KTM 390 Adventure

This entry is part 5 of 17 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #43

wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Main-series-img-9.png

KTM’s LAMS-approved adventure offering punches way above its slinky weight.

For experienced riders looking for maximum enjoyment and perhaps less hard-core physical commitment, the 390 must be a great option.

There’s a lot to like about small-capacity bikes. They’re light and usually nimble, chains, sprockets and tyres last a long time, and they don’t get scary when the throttle’s cracked open.

On the other side of the coin, small-bores ask more from a rider when the pace goes up, and loading them with luggage to do long trips tends to take the shine off them a little.

KTM’s 390 Adventure gets a lot of interest because while it’s light, nimble and easy on final-drive components, it’s a KTM, so there’s an expectation performance will be a step up from similar bikes in the class.

And that pretty much sums up our experience with the bike.

The 373.2cc, Euro 4-compliant motor punches out 44hp and 37Nm of torque.

Up spec

Our review bike had some nice upgrades from the KTM PowerParts catalogue, including a Titanium Akrapovic slip-on, a seat, quickshifter, soft panniers and knobbies. Things like the TFT screen, two-channel cornering ABS, a lean-angle sensitive traction-control system, LED lighting, and compatibility with the KTM My Ride phone app are all standard.

KTM claims the 373.2cc, Euro 4-compliant motor is the most powerful in its class at 44hp, a 14.5-litre tank should give a range of a touch over 400km,and ride-by-wire ‘force feeds optimal linear power delivery’.

That makes for a fairly eyebrow-raising package at a price that’s hard to believe.

Our review bike was all but brand-spanking new. It had something like 500km on the odo when we touched the button, fired up the smooth, chuckling single and started trying to find our way around the menu.

Pedigree

The 390 not only looks like the little brother of the 790, it feels a lot like it as well. As we sat thumbing through the menu options, memories of the glorious and fantastic riding we’d done on the incredible 790 Adventure R came flooding back. The TFT screen looks the same and the seat and body position felt familiar.

Naturally, the colours and shapes combined with the orange trellis frame are KTM through-and-through. Even allowing for those things, the first impression of the bike was strong: it felt kind of slim and smallish,but a really capable, beautifully finished bit of gear.

“ The 390 not only looks like the little brother of the 790, it feels a lot like it as well.”

While all that was running through our minds we were stepping through the menu options, switching off the traction control and selecting Offroad ABS before rolling the bike on to the trailer. That turned out to be another good experience.

Rolling 170-odd kilos of bike on to a trailer is a piece of cake compared to the heavier outfits we’re used to.

The 390 Adventure will pretty much answer the call no matter what’s asked of it.

Truth

We might as well ’fess up early: riding the 390 Adventure was seriously good fun.

We’ll try and be all pro and give sensible opinions, but it’s not easy when every time we think of the 390 we crack a huge smile and start remembering some of the crazy stuff we did. A lot of the fun we had on the bike wasn’t too sensible at all.

We kept telling ourselves this was a LAMS-approved bike, and a small-bore, and we needed to keep in mind the bike’s intended purpose. But no sooner had we thought that than a greasy-rocked creek bed would beckon, or someone on a bigger bike would challenge around a corner, or there looked to be a sneaky line through some lantana that would give us the lead. Such is the nature of the 390 that every time something like that hap-pened we didn’t hesitate to have a crack at it. Other bikes may well have caused us to pause due to their weight or insane power output, but with the 390 we put our brains in our bumbags and didn’t hesitate about anything. Not once.

And the result was sensational, awesome-fun riding every time.

“Reckon it’ll handle deep sand?” “Dunno. Let’s give a try!”

Intended purpose

KTM’s adventure models, like the 790, are renowned for being strong in performance areas like power output, handling and especially suspension. The 390 has those characteristics to a degree that should satisfy even the most critical KTM fans, allowing, of course, for its engine capacity.

The motor is very smooth right through the rev range.

It’s not a stump-puller at low revs, but it’s no weakling dawdling through the city either. A light, smooth, slipper clutch makes it easy to let a rider deal with stop-start traffic, and the quickshifter on our test bike worked really well in that situation. As long as the bike was moving we hardly needed to think about the clutch at all.

