KTM 700RR

This entry is part 35 of 24 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #3

Are you ready for this?

KTM’s 690 is a weapon. Straight off the showroom floor it offers seriously good performance in pretty much every parameter where performance is measured. With a great deal of research and some very precise, high-powered fabrication, an Aussie company has come up with a rally kit that’ll have the 690 ready to lay waste to the type of longdistance, hard-charging that rally racing needs. The best bit is, it’s a smooth, comfortable distance runner for ‘ordinary’ riders as well.

Craig Hartley’s been around a while. He’s done a few Safaris, a jabillion enduros and cross-countries, and ridden across the Wide Brown Land a few times. There aren’t too many people who can handle a seriously heavy, big-horse power off-roader as well as Craig.

Darren Wilson has a few runs on the board as well. He’s ridden a Safari, done a heap of adventure riding and loves trailriding. He’s built some really nice bikes and has a love of beautifully finished manufacture that not too many people would match. He likes building bikes.

So when the two of them team up to design and build a rally kit, there’s a reasonable certainty that on the one hand, it’ll be functional and designed to do the job, not just look the part, and on the other hand it’ll be a seriously undies-stretching, drooling-from-thecorner-of-the-mouth object of lust.

And that’s what we found on a stormy Queensland afternoon, ready to take the Horizons Adventure Rally Designs 700RR – Craig and Darren’s designation for their kitted-690 creation – for a blat.

We’re still drooling, and even now we won’t be able to stand up from behind the desk until the office girls have left the building.

The kit

Before we get into the bike itself, here’s the deal: a customer can buy the HARD 700RR kit you can see here and fit it straight to their 690. Or they can buy the kit, and Dalby Moto will do the fit to the customer’s bike. Or, a customer can write a cheque and pick up a brand-spanking new bike,already fitted with a HARD 700RR kit. The new-bike warranty is still good, and there’s room for personalisation in the choice of pipe, instrumentation, seat, ’bars and just about any other variable a bike can offer. The price will depend on what the customer asks for, but as a general guideline, the kit alone runs at around $6000, the kit fitted to a customer’s bike $6500, and a new, kitted bike, around $21,800 plus on-road costs (which can vary a tad from State to State).

Craig Hartley knows a thing or two about setting up desert racers and rally bikes, especially KTMs, and his input shows on the 700RR.

And what’s in the kit? Here’s the rundown:

• Fibreglass fairing

• Carbon-fibre dashboard

• Carbon-fibre/Kevlar bashplate

• Carbon-fibre tank guards

• Purpose-built Nomad Tanks

• All mounting brackets, electrical components and wiring, and all fuel hoses, taps and joiners

• The downpipe header as far back as the muffler

• Hella rally-style headlights Mechanically the bike is the stock 690. That’s a big platform to start from.

Smoove

We’ve ridden rally bikes before and they can often be front-end heavy motherfudgers. They’re usually loud, difficult to turn and offer all the vision of an NRL strength trainer with a bag of ‘supplements’. So we were pleasantly surprised to find the 700 didn’t have an oversized feel. When we first snuggled in to the seat we were surprised at the narrow and roomy impression of the bike in general. It’s obviously a fair chunk larger than a standard 690 thanks to the front turret alone, and there’s a couple of small bulges between the rider’s knees where the Nomad tanks finish, but the overall impression is that it’s a tidy package. The downpipe is there behind the rider’s left heel, and the bashplate adds some width to around the bottom frame rails, but it all gives the impression of being very nicely integrated and designed as a whole. We were expecting the usual ‘bolt-on’ result where things stick out all over the place and the impression is that it’s a slim bike with heaps of stuff stuck on it. Not this bike. It really does feel as though it was designed to be like this.

Balance and general handling are really excellent. We rode the bike with tanks about half full.

The large turret limits visibility forward, a lot like the old 640 Adventures. It seems strange at first, but after a minute or two it’s forgotten, and once the rider stands up it doesn’t matter a damn.

Our test bike had heavier fork springs to suit Craig’s preference – him believing he’s really fast an’ that – but otherwise bog-stock suspension. This bike also had heated grips, and that meant a couple of extra wires running to each side, and the speedo and switches mounted on the dash let the rider know this was something different. But in a way that’s difficult to explain, it wasn’t a million miles from the stock 690. It’s going to be a very comfortable transition for current owners.

