Hey All,
I would like to share my experience with a recent trip on my Honda Crf300l. This was meant to be a 2 weeks trip to Morocco from Malaga (where I live). The first week was great - bike performed great on B roads and off road (we did a couple of tracks from Chris Scott’s book Morocco Overland i.e. MH1 and MH10, made it to Merzouga and spent a few days exploring the area and playing in the sand. On the morning of day 8 we were planning to go down MS6 just to take a peak and then turn back and head north slowly making our way back to Tangier. So we did - we reached the auberge Porte de Sahara Ouzina, had a snack and turned back. 2kms in, I had a fairly slow fall on some fesh fesh and landed the bike on its left hand side. I noticed the shift lever was a bit bent but didn’t think much of it until a few seconds later I realized the bike was stuck in first. With my friend we tried to rock the bike back and forth, all the usual things, but nothing. Long story short, we had to arrange transport back to Merzouga, and now I am getting the bike sent back to Spain through my insurance because the problem cannot be resolved on site (or it could if I was willing to wait a few days for the part to arrive, but unfortunately I have my ferry back in 3 days). So what is the problem? Well apparently this is a known weak spot for these bikes, as it’s quite easy to bend the shifter if you fall on your left hand side. And fixing that is not the easiest thing if you are in the middle of nowhere as it requires you to drain oil and coolant, plus having a spare shifter or hope that somebody can bend it back to its original shape without breaking it.

Now my trip is over, and I feel that the same applies to my trust in this bike. At the same time though this is only my third bike (after a Suzuki van van 125 and a RE Himalayan) so I am wondering whether I am reaching my conclusions a little too fast. To clarify - I love the bike, I’m no fast rider so I’m happy with the power delivery and after changing suspension I feel it handles rough terrain quite well. But I am a bit worried that if I was to come back here in Morocco with the same bike I would be a little paranoid about this design flaw. So - what do other more experienced folks think about my logic here? Do all bikes have some kind of weak spot that you need to be ready to deal with, sooner or later? Are there other bikes out there that you think would have handled such a situation better ( in terms of overall design but also parts availability)? Again I’m in Europe so old style bikes lol DRZs ecc can be found but they are likely to be quite old now. Also I was surprised to see so many KTMs around here - is the 690 platform becoming more widespread / used for overlanding?