Dual Sport vs Adventure Bike: What's the Difference Between Dual Sport and Adventure Motorcycles?

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Dorkside. I am the Dork in my Garage, and today we're going to talk about the difference between an adventure bike, like the Africa Twin here, and a dual sport, like my trusty old CRF250L. That's right, everyone. I am the Dork in the Road, and I want to be your internet riding buddy, and I'm better than your regular riding buddies because I'm available whenever you want and I come with the mute button. So, please, consider subscribing and don't forget to hit those notifications so that you know when I post awesome new dual sport and adventure motorcycling content just like this. So, as many of you know, I recently added this beautiful 2016 Honda Africa Twin to my garage, and along the way there were a lot of conversations with my wife about why I needed an adventure bike when I already had a dual sport bike and what the difference between the two of them was. It occurred to me that she may not be the only person in the world who is confused about the distinction or wants more information, and so that really led me to put together this video. Both types of motorcycle are off-road motorcycles. Both are off-road capable. Both can be ridden on and off the road, but there are some key distinctions to be aware of. Also, one more caveat. It's a sliding scale, and there are exceptions to every rule, and there are a lot of bikes that skirt the line between the two very, very well, so my plan is to speak in general terms, but obviously there will be bikes that are exceptions to the rule. Let me try to explain the difference between these two types of motorcycle in 10th grade biology terms. Sometimes in the world, a street bike and a dirt bike meet and fall in love. One thing leads to another, and those two bikes produce offspring. In the Punnett Square, there's your biology reference. Of the offspring created by the union of these two types of bike, your street bike and your dirt bike, you're going to find dominant traits and recessive traits of each type of bike. Short version is the offspring of a street bike and a dirt bike. The kid that gets the most street bike traits but still has some dirt bike traits, that's your adventure bike. The child that gets the dominant dirt bike traits but has a few street bike traits, that's your dual sport. If you think about it that way, a dual sport is generally an off-road motorcycle with some concessions made to make it easier to ride on the road. An adventure bike is generally a street bike that can handle some off-road but carries a lot of the same traits as a street bike. You with me so far? Did I lose you with the 10th grade biology analogy? Just remember dominant traits, recessive traits, all that. Super fun. Thanks, Mr. Snow. 10th grade biology. In what? 19... I don't want to talk about it. A while ago. Now that you have a rough overview, just an overarching idea of what the two types of bikes are like, let me give you some more specifics. Let's start with the dual sport. This is a dual sport motorcycle. It's my Honda CRF250L, it's a 2016. Here are the major dominant traits of a dual sport motorcycle in general. Their base platform, the ergonomics, and the look are dirt bike-esque. Generally more off-road capable, they're lighter, they have more ground clearance, and are generally considered the bike that you want to have in rougher terrain of the two. It's not to say that an experienced rider couldn't out-ride me on this thing when I was on that thing, but in general, they're considered to be more off-road capable. Dual sports are often single cylinders or thumpers. They tend to have smaller gas tanks. This has a two-gallon tank. My bras behind me has a three-and-a-half-gallon tank, so that's pretty big for a dual sport. The seat tends to be a little less comfortable, more dirt bike style, more flat. Some people compare it to a two-by-four or a piece of wood. And the wheels, in general, tend to be spoked. It's not a solid piece of cast aluminum like a lot of street bike wheels. It has the spokes, which are generally considered more flexible and more durable, better for rough off-road technical terrain. So some examples of dual sports that you might have seen, the CRF250L is an obvious one, the Yamaha WR250R, the Suzuki DRZ400, KTM EXC series, the KLR650 is considered by many to be a large dual sport and not an adventure bike. I would put it in that category. They vary in size, but generally, if it's a thumper, looks like a dirt bike, and has spoked wheels, it's almost always a dual sport. Advantages or pros of a dual sport over an adventure bike. They're lighter, easier to pick up. These adventure bikes can weigh almost twice as much, which makes it pretty hard to pick up if you have an unscheduled separation from the motorcycle. Dual sports have fewer body parts to break, and they're generally cheaper to replace, so a set of plastics for this bike is somewhere in the neighborhood of $100, where you might pay $100 for a single piece of the plastics on the adventure bike. They have small, reliable engines, proven often unchanged in the last two decades, depending on the bike. In general. There are exceptions, obviously. KTM. They're narrower, easier to maneuver in tight spaces, better on tight technical single track stuff like that, and they're a lot less expensive than an adventure bike, in general, to buy and maintain. Some cons to a dual sport. They tend to have very small gas tanks, as I mentioned, only two gallons on this bad boy. The seats are uncomfortable, they're not great for eating up long miles without modifications, or just having an iron butt, which many dual sport riders develop. Very few creature comforts, so you don't have a windscreen, you don't have cruise control, heated grips. They're pure utility for the most part. They can be buzzy at high speeds because of the single cylinder, and because of that, they're not great for long rides, not great for touring. People do it, but it's less comfortable. They aren't great for the freeway, because you don't have a lot of wind protection, so you definitely take a beating when you ride it on the street. They tend to have knobby tires, give you less traction, and feel a little squirrely, a little unstable on the road. So dual sports are best suited for technical forest roads, trail riding, mostly off-road riding with some short on-road connections. You can ride them on the highway, but that's not what they're designed for. They're really designed for the off-road, and that's where they shine. So that's the dual sport. Let's talk about the adventure bike. So this is an Africa Twin. It's one example of an adventure bike. So adventure bikes, in general, similar ergonomics to a street