Since we’ve gotten back onto the weight issue, I’d really Ike to see Kawi or another manufacturer rethink the ADV bike concept.
Current ADV bikes are based on some kind of dirt or dual purpose bike modified mostly to carry more shit a further distance, with a lot of the appearance driven by marketing departments that want it to look like a Paris-Dakar racer.
Reality check: has anyone here ridden PD? I didn’t see any hands go up. What we end up doing with our bikes is a lot more quotidian. And to deal with the everyday uses, we end up spending hundreds of dollars putting on heavy crash bars and bark busters and other stuff to protect the expensive, fragile, lightweight plastic parts; and then we spend hundreds more dollars to hang panniers and pannier racks and other heavy parts to allow us to carry more shit.
Instead, I’d like to see an ADV bike designed with a perimeter frame, including a skid plate as an integral part, that surrounds the engine in such a way that protects from damage without adding another 20 lbs of crash bars. The gas tank should be made of polypropylene, like the IMS tanks so that they are inherently damage resistant, or should also fit inside the perimeter frame (think Ducati Monster style). And the rear frame should be designed wide enough so that panniers mount directly to it, instead of requiring another 10 lbs of mounting racks. And while we dreaming it, I want a front fairing made of polypropylene or polyurethane that can take a beating and bending and not break, and a polycarbonate windshield for the same reason. Something like the Gen 1 fairing, but significantly bigger to provide more wind and rain protection.
Surely some Moto-designer somewhere has doodled this in his sketch pad. I’d like to see it built.
No, don’t wake me up yet...