Braking was strong and the ABS was excellent. We tried the standard ABS setting on a bitumen run on a rainy afternoon and it worked well, but the Offroad setting suited us better, and once we’d tried it we pretty much left it selected for our whole time with the bike. It meant no ABS on the rear.

Say no more.

The forks have easy-to-use adjusters on the top for compression on the left and rebound on the right, and we found the factory settings of 15 clicks out on both worked well for us. The shock was the same. It has rebound and preload adjustment only, but the standard rebound setting of nine clicks out suited us fine – which was good, because we don’t like messing around with rebound too much – and the static sag as delivered was near enough to cover the variety of riders who tried the bike. We did manage to crunch the shock once during a poorly executed manoeuvre that didn’t go to plan, but in general it coped with everything well.

We reckon a bike like this one is probably going to spend most of its time with young riders going to and from uni or work, with maybe some lightweight trail riding on weekends and perhaps that one big adventure ride in a year. For that kind of rider in that kind of setting the 390 Adventure is superb. It’s a great pleasure to ride, the electronics will help look after an inexperienced rider in the best possible way, and both on and off road it’ll hold its own, even in among much bigger capacity, higher-specced bikes.

KTM has done an excellent job with the 390 Adventure.

A TFT screen on a LAMS bike! It’s so easy to read and nice to use.

Toughen up, Princess

What about some rougher going with more experienced riders?

This is where the bike became interesting for us.

The first reaction of probably 90 per cent of people we crossed paths with was, “Can you get spoked wheels?”

There are no spoked wheels for this bike in the KTM PowerParts catalogue – KTM advises spoked wheels for the 390 are ‘in the works’ – but having ridden the bike for a while we’re not totally convinced we’d make the change if there were. The cast aluminum rims copped some reasonable abuse and didn’t show any damage we could see, and we’re comfortable enough with tubeless tyres these days. A 21-inch front wheel would definitely suit our regular riding better, but we didn’t feel limited by the 19-inch rim, and the thing handled really well on the road.

The comparatively low power output will put off some potential owners for sure, but in a strange anomaly, good riders will get all they need from this motor, while inexperienced riders will find it so easy to use they’re likely to perform above their expectation on it too. It’ll only be those carrying around a big self-image not supported by riding competence who’ll blame a lack “ The cast aluminum rims copped some reasonable abuse and didn’t show any damage. ”

A PowerParts seat was comfortable and looked horn. The seat-to-’pegs distance will favour riders less than about 175cm tall.

of horsepower for any shortcomings.

Compared to the current crop of grunt-monsters the 390 is a horsepower lightweight, but geez, it’s a sensationally good-fun motor to use, and when it’s used, and used hard, the race heritage shows. It’ll spin up quick and run at highway speeds or gobble up fast, off-road tracks without any complaint.

Another way of looking at it is the 390 Adventure offers a rider a chance to show how good he or she is. Whatever level the rider sets, the motor on the 390 Adventure will match.

As a stray thought, when we pushed the bike the quickshifter didn’t cope as well as at it did in city riding. It tended to hang up on upshifts when the bike was being fanged. Fortunately the clutch is light and smooth and made things easy.

The 390 Adventure is a little smaller than its KTM stablemates, but it still looks the goods.

D’oh

As is often the case, some of the bike’s strengths can, in some situations, also be its weaknesses. For the 390,there were a couple of things that really got our goat.

The one that really porked our chop was the traction control resetting itself to the ‘on’ position.

We realise this is a good thing for our LAMS chums and it’s a Euro-spec requirement. Really, a big part of our frustration with the feature came from the steps needed to switch off the traction control. If it was as simple as pushing a button it probably wouldn’t have bothered us, but it takes a few steps through the menu, and one step needs holding the button pressed for a few seconds. That’s every time the ignition is turned off. Or even when the ignition is left on, but the rider hits the kill switch. We even had one occasion where the motor coughed as though it was going to stall, but kept running. That was enough to reset the traction control to ‘on’. By the time we’d done the reset 10 or 12 times in a day we found our patience tested. It needs to be switched off for pretty much any kind of off-road riding because it’s very intrusive.

