I'd buy plastics like that now for my TE310 if they were available. Red and chrome like my old 250 OR.
aftermarket colours dont make up for lack of riding, who cares about colours its soul that counts, so whats the news on steve then? he botched husaberg an gone husky with double strength caffine?
No reason why you couldn't get some chrome 'wrap' and stick it on the gas tank in the appropriate areas.
Hi Rough Rider - and I thought my XR600 was too heavy! It seems the world is full of bikes that are either 80/20 dirt biassed, or 40/60 road biassed. Where are the modern dirt bikes in the 60/40 -70/30 offroad range? It's 2013 - surely it can't be that hard to take an enduro chassis, lose a little height and an inch or two of suspension travel, conjour up a low maintenance motor that makes an honest 35 or maybe 40 hp at the back wheel (for comparison my tweaked XR made 40, a stock TE 449 makes 45ish) and sling on a headlight that will get you home in winter. TBH 35hp with a wide spread of power and no excess weight would probably be plenty on dirt tyres. It didn't seem to matter back in the 80's, when trail bikes and road bikes were eqully crude and four strokes wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding, but since then Suzuki managed to extract 120bhp/litre from their boringly reliable TL1000 twin fifteen tears ago and even Ducati can make a sport bike with 15,000 mile service intervals. I can't help feeling that compared to their road cousins, dirt bike riders are being short changed (and that goes for competition machinery too). How is it possible in this day and age that it's necessary to build an "offroad" bike so lardy that it needs a 600+cc engine just to pull it's fat backside out of the garage? And why should "trail" (as opposed to competition enduro) bikes be cursed with bad suspension, too much lard / flimsy build quality / poor performance? Why can't we have performance biassed yet practical machines, like that asphalt guys do? I could ride my GSXR750 proddy racer to work back in the day (so long as I remembered to put the licence plate on it...) I think it was economist Paul Krugman who said "A free-market economy can get trapped for an extended period in a bad equilibrium in which good things are not demanded because they are not supplied, and are not supplied because not enough people demand them." *don't get mad at me, I'm just thinking out loud, but as we're in a bit of a fork-in-the-road moment regarding Husky and the shrinking of the whole offroad scene in Europe and the USA perhaps it's time to ask awkward questions of the industry.
And a TE449 could fit that bill, with double the oil and a wide ratio gearbox and that slightly lower suspension plus proper mapping (not necessarily full power, just clean and strong throughout the rev range). Too bad that BMW/Husky didnt see fit to give it to us that way....but some of us our going to finish the job for them.
Wasn't the G450X supposed to be that hi tech dual sport? That was a good looking bike, theoretally awesome bike.
I think the reliable bikes stay heavier because manufacturers feel they need to be either a budget build or a race bike. As for the other statements a 600cc sportbike makes about 110 rear wheel hp while the husky 450 is making 45 rwhp. Which puts is at more hp considering its 3 cyclinders short. I think another consideration is how they lighten internal motor parts in a race bike that may make it less reliable but makes the bike feel quicker and turn better. There is no doubt though that someone should be able to build a 450cc dual sport with 15k valve adjustments that weighs about 260 pounds. I just wonder at what cost. A wr250r yamaha makes about 25 hp, is over 300 pounds and costs about 7k. I'd really hate to see how heavy the big brother would be and the cost.
This is exactly why every rider needs two bikes, one for playing/racing and one to throw down pure mileage . When I'm president, everyone will own 2 bikes, vote for me!
Nevermind, I don't want to be president anymore because no matter what you do someone will complain lol
Yep and right in the middle was a frame without an engine cradle ..Makes you think that with all that brilliance, the designers did not know what they were building this bike for ... Most if not all the new/old ideas of that bike ended on Huskies models with a new frame complete with an engine cradle.
The guy I replied to was speaking of maintenance intervals like a real street bike and the KTM like the Husky is no where close. Designers extracted the power they could out of them and it makes the bikes expensive not just with the initial price but maintenance.
