KTM690 Enduro

Gravel express

About 10 years ago I rode from Cairns to Cape York and back on a KTM620. The big girl vibrated like a sex shop, gathered speed in the manner a coal train gathers speed, and because of its sheer bulk was a very tiring mudderboik to ride. At the end of half an hour in sand on the day we got to the pointy bit I was totally shagged, good for nothing but intravenous beer.

Big and strong that bike was, and reliable too, but I'm relieved to say the 690 Enduro I've just finished evaluating is a much nicer bike in every way. It won't turn my scrotum into a wonton for one thing, and it's smooth everywhere the old 620 was rough as guts. It's a big bike, no doubt about that, but it's not ponderous. In my book that's the same as a woman being sexy but not mean with it.

WHAT'S A KTM690?
The dealer told us it's as a bike designed to cover long distances quickly when those distances include sealed and unsealed surfaces. It was an apt description. This bike is comfortable, fast and versatile.

As on most dirt bikes, and even 'adventure' bikes, the KTM's seating position is upright. You're not slung over this one like writer Joe Bennett might call "a suddenly flung crab". There was no wind deflector on the test bike but KTM lists a small 'touring windscreen' in its parts cattle dog. Always present without a deflector of some sort is the sensation that once your speed exceeds 100kph the wind will try to blow you off the back of the bike. Got the bike? Now get the windscreen.

In that comfy seating position there's little weight on your wrists. The clutch action is very light and the six-speed gearbox slices  through the gears like a machete through a pensioner's party hat. The seat is nicely padded, without being a pudding, so the 690 is way more comfortable than any supermoto machine I've ever been on. Come to think of it I've never been on a comfortable supermoto machine; they don't make one. The seat-bars-pegs relationship feels spot-on for someone of more or less normal dimensions, and I thought the bike felt exceptionally well balanced.

It pulls up with a lot of aggro too. If there was a bar pad on the tapered Renthals you could leave teeth marks in it. The braking combination uses a twin-pot Brembo calliper up front with a dirty big 300mm floating rotor. Down the back you get a single-pot calliper with a 240mm rotor. The braking power this duo sets up is very impressive. Don't overdo it on the dirt though or you'll be leaving teeth marks in the front tyre.

If I have one gripe it's about the seat height. It's 910mm. That's about 15mm taller than most trail bikes these days, and 15mm makes an awful lot of difference if you're not 6' 2". When sitting on the bike I could reach the ground with both feet but only just. At one point, as I threw my leg over the seat to mount the beast, I failed to throw it high enough and smashed my right knee into the pillion grab rail. It hurt so much my mind's eye watered. The best solution if you're short would be to throw your leg over from the lefthand side with the bike still on the sidestand. Or drop into the saddle from an overhead tree, like the Lone Ranger.

I wouldn't call it a gripe but I thought this bike had road rather than dirt-oriented suspension. Either that or it's been set up to deal with the heaviest loads KTM recommend you carry - 350kg with a pillion and a bit of kit. I took four clicks out of the fork compression to improve the ride quality over small bumps but it didn't make any difference. I imagine 26psi front and rear doesn't do much for ride quality either. I wouldn't call it choppy but it is bearing down on firm when you're one-up.

The instruments are housed in a neat and compact binnacle, no doubt made from high-impact something or other. The tacho is analogue but everything else is diggie. And it's all there.

You get an odometer, two trip meters, a tacho, a speedo, various warning lights, an idiot light for the indicators, in my case an idiot to go with it, and a coolant temperature gauge and fuel gauge. Speed can be displayed in mph or kph. Also published in the owner's manual are torque settings for every widget and squidget on the bike. There's a clock too.

When you turn the ignition on the tacho needle zaps back and forth while the bike does a system check. Very Formula One. For some reason you also get a readout telling you the circumference of the front wheel with the standard tyre. Eh?

The heart of any big bore is the engine. This one stonks, though I did wonder where KTM got permission stretch 654cc LC4 into a '690'.

But the fact is, this lily needs no gilding. My initial impression was that the gearing (15-45) was a little too high but that impression blew away in the wind when I cracked the throttle in first and second gear and watched the front end rear up like the neighbour's cat when I surprise it with the pressure washer. Sixth gear is a cruising-only cog and you won't really need it until you cross over to the dark side of 100kph.

Throttle response is very good for a big donk like this, fuelling is sweet, power delivery strong and progressive and acceleration through the first four gears is quite snappy. With most big bore singles you can expect a lot of hard working torque at low revs but this engine doesn't really work like that. With a stroke much shorter than its bore (80 x 102mm) it revs like a ceiling fan. But all this on-road performance is useful. You can slide passed the Home For The Limp mini bus before the occupants can even register the blur representing your presence. ("Kick me in the nuts if I'm wrong Mildred, but did you just see a giant orange parrot?")

With memories of the 620 and 640, I expected a huge single like this to vibrate like buggery but I was wrong. Vibration isn't much more than you'd get from a garden variety 450cc four-stroke, and gets no worse as engine speed increases. KTM has accomplished this by carefully balancing the big crank and adding a separate balance shaft to counter the inertia created by such a large rotating mass.

ON THE DIRT
I was surprised how calmly the big KTM handled suburban traffic. It idled without lumps, and was easy to manoeuvre in tight spots,  again proving how well balanced it is. But to be honest, and again with thoughts of the humungous 640 Adventure in mind, I wondered what the Katie would be like when I chucked it on the dirt?

KTM specced this bike with Metzeler's Enduro 3 Saharas. Up front we have a 90/90-21 and down the back a 140/80-18. The recommended pressure for one-up touring is 26psi front and rear.

On bitumen the Saharas are quiet, give plenty of grip and feel very predictable. The compromise a dual-purpose tyre has to make is obvious, and always most evident on dirt, but they never felt twitchy on gravel either.

That doesn't mean you can stick your granny on the back and expect her not to flinch occasionally. Dual-purpose tyres are fine on dry surfaces but in mud, and inherently slippery surfaces like clay, their knobless design leads to a lack directional stability on dirt and that can be can be problematic if you're sliding sideways downhill when grandma wants to bail.

I took this bike on trails we use to test hard corps 450s, cratered back roads with big puddles, rock shelves in both directions, humungous LandCruiser mud pits and ravine-size ruts. Apart from feeling heavier in the steering, and requiring slightly more physical effort in general, the KTM behaved like a well trained Labrador. The tall seat height was a problem if I put my foot down and there was nothing there, but that's the problem if you're 3" 6' and riding a DR250. On the other side of that coin, the KTM's 300mm ground clearance means a competent rider can take this bike anywhere he damn well likes.

Call it a parting shot if you like, but the fuel economy I got from this bike plunged me into self-doubt. First I rang the local servo to check the price of the Premium Unleaded I'd just purchased. Then  I rang the dealer I told you about to see what he thought the consumption should be. Most 450s we test get between 10 and 12km per litre. With the 690 I used 3.41 litres for 80 kilometres on a route including bitumen and dirt. That's a startling 23.4km per litre. From the bike's 12 litre tank you should score 260 to 280 kilometres before bumping the pump again. And getting out your Visa card.