The tower and cockpit layout are excellent. A set of standard KTM gauges fits on, and after that it’s up to the customer. There’s lots of room.

Handle it

Hit the starter, snick the 700RR into gear and hoo-aah! Life is good.

Our test area for the day offered a rocky, rutted, uphill dirt road, and it was ideal for this bike. Any mistakes meant the new 700RR was over the edge or piled into a large gum tree. There were plenty of hard-tosee erosion mounds, a few gates that sprung up unexpectedly, some puddles, and even a few four-wheel drives with scowling drivers who clearly felt this was ‘their’ road.

And the 700RR flayed them. All of them. Every obstacle was a delight, every unseen hazard was dealt with, and slewing around oncoming four-wheel drives was a joy.

A lot of it was due to the 690 suspension being so damn good to start with, but even allowing for that, there was something very stable about the front end that’s not easy to explain.

The front tanks are built by Mick at Nomad Tanks, and they’re superb. Like the rest of the kit, they’re beautiful work. Tough too.

The front wheel was slamming into things and the ’bars were passing the deflections on to the rider, but somehow the whole bike just felt incredibly stable. It wasn’t just a sensibly set steering damper at work. We think it may have had something to do with the way the nav turret itself seemed to stay straight. It didn’t flex or rattle, and the harder we pushed the bike, the more the bike rewarded us with an increased feel of confidence.

The rear was good as well, but it was the front that copped the pounding during our ride, and it was astonishingly good. Perhaps we should be saying the overall balance of the bike was astonishingly good, because there’s no doubt of that.

Full tanks will change things of course, but we’re ready to back this bike’s handling integrity. It’s really bloody nice. It’s not nice like the 690, because there’s a lot more bike here, but it’s beautifully balanced, a pleasure to wind through twisting, tight dirt corners, and it seems to thrive on the hopeless, misguided pounding of flappy, no hoper magazine wobblers with very high opinions of their own ability.

Imagine what it could do in the hands of a genuine competitor.

WYSWYG

Mechanically there’s not really a heap to talk about. The 690 motor is smooth and punchy and the Akro gave it that guarded, throaty growl that only an Akro seems to give. There are no electronic rider aids, and we admit we thoroughly enjoyed trying to keep the motor in check and steering with the rear wheel when circumstances allowed. We didn’t enjoy soiling our tweeds as we locked both wheels and slithered toward an oncoming fourwheel drive, but we were ecstatic at how we could ease off the anchors and drive the bike hard through the full 45cm-gap the drivers begrudgingly left us. The bike made us feel so confident we were back on the throttle before we’d cleared the three layer pearl of his rear quarter panel.

There was a quiet whooshing sound from down the front somewhere, and we thought it may have been the knobby tyre, but on dirt it couldn’t have been. We asked Craig and Darren, but we’re pretty sure now it’s the carbonfibre/Kevlar bash-plate resonating. It’s not loud or unpleasant, but we were curious about it. That’s our best guess.

On appeal

It’s not easy to offer an opinion on a bike like this without hedging a heap of bets.

Heated grips. Mmm…

For competitors who know what they want, and who understand what rally racing is about but have a tight budget, we suspect this bike will be a really excellent platform, but we can’t really say that for sure unless we race it.

For recreational riders it’ll definitely be excellent, as well as being the kind of bike that makes an owner proud. It’s a superb build and riding it is a huge thrill. For the APC entrants, this thing should be mother’s milk. It’ll be brilliant.

This is the kind of attention to detail that gets us really excited. The carbon-fibre fitting below the tank routes a fuel hose in the best possible way. There’s little features like that everywhere on this bike.

For the sightseers and general dualsporters, we still think the pleasure of being able to climb on a bike as exotic as this, and to be able to savour that hint of a genuine, dead-set rally contender, makes the 700RR a good bet. The motor is silky smooth and the handling impeccable. Perhaps the nav turret might be a little intrusive to the sightseers, but they should bear in mind that with the performance the 700RR offers, they’re going to be at the lookouts way before everyone else. They’ll have time to climb off the bike and have a look before anyone else gets there.

Our test bike had an Akro, but the kit is designed so that just about any pipe will fit, including the stocker. Not only does the pipe fit, it stays in close to the bike and keeps everything nice and narrow.