| | | | Road TEST: KTM 990 Adventure + 990 S Dakar – Adventures on a small island |  Written: 14/02/2006 : 15:57. Read 28844 times (33/day). | | The integrality of this filed article is for Premium Members. | Since 2003 KTM has had a big Adventure Enduro on offer. This year KTM has treated Adventure fans with the latest 999cc engine from 990 Superduke. We attended the world launch at the far away Island of Fuerteventura on the west coast of North Africa. If you look the Canary Islands up on a map you will see that the Islands are parallel with the greatest desert in the world, Sahara. KTM had a great adventure awaiting the lucky journalists that had made the journey from all over the world.
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KTM’s 950 Adventure has not been as big a sales success as BMW’s R1200 GS. KTM has gone from being a small niche producing manufacturer that produced 8.000 units in 1992 to last years 80.000 units. This makes KTM Europe’s second largest manufacturer of big motorcycles after BMW. To try and change the situation KTM launched both 990 Adventure with ABS and 990 Adventure S Dakar on a perfect location both for on and off-road riding. On the programme were twisty mountain passes, motorway, miles of gravelled roads and a beach challenge. Could the new 990 Adventure ABS handle it?
The riding started with some fast and twisty motorway miles. The local police was looking closely so I waited until I was off the main roads before exploring the new engine fully. The new ABS system from Bosch/Brembo can be switched on and off and I choose to start without ABS to be able to compare.
I cruised on the motorway first to get a feel with the new engine. After all, it is the engine and ABS brakes that are the most important news on this model. From standstill the new fuel injected engine accelerates smoothly into the max torque area between 5.000 rpm to 7.000 rpm. Max torque is 95Nm at 6.500 rpm. The midrange is beefy, as a matter of fact beefier than 990 Superduke up to 7.000 rpm. The max power figure remains the same as the old 950, but the torque is increased over the whole range for more usable power. This is exactly what you need on a model like the 990 Adventure. In the mountain passes I put the engine through its paces and the fuel injected engine responds beautifully from 4.000 rpm followed by the flexible midrange that allows you to float on and off the throttle in a higher gear rather than shifting down and braking hard before each bend. When slow speed control is necessary I found the throttle to be too light. Small bumps in the road upset the right hand enough to slide off and on the throttle with a jerky injection response as the result.
When really going for it I started exploring the double 300mm front discs with 2-pot Brembo’s. For full effect they need to be applied with some force. Turn on the ABS and there is on ...
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