It has the advantage of much more travel than an Anti-Vibe steering stem.

Cons:
We had to place a small piece of material under the unit to make the steering stem not feel "loose".
The subsequent "thunk" sometimes when the stem returns to it's resting position.
Although it has much more travel than an Anti-Vibe stem, it only has travel in one direction - forward.

Houser Racing
2034 Harding Hwy East
Marion, OH 43302-8527
Voice: (740) 386-5020 Fax: (740) 389-9630
[www.houser-racing.com]