Off-road Test – Husqvarna 701 Enduro

This entry is part 8 of 18 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #18

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Husky has undergone yet another change of ownership, and if you love sharp performance and real off-road cred, you’ll be big fans of the company’s current direction. The 701 Enduro is the new adventure bike, and it’s one grunty whippet of a motorcycle.

Adventure bikes seem to fit into two very broad groups – the big, expensive, glamorous mofos on one side, and the smaller, lighter more agricultural and low-cost singles on the other – so it’s interesting to find a bike like the Husqvarna 701 Enduro. It’s a single, and it’s light, but it’s definitely not agricultural, and whether or not it’s expensive will be in the eye of the purchaser. There’s nothing ‘cheap’ about the build, look or presentation of this bike though, and for eye-opening, near competition-standard performance, this bike will leave a lot of multi-cylinder big bikes panting in its dust.

Crushed nuts

The liquid-cooled, fuel-injected single-cylinder motor asks a few questions of accepted modern-day norms. It’s a single overhead cam for instance, when multiple cams are very common on singles these days. And there’s a type of slipper clutch, which is normally a feature of motards. The Enduro sits right alongside the 701 Motard in the Husky range, so it’s probably not much of a stretch to find them sharing some components and ideas.

Suspension is, unsurprisingly given the KTM relationship, WP, and offers 275mm of travel at each end. A chain drives the rear wheel and a six-speed box does the bizzo between the crank and the front sprocket.

The 13-litre tank is under the seat.

Actually, the tank forms the subframe and the mount for the seat, and Husky has taken advantage of that set up to run the seat itself right up to the steer-ing head. If you have knackers big enough to make use of what this bike has to offer, you might even find you’ll get them squashed by the fork legs in tight turns. That’s how much rider movement the seat allows.

Seat height is 950mm, and overall, the Husqvarna 701 Enduro feels like a true dirt bike. It’s slim, tall, agile and with 67 horse-power available as it rolls off the dealer floor, it begs to be let loose on…well… just about anything really. But challenging off-road conditions are where the bike really shines.

Horn

Climbing on the bike the seat made a very strong first impression.

We’ve already mentioned how the cockpit is so open, but while the bike feels narrow and seamless, the seat is very firm and has a flat top which makes it feel a little wider than we expected. It’s comfortable enough, although that will depend on a rider’s preference, but with the look and feel of the rest of the bike we were expecting a motocross-style seat that would work its way up our bumcracks if we tried to sit down for more than a minute or two.

Not so. The seat offers plenty of support.

Everything else about the Husky does have a distinctly motocross/enduro flavour.

The motor’s very compact and the bike itself has no protruding edges or snags, the instruments are in a very minimalist display that actually offers plenty of information once you start pressing buttons, and our test bike had no luggage frames or rack.

A touch of the button has the motor chuckling into life, and selecting first and easing out the incredibly light hydraulic clutch begins a very, very pleasant, high-performance riding experience.

Hoo-aah!

The Husky has more snort than a rhino with a sinus condition.

High point

We need to be a little careful here. We enjoyed this bike so much we’ll get carried away. Already we can imagine a stampede of riders heading to their computers to make comments on web forums about how their bikes have 100 horsepower or more, and how we don’t know anything.

We may not know much, but we know when we’re being treated to something a bit special in bike performance.

The Husky weighs in at 145kg dry, and the motor and suspension package make the bulk of the horsepower available to riders of even average ability. That translates to a whole heap of fun and a real incentive to improve.

Grabbing the Husky and wringing that motor’s neck to offer all it can will be well beyond most riders, we’d think, but it’s so damn good you just want to try. Drive comes on with a bit of lunge from fairly low in the rev range, so rather than a scary explosion of power it’s a solid drive that goes on for a quite a while. And it’s deceptive. The bike was comfortable at 120kph, but can accelerate away from that pace fairly quickly, to the point where we weren’t keen to take our eyes off where we going to check the speedo. On the road that means freeway speeds put little or no stress on the bike, and not much on the rider.