When it’s used, and used hard, the race heritage shows.

We’re being careful there because the traction control is an excellent safety feature and plenty of bikes these days are offering different levels of control.

The 390 has only on and off. It works well for its intended purpose – keeping riders safe – but makes no allowance for mud, sand, clay or corrugations, and the bike’s almost unrideable in those situations if the traction control is on. The bike was so much fun we wanted to do a lot of that type of terrain. Again, the motor having less punch than the bigger bikes made traction control less critical in off-road situations, so an interesting balance presented itself.

Another thing that gave us cause for thought was KTM’s claim of a fuel range of around 400km from a tank. We couldn’t get that range in our time with the bike.

Navigating the menu is all done from the left-hand switchblock and is fairly straightforward.

We averaged around 23km per litre, and that meant about 340km from a tank.

The warning light came on at around 230km and the readout insisted we had around 160km left, but the fuel gauge dropped so fast we panicked and filled it each time it happened. We felt like even 340km from the tank was possibly optimistic, but we admit we did push the bike a little at times. For its intended purpose the fuel range is good.
Anyone wanting to head to the wide-open spaces might want to consider carrying a little extra.

A family affair. The similarity between photographer Wilko’s 790 and the 390 are obvious and welcome.

Happy, happy, joy, joy

As we said at the start, the 390 Adventure is an insanely good-fun bike to ride.

It’s smooth but still has enough snap in the motor to offer good performance from those who know how to ask for it, it’s light and easy to move around, the stock suspension and brakes are really good, and it’s loaded with features we don’t expect to find on a LAMS bike.

For its intended purpose – LAMS riders and perhaps those just beginning their adventure-riding journey – it’s superb. For experienced riders looking for maximum enjoyment and perhaps less hard-core physical commitment, it must be a great option. The seat height is comparatively low too, and there’s a lot of riders who’ll consider that a major bonus.

We’d rate the bike’s adventure capability and versatility as ‘high’ and would be happy to point the 390 Adventure at a ride of just about any kind.

In fact, we wish someone, anyone, would challenge us to do some more crazy shit on the 390.

Now we’re grinning again.

: KTM’s OEM soft luggage was brilliant. The panniers aren’t huge, but they’re awesome for an overnighter or carrying bits and pieces. They stayed dry inside after a couple of fair soakings, too.

KTM 390 Adventure

Recommended ride-away price: $8,995.
Web: www.ktm.com/en-au.html

Engine type: Single-cylinder, four-valve, liquid-cooled, DOHC four-stroke
Displacement: 373.2cc Bore x stroke: 89mm x 60mm
Power: 44hp (32kW) @ 9000rpm
Torque: 37Nm @ 7000rpm
Compression ratio: 12.6:1
Starter/battery: Electric starter/12V, 8AH
Fuel system: Bosch EFI (46mm throttle body)
Lubrication: Wet sump
Primary drive: 30:80
Final drive: 15:45
Ignition/engine management: Bosch EMS with RBW
Traction control: MTC
Exhaust: Stainless-steel primary and secondary silencer
Clutch: PASC slipper clutch, mechanically operated
Transmission: Six-speed
Frame: Steel trellis, powder coated
Subframe: Steel trellis, powder coated
Handlebar: Aluminium, tapered Ø 26mm/22mm
Wheels front/rear: Cast aluminium 2.50 x 19”/3.50 x 17”
Tyres front/rear: 100/90c x 19/130/80 x 17
Front suspension: WP APEX, Ø43mm, adjustable compression and rebound
Rear suspension: WP APEX shock absorber, adjustable rebound and spring preload
Suspension travel front/rear: 170mm/177mm
Front brake: Four-piston, radially mounted caliper with Ø320mm disc
Rear brake: Single-piston, floating caliper with Ø230mm disc
ABS: Bosch 9.1MP, two-channel (including cornering ABS and Offroad mode)
Chain: X-ring 250
Seat height: 855mm
Wheelbase: 1430mm +/- 15.5mm
Ground clearance: 200mm
Dry weight: 158kg
Fuel capacity: Approximately 14.5 litres/3.5-litre reserve
Service intervals: First service 1000km, then every 7500km