KTM 690 Rally Build

Finally after more than 4 months waiting I get 3 boxes and 41 kilos of kit delivered First part is to see if every things is there. As expected a bunch of stuff is missing. For the tank kit is is only the unit that goes into the fuel pump so not really stopping me. For the fairings kit there is more missing, like head light for instance, and it doesn't come with a graphical inventory making it pretty hard to know what is missing. I emailed Rally-Raid who supplies the parts a list of missing parts for the tank kit and a picture of what I received for the fairings. I called them up and explained the problem but haven't heard anything back yet. Will chase on Monday. All parts are supposed to be added using Loctite so had to find equvivalent of that over here in Hong Kong. Firs part to fit the tanks is to relocate the rectifier, that is what turn AC into DC to charge the battery. The new place for it is on the lower right side of the bike. ...

Ok, so how do we start this project? First I reckon we need a bit of vision of what it will look once it is finished. I've seen a few bikes I like and this is one I found in Kunming, China. Nothing really fancy but reminded me a bit of my 640 Adventure with build up dashboard and large tanks. The current state of the bike is very much vanilla 690 Enduro R. Given I manage to brake a few things like this brake lever I realised I needed som initial upgrades before starting the real project. First things to get sorted were aluminium crash bars, led indicators and a metal license plate. Before receiving any parts I thought I start doing the basic preps. First steps is to remove the fairings and the air box. Once the air box is removed the intake is very exposed for dirt. To avoid any dirt getting in I covered it with a zip lock bag. Some parts are well marked for refitting like this vent box. But the screws I always f...

I've been looking for a new travel bike for my next longer ride for a bit. In the past I've used a few different setups. This was the first Honda 250 XR I did Thailand, Laos and Cambodia with. Great lightweight bike despite quite basic luggage system for the first 7000 km. Not much went wrong on this one except for a flat battery and a broken brake lever after my very first crash. I spent a year on the KTM 640 Adventure all over South and Central America which ended up being about 45000km. Very good bike for a bit longer distance and just about the right size for long distance adventure without being too heavy do do some off-roading with. I spent about 25000km around Europe on this KTM 990 Adventure. Smoother and classier than the 640 but too heavy for me to take off-road and hence I didn't even drop it once during 4 years of usage. This is the new project! It is a 2014 KTM 690 Enduro R. Not much of a travel bike yet and here I just broken t...