Another Year on the 690.

At the start of each riding season especially if you live in a mountain town where the roads are snow, salt grit and ice bound for 4-6 months getting back on the Iron Horse can be a foreign thing. It also comes with questions about the bike. Another year another set of bike launches, the new Africa Twin, the SWM Adventure, another megalithic GS, and the credible CCM450 Adventure and a plethora Triumph Tigers and XC and serve to push you to re-evaluate your machine of choice.

For me I am on my 2014 KTM 690 Enduro R for the 2nd full season.  The only thing that comes close to the mix I wanted is the Husqvarna 701 but hey its 690 in Blue White and Yellow and without the large supply chain making aftermarket bits (this may come). The CCM of course would be ideal but for the 450cc engine.

I suppose you need to be honest about what sort of riding you will do and how and where you want to ride it. 15,000 British GS riders in the last 8 years bought into the rufty tufty round the world dream, complete with matching suits and plenty add-ons to add weight to your monster. Most will never see dirt, let alone a sand storm or a single track. So if you like the image, and your idea of an adventure is a French motorway to a GS meet near Nice, knock yourself out. However if you want rocks, rubble, dust and skinny trails, then The GS or any weighty machine is not for you.

Also be honest, do you need a 300mile range tank, are you really going to travel from Khartoum to Dar-es-Salaam and never pass a fuel station and if you ever do, then a couple Rotopax bolt fuel canisters or a fuel bladder will get you there. Fuel is heavy and unless mounted low seriously affects the handling of the bike.

Most “adventure bikes” are 200kg plus, add some luggage (even you manage to travel light) you will be close to 230kg, some may top 260kg.

Having been pinned under a GS800 with 2x15kg panniers made me rethink what the GS I was doing.

There are not many sub 180kg bikes and none off the peg that really fit the bill of what I wanted.

My criteria are

I need to drive to the trailhead and unlike the USA these distances can be long, often a day or two on the flat top. A small 250-450cc engine would seem just to be under a lot of pressure doing this day in, day out.

I stick to the A and B roads generally but it needs to sit at 110kmph/70mph and still be relatively comfortable and handle. Some wind protection would be nice and it should be able to carry some luggage.

14+ litres offering up to a 350k range means we can ride for two trail days and not panic about finding fuel.

It strikes me as odd that no-one makes a 600cc sub 180kg machine with a reasonable range and good suspension for the trails. But having just ridden 6 days on the best trails in Europe in Sardinia and meet no other riders, whilst on the nearby roads hundreds of BMW’s and Multi Stradas it maybe should be no surprise.

These ubiquitous hard panniers machines piloted by multi pocketed Cyberman, suggests to me what we are doing, whilst is a strong aspirational marketing image that is selling the machines to the masses, is actually pursued by only a few.

So if you want adjustable good suspension, the ability to ride road, some single track and trails, and feel as though you are riding not just surviving then few machines are as capable as the KTM 690 Enduro with its added bits.

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KTM 690 Enduro - How it rides?

Its temping to get stuck into the discussion about after-market parts, tyres, lights etc before actually looking at the basic bike as a riding experience. But lets not, just yet.

Well, its amazing, but thats not quite enough if you are about to spank close to £8000 of your quids!
Ok, it rides like a hot wind stripping a cat?, a deification on a polished shovel or other meaningless superlatives. I have read so many of these types of comments they blur into cliche'.

So really, this is how I see it. It's a tall bike that feels small and light, a friend commented on when following me on and off-road that I looked completely "at one" with the bike. This is so, its very natural and balanced, with handeling that really inspires confidence.

The lack of screen at the moment, and having no petrol tank at the front of the bike leaves you feeling a little exposed but then off road you ride it like an MX bike, shifting your weight forward and dropping you leg out in the bends. It's a totally normal action and great fun.

And fun it is, it feels like more of a toy than anything I have ever ridden.

