D.O.G. Dualsporters Of Georgia

Cowboy Kenny Bartram was flying his Orange Weapon last night at Calhoun SX :eek1

I DONT KNO HOW to put Vid on here from Photobucket

My wife and I are going to spend a week there next month and I am looking for some good roads and trail in the area . Anyone have any suggestions for a fairly active 62 year old and his KLR? We will be staying in the horse camp area. Thanks, Big Al

only if you want to hear banjo music.

Hey dogs,

I got a XR for sale in Augusta if you know of anyone looking for one;

http://http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?p=22599787#post22599787

Thanks!

The 990 is an amazing machine. I have never been on a bike where you can go from riding dirt in Moab in the morning and hammer 400 miles of scenic back country on the way to homebrew and wood fired pizza in Phoenix.

finally drinking the orange kool-aid I see?? welcome to the cul... I mean fold. :)

the ADV's are definitely a versatile bike.

I can swap notes anytime. Only problem is I have'nt rode them in a few years now, and things change quickly.

I wanted to come , but wanted to be rested for HS on Sunday. Figure it out!

You been drooling for years, over one

Is this your Girls Bike

Did it come from a Lady Bell ?

Since I could care less about stick & ball sports

Go BullDog

So Thats the infamous Brown Dog......

[/QUOTE]

No he came along later.

My cousin alwaz called me Brown Dog

I'm back in the DOG house. Amazing trip, covered a lot of territory and got some great family time. Left Arizona and was in the zone. 1910 miles and 32 1/2 hours later I was pulling into the shop. Didn't even realize it was Friday till this morning. Damn, now I have to go to work.

Congrats Clay

Pix

I had a chance today to go out to Mountain Motorsports in Conyers GA and take a ride on a few demo bikes.

My buddy Bob and I were both there to ride a couple bikes, and thanks to my buddy Russ (Schoals), he was able to set us up with a few rides. First up for me was brand new KTM 1190. I have been lusting after this bike since it was announced and was glad to see one in the flesh and finally throw my leg over one. This was the just the standard KTM 1190 Adventure with the 17/19" wheels, but for me personally, I'd be going for the KTM 1190 Adventure R with the 18/21" wheel set. Bob wanted to ride the Tiger 800XC, so that was his first bike of choice.

Ergonomics on the KTM felt pretty good although I would need to raise the bars to stand up comfortably. Amazingly, the bike feels pretty light, even less porky than the Tiger 800XC. I think overall, the bike is laid out very well. The instrumentation is fabulous with a big analog tach right in the middle. Off to the right in digital format are your speedo, fuel & temp bar type gauges, gear indicator, and time and maybe a few other things I'm forgetting. Off to the left is another good size square screen with all kinds of information. Its controlled by the a 4 way keypad on the left handle bar and KTM really allows you customize the screen to see exactly what you want. You can pick 5 of your favorite items from just any setting you can imagine and they show up on your "favorite menu". You can cycle through about 7 screens including 2 different trip screens that have all kinds of info on them. On other screens, you can fuel/throttle mapping and suspension mapping on the fly. While you are stopped, there are more settings you can tweak with too like Traction control, ABS, more specific suspension changes, etc. I'm not sure if you can, but I would hope you could tweak and save the presets to be what you want so you can switch to them on the fly.

As we rolled down the road, I knew I was in for a treat. The big LC8 KTM motor just purrs along low in the RPM range with no problems just lugging it along if you want. I'm not a fan of big motors that don't like to chug down low very smoothly, but KTM got this one right! Once we got to some of the back roads, I really got to open it up. That 1190 motor is an absolute animal and just keeps pulling. I found myself having to back off in 3rd gear or I'd be easily into the triple digits. In 2nd gear, it will start to the loft the front tire around 5-6k without even trying and surely felt like it would do it in 3rd pretty easily too. Heck I even surprised myself pulling up the front end in 4th gear under low rpm's with just a little rise in the road. Its downright scary what the bike will do in the upper RPM range if you jump on it hard, but at the same time its such a pleasure to ride nice in easy too. It covers everything well.

I spent most of my time in Sport mode with the sport suspension setting and it felt really good and responsive. It dipped into the turns with ease and was such an easy bike to ride, but felt like you could easily rail on it too at the same time. I did play with the other settings and I really like how it felt in each of the respective modes. (Sport, Street, Rain, Off-road). Rain mode really calmed things down which would be a great mode to use if you were in heavy traffic and just lugging along. Street mode is still pretty aggressive, just not quite as aggressive as sport mode. I didn't get to try the bike off road, so the jury's still out there, but I would really expect it to shine!

We did a nice 20 min ride on our first ride, then came back and traded bikes and did the same exact ride again. I have ridden the 800XC a few times before, but it was good to jump on it back to back with the KTM. The 800cc triple is an absolute dream in the low RPM's and is so smooth and I've always been a fan of that motor. The KTM isn't vibey at all and is a very pleasurable motor to ride, but that triple definitely shows you what super smooth is. The triple has a pretty flat torque curve as you accelerate although its got some punch on the top end. Riding Tiger back to back against my Vstrom 650, it feels like its so much more powerful, but riding the Tiger 800 and the KTM 1190 back to back just blew me away how much faster and stronger that KTM motor is. They aren't even in the same ball park. The Tiger 800 triple feels like an absolute dog when you ride it back to back with to the KTM even though its really not a bad motor, the KTM just is that much of a monster! When I was riding the Tiger, I kept waiting for it to spin up when I got on the gas and it just never happened, LOL.

Once we were back from that ride, Russ let me jump on the new FZ-09. That is a great small and lightweight bike and I just wanted to see what it felt like. Its not the type of bike for me, but I never pass up the opportunity to ride a new bike and I sure enjoyed playing on it. Again its a triple motor and I think Yamaha did a great job on it. It has a very minimalist feel with not much in front of you and even the small dash is off set to the right giving you basically and unobstructed view right to the front tire. The bike was brand new with hardly any miles, so I didn't rail on it, but I could definitely tell I enjoyed the motor. I think if Yamaha took that triple and made something comparable to the Tiger 800 keeping the focus on lightweight, they would have a great bike on their hands. The Super Tenere is a heavy beast and will definitely eat up the open roads, but give the consumer something to compete with the Tiger 800/800 XC and I think Yamaha would have an instant winner on their hands.

I came back from that ride and didn't want to end the day not riding the KTM one more time, so Russ let me take it out again. I went solo this time and had even more fun that time around and came back smiling just as much as the first time. I spent a little time just riding in street mode taking it easy just seeing if the bike would be enjoyable for every day riding and it really is.

I could easily see the KTM covering everything from long distance touring, to adventure riding to even aggressive dual sport riding (in the 18/21 tire version). I could not find anything to nitpick about the bike at all which is pretty amazing. KTM really got everything right on it!

Getting ready to climb on the KM 1190


I would expect the Adventure R to be a bit higher. BTW, this is with the seat in the tall position too, but I'm 6'4".

Great write-up. I don't think I would have much luck flatfooting it though...

Nice summary, which one did ya take home

haha, I wish I could take them all home.

Great info Dan, thanks for posting up.

Dammit, Dan!

Your revew of the VStrom clone KTM, Almost makes me want one...

I'll need to chew on that 16,000, before I hand it over...