keebler

desertbilly wrote:
<blockquote>a fair number of us are doing what these bikes were designed for on KLR650's.</blockquote>

I think that the KLR gets listed as a dual sport instead of an adventure tourer, though I've read stories about people doing pretty long treks on them. There are lots of accessories for them, including some decent luggage options.



It seems an adventure tourer is a larger bike that's meant to let riders tackle any road that comes their way, like five hundred mile of slab with fifty miles of gravel and a hundred miles of twisties, for days on end. A KLR650 can do all that, sure, and take you deeper into the woods to boot, but I don't know if I'd want to cross the country on one.



While the article gave good feel for the bikes, they left out some rather important numbers, like mileage, fuel capacity, seat height, weight, ground clearance, maximum load, and alternator output (so you can add lots of lights and still use a heated vest). Seat hight's an interesting one—I test rode an R1150GS once, and even with the seat in the lower position, with my 30 inch inseam I could barely get more than a tiptoe on the ground at stop lights.

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Grappelli

The funny thing is these bike are broadly modelled on the Paris-Dakar desert racers. Although the GS is raced, the desert version looks nothing like the road version (or vice versa). The KTM is going to be the only one that looks like it should!!

blip

videos went up last night



ftp://ftp.motorcycle.com/pub/videos/

Hadji

I would like to see KTM build a bike to fit the sports touring mold a la VFR800/ST4S/Futura or R1100S. And if they could sell it for less than the competition, I would buy it. Heck, if the ergos on the Adventure LC8 were good I might just buy that.

crouchingtiger

MCN ran some pics of a bike KTM is developing. More like a Ducati Monster though.

Grappelli

that's a different bike



same engine though..

elizilla

I can't find the mileage stats. Have they been posted?



Thanks!

gasdive

Grappelli said:



"3. can go offroad enough to get me there: a. and won't break when I crash it. "



All these bikes are far too fragile to be considered "off road" in any sence of the phrase.



I wouldn't take any one of these bikes on any road that I wouldn't take my CBR1000 on, so what's the use of them? They can only go where road bikes can go, and on sealed roads they're badly compromised. It's a useless trade off. You don't benefit from expanded capability off road, but you do lose out in onroad ability...



Cheers Jason = (Australia)

gasdive

Keebler wrote:



"It seems an adventure tourer is a larger bike that's meant to let riders tackle any road that comes their way, like five hundred mile of slab with fifty miles of gravel and a hundred miles of twisties"



With the exception of the five hundred miles of slab (which I hate) this is more or less exactly what I did with my CBR1000 a couple of days ago. Couldn't sleep, so I got out at dawn, and did about 100 miles of "slab", about 200 miles of twisties and 100 miles of gravel... Just as I said, anything you can do with these "adventure tourers" you can do with an ordinary tourer except that an ordinary tourer is more comfortable on the "slab", while also being faster and more stable through the twisties. I don't think an adventure tourer would be any better on the gravel roads so there's no gain on that side for the adventure bikes.



Cheers Jason =

BlakeB

I don't know what happened. The videos were delivered as promised, but there are still no stats. I can't claim to be an expert on electronic journalism (or journalism of any kind), but I don't know why they don't provide the full report all at the same time, or at least provide a RELIABLE timetable. Bada Bing?