There’s a light, almost buzzy vibration that makes its way through the ’bars and ’pegs, but it doesn’t cause any discomfort, and of course the wind blast comes into play once the speeds go up.

Find some dirt and start snapping open that ride-by-wire throttle and the Husky really shows its pedigree. Hang the back out in loose snot or carve a tight line through a rutted corner with the throttle open and it’s a delight. Loose sand is a gift!

Dirt riding is where the Husky really shines.

Just too good

Along with a great motor the Husky offers really excellent braking, especially on the rear. The ABS lets the rider be fairly aggressive, and turning ABS off is a snap. In standard trim that’s the ABS choices: on or off. It worked great for us.

There’s no traction control, but if you’re after a bike like this one, we reckon you won’t want traction control. You’ll want to be ripping it up and steering with the rear every chance you get – and you’ll get lots of chances.

The suspension offers heaps of adjustment, but we weren’t confronted with anything the standard settings couldn’t handle. We had the clickers set in the middle of the range and started to fool around with things, but the components worked so well we gave up.

We weren’t finding the limits of either front or rear no matter what we did.

There’s three ignition maps available for those who want to craft the throttle response: Standard, Soft and Advanced, and there’s also a ‘Bad Fuel’ setting. We’re not sure how bad the fuel has to be to use that option, but we bet it’ll be handy for riders heading west of the Great Dividing Range.

Gearing up

The throw between gears is short and makes for hard-charging motocross acceleration for those who can time things right. Shifting was possibly a little notchy, and that probably had a lot to do with the bike only having done around 250km when we took delivery. It’ll probably smooth out as it beds in, and it certainly didn’t slow the bike up any. It was just a noticeable ‘feel’ more than anything.

There was only the one thing that caught us out with the 701: the turning circle isn’t as tight as we expected it to be. It’s pretty good, and it didn’t cause us any problems once we sussed it, but we thought it would be tighter and had a gusset-stretching moment the first time we went to spin it around.

Loved it

The Husky 701 enduro isn’t going to be for everyone, mainly because it has a real dirt-bike feel. It’s slim, light and powerful, and those who’ve spent their time on road bikes might prefer something a little less performance-oriented and little more built for comfort.

But having said that, we did some reasonable road kilometres on the bike and found it very easy to live with. And there’s no problem about loving that motor and the bike’s general performance, on- or off-road. Fitting luggage and a screen would no doubt make the Husky a distance hound, and we’re guessing there’ll be long-distance tanks available very shortly.

With those accessories fitted, this bike will be one scorching hot time waiting to be enjoyed.

Husqvarna 701 Enduro

Web: www.husqvarnamotorcycles.com Rec retail: $15,995 + ORC

Engine: Single-cylinder, liquid-cooled four-stroke
Capacity: 690.0cc
Bore x stroke: 102mm x 84.5mm
Compression Ratio: 12.6:1
Fuel system: Keihin EFI (throttle body 46mm)
Engine management/ignition: Keihin EMS with RBW, double ignition
Control: Four-valve, overhead cam with roller rocker levers
Starter/Battery: Electric starter/12-volt 8.6Ah
Lubrication: Pressure lubrication with two oil pumps
Engine oil: Bel Ray, SAE 10W-60
Transmission: Six-speed
Clutch: APTC slipper clutch, hydraulically operated
Primary drive: 36:79
Final drive: 15:45
Frame: Chromium-molybdenum-steel trellis frame, powder coated
Subframe: Self-supporting plastic tank
Front suspension: WP-USD 4CS Ø 48mm
Rear suspension: WP-monoshock with Pro-Lever linkage
Front brake: Brembo four piston, radially bolted caliper, brake disc Ø 300mm
Rear brake: Brembo single piston, floating caliper, brake disc Ø 240mm
Suspension travel front/rear: 275mm/275mm
Seat height: 950mm
Wheelbase: 1515mm +/- 15mm
Fuel capacity: 13 litres
Dry weight: 145kg