The short gear shift criticised by some is not an issue for me, yes you do use the gears a lot more on the road but the slipper clutch works very well on the road and downshifting even at high revs is smooth and very predictable. It feels safe and very useable.

When standing and downshifting without using the clutch is smooth and easy, great when you need a spurt of power on a steep trail.

When using the Yamaha 660 or the BMW F800GS I used to stand a lot, but on the KTM I find myself sitting a lot more especially in the corners, leg out and weight forward. It is the real deal off-road where as the BMW especially, was a big bike with an off-road sticker on it.

Throttle response - Well its very quick indeed, it will hike from slow speeds to overtaking much faster than the two bikes mentioned above. I have not been brave enough to put the bike in sport mode as the "Normal"map  is more than enough at the moment, and I am still riding it under 6000rpm.

The suspension set up may take a bit of tweaking. I though I would follow the manual and set it to "standard" after a couple of days on very rocky trails the rebound seems a little harsh. The result is that the rear end skips over loose ground a little to quickly and you don't have the lovely weight and unweighting I have on my DH MTB. So I have dialled the bike (in the slow settings) to 12 clicks softening the bike. Its much better, Maybe with another few long rides it will loosen up.

So on the trails I have gone from BMW survival mode to attack. Well more like go, it feels very planted and safe. Although travelling faster if something goes wrong it will will be a faster fall.

It rails in corners, accelerates quickly, the brakes on and off-road are very good indeed. I have to say its a bit of a revelation.  I its un-farkled state the bike is very good indeed. Its not a long distant traveller but an amazing platform for the evolution.

Patsy Quick and the KTM a "Gateway to New Horizons"

You know when you bought that album based on the one good track you heard, or the top selling single you liked, and then you get it home and the rest is awful, its a bit like being cheated. It may it only have been £15, but there is sits, its spine or case a reminder of an impetuous moment of excitement. It leads to an age of disappointment, until that moment 10 yrs later when you take it to the second hand shop, where there it sits, marked down to 50p for another ten.

I have done this with cars, the MGB GT which would never start on damp mornings, the third edition of the Land Rover LR Disco which died at 3am in Chamonix when it was -18deg c. and now a Vuaxhall Antara which I have inherited from my mum.

Whilst the BMW F800GS was a nice road bike it did not fill me with confidence off-road. Falling out of love either with a woman, man or a thing, often starts with an off-hand comment. This fateful end of life comment for the F800GS, came from Patsy Quick, famed  Dakar Rally Rider and boss at the Desert Rose Riding Academy. When I visited her stand at the Goodwood Festival of speed in 2014,  the rot set in. So now the BMW is gone, what to do?.

The Yamaha Tenere' 660 for me was too heavy, Morocco proved that, the Beta Alp 4.0 was a small mans toy, Yamaha WR250's looked good but a clean one was rare, the promising new CCM 450 Adventure thingy way too expensive, untried and just maybe 450cc was just too small on high Alpine roads where I love to ride (lack of a dealer/service network for the CCM was a huge issue for me). So I kept coming back to the KTM 690 Enduro R, with all its know short comings.

Lack of fuel range, poor lights, seat etc are all well discussed, but the number of companies making bits for the KTM are huge and there is an active eBay market for the add-ons if required.

My first experince with a KTM 690 Enduro was on a trip in 2012 when a friendly German we were riding with lent me his 2010 machine for a short road section. My first impressions were that it was slow, agricultural, rattled all over and had an awful gear box. I was not impressed. But I have been watching the slow evolution of the 690r for the last few years and at last EIMCA show in Milan the bike looked vastly improved. New Fly by Wire throttle, new Duke engine, and slightly more refinement. But before I was going to spank nearly £7000 on an "album" that promised a lot but ended up in the local Cancer Charity Shop I though I had best try on before buying.

So I called Patsy Quick's  http://www.adventureridingacademy.com/  and headed to Englandshire to learn something and see what I and it could do. After all she promised a "Gateway to New Horizons"