you got the poison?

KTM. No other manufacturer can hold a candle to them in bike design, kiska design is like nothing else out there for me, edgy and a tad dangerous and a bit ‘marmite’ I love them me, the 690 lc4 engine in both the supermoto and the Duke are brilliant, 70+ bhp is ridiculous from a four-valve, single cylinder motor, fast, torquey, light and high end components, brembo radial brakes? check, wp suspension? check, just the perfect motorcycle for brexit britains pock-marked b-roads, so, why aren’t these two bikes still in the loveless shed then? Well, as you know, I’m not averse to fettling old British wankers, [superbike magazine circa 1984] Italian exotica, [step forward aermacchi and ducati] but when you shell out on a new bike should you really expect to have to replace three speedo/tachometer units? [both bikes] or two water pumps and seals [the duke, at the 2017 manx gp/ classic tt, resulting in having to fill up the rad every 30 miles and a special mention to the nightmare journey home from heysham at stupid o clock in the morning, stopping on the hard shoulder of the m6 to refill the poxy rad by torchlight as articulated lorries thunder by is no fucking joke] great bikes, just let down by reliability issues, I suppose you shouldn’t really expect anything else with them being so competition focused and to be fair to ktm everything was sorted under warranty even though in the case of the duke I was three months out. so, these two are gone, moved on to be replaced by err, two more ktm’s and a fucking japper.......