KTM 690 Rally Replica
- Video: Replica KTM 690 Rally
Strongly powerful and dangerous beast. And they race with her through the desert? Fools!
The thrill that caused my sweaty palms and a lump in my throat before I sat down in the nearly one-meter-high glowing blue KTM Stan's seat was not unfounded.
Besides Miran, I was the only one who had a chance to sit in this car up to this point. “It's not fully used yet, so we have to warm it up first,” Miran tells me in no uncertain terms, so as not to miss out on a near-clean engine.
Of course, driving is not at all relaxed if you know you cannot crash on the ground, and especially if you are driving off-road, for example, at a tank distance, where conditions are even more similar to those in Dakar due to the hilly, uneven and, above all, unpredictable soil. !!
But let's start from the very beginning. For the 30th Dakar rally, our company desert fox presented the best car you can buy at the moment. Price? Ah, only 30 thousand euros per base, but it all depends on which assistance package you choose!
KTM has released a limited edition, so getting a new Rally Replica is not easy and above all, not everyone can buy it. To be able to queue at all, you must have an application for Dakar on hand, but if you have already successfully accepted it, like our Miran, you will get quite a few places in the queue. And considering that Miran, as one of the three main test drivers of this particular race car specification in Tunisia in the spring, performed very well, he was one of the first to drive into the garage the worst and most modern weapon for fighting the desert.
The condition that Miran gave me before the test was only: “Don't break it, otherwise I don't know exactly how I will race in January! " Definitely! I'll be careful, I replied. Well, it feels like something is squeezing in your stomach, although I was sitting on a dream motorcycle.
Unlike conventional enduro bikes, is this bundle of switches, lights and gauges and of course a "road book"? box in which the travel book is folded. If you are not there (and we did not have it on the test), it is difficult to get used to the environment with drivers. In general, it most closely resembles a racing rally car. “First a button touch, then a start, then a light… And be careful, if that red light comes on, it’s for oil, it lights up if the engine is too hot, you have an electronic compass here, there are two on-board computers upstairs…”, – he explained to me. I confess, I almost didn’t remember, and I didn’t even install the GPS!
It was already a little easier in action. The 654cc single-cylinder engine rumbles beneath me in stereo melody, and even in the sound you can feel it pulling it away from power and torque. The barrel-to-stroke ratio is different from motocross. Here the piston stroke is 102 mm and the bore is 80 mm. In simple language? when the engine is quietly idling, you can actually feel and hear the movement of the piston through the cylinder.
In my entire history, it is also the largest single-cylinder engine ever to power an enduro motorcycle. Only Suzuki in the early 800s relied on a single-cylinder engine, which was expanded to XNUMX cubic centimeters in the DR-Big.
There is only one simple reason for such a single-cylinder design - durability! Persistence, invincibility. In Africa, everything must be subject to the fact that the engine does not fail, even if the driver tortures him for ten hours on the dunes and sands. It goes without saying that therefore the most stressed parts are forged and machined with the utmost care.
When you're sitting on such a big and really bulky off-road bike, you can't afford the recklessness and surprises, so I started slowly and first on fast rubble.
The device pulls incredibly smoothly, and as the pace increased, I just wondered when does it stop pulling? Going through the six-speed gearbox is tricky, but definitely full of racing. The only annoying thing is that due to the additional protection of the engine and fuel tanks, there is not much room for boots. Is each inch dosed for a specific purpose, is each ingredient in its place? because it should be there.
The speed it reaches when you open the throttle is a whole new dimension for off-road bikes. You're cruising at 140 km/h with the rear end spinning, and when you add gas it still pulls with the same linearly increasing power curve. Congratulations to KTM on this. A 70 horse single cylinder pulls like a 100 horse two cylinder and anyone who says they will have more ponies is crazy!
At these high speeds, any pit or hump can be fatal if you don't notice. And it happens easily.
Then the WP suspension has to show everything it can to keep the KTM stable. As long as you ride on the track of a cart with rolling wheels, there is no problem, but when jumps and bumps come, things get more complicated.
A 52mm front fork and a single shock tucked between the two rear fuel tanks respond surprisingly well to surprises despite the bike’s dry weight of 162kg. The only thing that freezes the blood in your veins is the sight of humps following each other. Here then only feeling, knowledge and happiness count. Apart from a little feeling and knowledge, I needed a lot of luck to get out of this most annoying situation.
The first hump still goes, but since the bike's mass is set high due to the four split fuel tanks, the rear is hard to deal with when it goes by itself. At that moment, I was glad that Miran did not fill up all 36 gallons of gasoline and was driving only with half-filled tanks. I can’t imagine how I would otherwise have driven through a series of irregularities. On the ground, this can only be solved by opening the throttle and turning on the rear wheel. Fortunately, KTM never runs out of them.
It is also encouraging that the brakes grip well. At the front is a 300mm Brembo disc held by racing brake pads with exceptional stopping power. I don’t know what they’ve got on the stock bikes, but the braking power overwhelmed me. On gravel, it slows down better than, say, the KTM 990 Adventure travel enduro. Well, this one does not slow down badly!
The feeling of speed that you are not used to and that Rally Replica does not allow is quite ecstatic and adrenaline-filled as it puts you into a kind of trance in which all the senses are focused only on the path you are walking ahead. you, the entourage .. but rushes by more as a premonition, not as a fact. You can probably conclude for yourself that I was not happy to hand the KTM back to Miran. But since he went with him to Primorsk and covered about 300 kilometers in a day, I did not dare to ask him for another lap. Maybe after he comes from Dakar? !!
Face to face. ...
Matevj Hribar: It's hard to imagine how I laughed after I saddled Stanovnik's new cavalry. I owned a KTM LC4 for three years that served as the basis for the Rally 660 and I can only tell you this - its successor is phenomenal! Although he sat very high and looked at all those meters and a large fuel tank in front of me, raised some doubts that I was even capable of taming the beast, the fear dissipated after a few 100 meters. The unit sends power wildly to the rear wheel, and the suspension swallows bumps like they weren't even there. Noro! Calm down, if you do not have time to run, say, for the general, do not hesitate to ask for help ...
Price of an equipped motorcycle for a race: 30.000 EUR
engine: single-cylinder, 4-stroke, 654 cm? , 70 h.p. at 7.500 rpm, carburetor, 6-speed gearbox, chain drive.
Frame, suspension: chrome molybdenum rod frame, front USD adjustable fork, 300mm travel (WP), rear single adjustable shock, 310mm travel (WP).
brakes: front reel 300 mm, rear reel 220 mm.
Tires: front 90 / 90-21, rear 140 / 90-18, Michelin Desert.
Wheelbase: 1.510 mm.?
Seat height from ground: 980 mm.
Engine height from ground: 320mm.
Fuel tank: 36 l.
Weight: 162 kg.
Petr Kavčič, photo :? Aleš Pavletič
Basic data
Base model price: € 30.000 XNUMX €
Technical information
engine: single-cylinder, 4-stroke, 654 cm³, 70 hp at 7.500 rpm, carburetor, 6-speed gearbox, chain drive.
Frame: chrome molybdenum rod frame, front USD adjustable fork, 300mm travel (WP), rear single adjustable shock, 310mm travel (WP).
brakes: front reel 300 mm, rear reel 220 mm.
Fuel tank: 36 l.
Wheelbase: 1.510 mm.
Weight: 162 kg.
