Hello,
I'm just back from a short shakedown trip to Belgium and France with spooky. The idea was to pack the bike for my six weeks trip to eastern Europe and see how it all goes and what the problems might be.

We did about 1200km some of that on rural gravel roads (shortest route on the Zumo ) and some of that on the Highway, blasting through Belgium and back home on the last day.

The bike pretty much did everything perfect, only downside is that after a 400 to 500km day you are truly and totally knackered. Most of it owing to the hard and thin stock seat. I'm considering an Airhawk or Sheep-Skin to help with that. Bicyclist pants (the padded ones) do also help.

After the first long and fast blast through Belgium the oil was a little low, but since I didn't check it before departure I can't tell if it was because of the fast going. I filled it up and now it's fine, even after more Autobahn abuse.

For luggage I use the Touratech-Setup I mentioned earlier. The Boxes are pretty big but I still couldn't fit in my sleeping bag (three seasons and just a big bugger) so I used a Kriega US-20 on top of one box (which fitted like it was made for the job) and strapped my tent on top of the other.



I ended up carrying about 13kg on each side as well as the tankbag (KTM Powerparts) for my camera with and additional lense.

You do notice the weight and the bike get's a bit wobbly at over 120km/h probably owing to horrible aerodynamics and curable through fumbling with the suspension setup.

It's still fine to ride though and great fun in the twisties and the whole loaded up bike weights less then many BMWs or bigger KTMs without luggage!

Spooky rode most of the gravel tracks behind me and told me that the panniers looked perfectly stable and weren't wobbly at all. I also had a minor spill where my front wheel slipped on some gravel (near standstill speed) and that left some scratches on the panniers and the handguards but that was it. You could say they were positivly crash tested

While fuel consumption is normally around 4,5l/100km with all my crap in tow it rose up to about 5,5l/km on the Autobahn (that's 52.27mpg down to 42.77mpg in US Gallons for a you metrically challenged people out there, still can't believe you do actually have two different kind of gallons...). With slow going and relaxed overland cruising I would expect it to be somewhere around 5 liters. Then again the bike just invites you to ride it hard.

At some point in France I was a little afraid to run out of fuel since the distance between villages was bigger than I anticipated and fuel consumption a bit higher than I thought. I'll probably end up taking a 5 liter jerry can on the big trip.

So far, so good, in two weeks it's off to the Balkans!

P.S.: Some more about that on my German language blog. Links in my signature.

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Projekt Balkan
www.buebo.de - Der tägliche Wahnsinn

Thanks for the updates, always good to read about peoples experiences with new bikes. With reference to the gallons (U.S. and Imperial). They are both based on pints, a gallon being 8 of them, it's just that in the U.K. a pint is 20 fluid ounces as our is served, U.S. is 16.
It seems entirely obvious to me which one must be right!

Somebody should have explained that to me earlier. That fuel consumption is actually based on the the driver had to drink makes the whole system a lot more logical!



And now back on topic please

__________________
Projekt Balkan
www.buebo.de - Der tägliche Wahnsinn

from touratech you cn get a 14 liter extra tank. soyour range increases 2 times.

How is the 690 E doing so far?
Have you posted any more stuff on it?

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inyang

Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Buebo's Blog ends in around July of '09, about 8 months ago. No updates after that. I don't read German so no idea how things went. There were Pics on his Blog in E. Europe so I'm guessing he did OK?

Maybe he has an English ride report somewhere?

I loved KTM's ... owned a few (640 Duke ll, 640 SM, 300 EXC) but would not be my first choice for a long range touring bike. I just did a 3 day ride with about 50 bikes ... about 75% KTM. Few other bikes tossed in. The KTM's were fast as Hell, mostly 30 something guys all out to race each other. Some really good riders in the mix. The young guys were exhausted at the end of the day, lots of sore butt stories. I was fine. Could have ridden 3 more hours easily on my archaic DR650 Suzuki. We rode about 250 to 300 miles a day, mostly dirt roads, about 50 miles of deep mud and lots of knarly twisty roads.


Mud Bogs! the KTM's rocked through these. Mostly 525/530/450's. Only one 690 that I noticed. A few Husky 450/510's. Three Huskies broke down,
as well as a couple KTM's. No idea of the problems.

KTM's kicked butt in this rocky canyon. The DR650 was work ... barely made it through. (no luggage)

How deep was the mud? This Hippy was 6'2". His girl friend in the Merc was livid. They turned around and got the Hell out of there.

This KTM expired ... not sure why.

The KTM's could out run my DR650 on these dirt roads but on pavement my 37 HP monster kept pace with the KTM's easy. 32,000 miles of hard use, no issues. Heavy? Yep, compared the the KTM 690 my DR is about 30 lbs. heavier than the KTM, and down quite a bit on HP ... yet I keep up fine
and can ride at 75 MPH all day, day after day on highway. No vibes.
Can any KTM single do that?

What I'd like to hear from Buebo would be how the big Alu boxes did on his 690R and how the sub frame held up over time?

staying in contact with Buebo and we doing a further trip next month, after attending the German HUMM in a few weeks time... so he and his bike are well...
actually Buebo now is in proses of getting a Safari-tank fitted to his beloved 690...

regarding his Blog... well Buebo is very busy for the moment, actually after finishing his solo trip around the Balkan last year... so don't worry.

spooky

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The trouble is that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hobgoblinontour

Hi,
My bike is ready to travel and do some pistes.
grts
Peter Penson

Attached Images

   

Hello Guys,
sorry no english ride report as of yet, I still have my trip journal but I'm too busy with other crap and didn't really got round to putting it all down...

The Bike is still going strong with about 15.000km on the clock now. However, it has developed a strange, ticking noise. At the moment it's beeing checked out by the dealer and we'll see what's up. I hope KTM will stand by their guarentee otherwise it might be time for a personal hands on experience :-)

I did change my luggage though. In the end I did not get on with the touratech boxes too well. They are just to big and cumbersome, I needet to find something that I could just throw over my shoulder and walk with.

I flirted with the idea of the Andy Strapz for a bit, they do absoloutely look the part but where too expensive considering shipping. Got the Giant Loop instead. Fits the bike much better but haven't really tried it yet.

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Projekt Balkan
www.buebo.de - Der tägliche Wahnsinn