bike, but more upright. So you're definitely sitting up higher. They look and feel more like a road bike than they do a dual sport or a dirt bike in general. In general, adventure bikes do really well on the road. They're comfortable and are designed to be. There are some very capable adventure bikes out there, but they're still heavier, harder to pick up. They're wider. They're less easy to ride off-road. They're way more top-heavy, especially with the big gas tank. They tend to have more creature comforts like windscreens, a much more comfortable seat. You can get cruise control, heated grips, things like that, standard. Because of all that, they're more expensive. So some examples of adventure bikes you might have heard of. Here's the Honda Africa Twin. The BMW GS1200 is a very popular one. The KTM 1190 and 790R. The Suzuki V-Strom. The Yamaha Tenere and Super Tenere are adventure bikes. And a Triumph Tiger is a great British example of an adventure bike. So all bigger, all taller, all heavier motorcycles. So advantages or pros to an adventure bike over a dual-sport bike. Far more comfortable on the road when you're eating up those road miles. A lot better for long tours. Seats are more comfortable. The engines are bigger, which adds to that on-road comfort, gives you more capability, lets you go faster at more comfortable speeds. Engines are better suited to sustained high RPMs. They're way less buzzy, because they tend to have multiple cylinders and not be single cylinders like your dual-sports. And the gas tanks tend to be much larger, so you can go a lot farther on a single fill-up on an adventure bike. Disadvantages to an adventure bike. They're heavier, much heavier. This bike's pushing 500 pounds. This one's right around 300. So they're quite a bit heavier, especially if you're by yourself and you drop it and have to pick it up. It can make them more difficult to maneuver off-road, especially when you haven't gained a lot of confidence, because it's more important than ever to maintain your momentum when you have a bike this heavy. They're more expensive in general to buy and maintain. They're less capable off-road, because they have less ground clearance. They're heavier. They tend to have streetier tires, depending on what you put on them. They don't all come with spoked wheels. You should put protection on both, but adventure bikes, it's even more important to add that protection like these bars, your hand guards, things like that, because the body parts are more expensive, especially if you drop it. It costs more to fix a more expensive bike. It has more bells and whistles, more sensitive electronics, things like that. So it's important to make sure your bike is protected. Also, talking about those bells and whistles. So you've got this bike has traction control, it has ABS, and all of those expensive components. Just more things that potentially cost more to fix versus a very simple machine like this that is lacking a lot of electronics. Adventure bikes are best suited for adventure touring. So if you want to ride, cover a lot of miles, take your camping gear with you, and do some off-road when you get there or on the way there, great bike for that. They'll carry a lot of gear, a lot of capacity. They're also really great for people that spend a lot of time on the road, but also want to be able to get off the road occasionally. They're great for exploring, but you're not going to do the same kind of exploring, tight trail riding, stuff like that, that you would do on a dual sport bike. Okay, so that's kind of an overview of the dual sport versus the adventure bike. So there are exceptions to both sides, like I said before, and it's really a sliding scale between dirt capability and road capability. It's not a hard and fast, black and white kind of thing. It's like, we talk about tires a lot in terms of percentage on-road, percentage off-road, 70-30, 80-20, 90-10, and there's a sliding scale of dual sport and adventure bikes too. But in general, you're more off-road capable, but less road comfortable or over here, and you're more road comfortable, but less off-road capable or over here. There are exceptions to every rule. I'm sure the comments will be full of them, but I'm talking in general, the general concept of dual sport versus adventure, that's it. The question you may be asking yourself is, if you could only have one bike, what type of bike should you get? You know you want to ride off-road, but you're not sure if a dual sport or an adventure bike is right for you. And my advice to you is to think about the type of riding you see yourself doing. If you want to go down the trails, if you want to ride tight, technical terrain, if you want a bike that's cheaper and easier to maintain, you may be thinking about a dual sport bike. But if you see yourself covering a lot of miles, going on extended tours, long moto camping trips to faraway destinations with some light riding when you get there, then you're talking about an adventure bike. The best way to decide is to think about the kind of trips you want to take and envision which bike you could see yourself riding, accomplishing those things most comfortably or most easily for you. Ultimately, both types of bikes have their advantages, and I don't think you can go wrong with either one. And if you do, if you do end up getting one or the other and really decide, man, you could use more of the other type of bike, so you get yourself an adventure bike and you find yourself wanting to ride trails and more technical stuff and do less long road tours, well, you can always trade it in and get yourself a different bike or do what I've done and get both. Because as I explained to my wife, there are very distinct uses for each one. They overlap some, but not so much as you would think. And I think there's room in your garage if you can afford it and if it wouldn't put an undue financial burden on your family to have both types. So my advice to you is if you can make it happen, get both. But if not, go with the one that you think you'll get the most use out of. So that's kind of a general overview of the difference between adventure bikes and dual sport bikes. Like I said, I'm not an expert. I don't claim to be a doctor of motorcycling. I'm sure there are nuances and pieces to this that I've missed. In general, let me sum it up for you. More dirty, more streety. That's kind of it. But both, they meet in the middle. So if you have questions, comments, thoughts, concerns, please feel free to leave them in the comments. If you got some useful information out of this video or enjoyed it even for one second, I would really appreciate it if you were to hit the like button. That really makes the videos more visible and really helps the channel out a lot. If you're real crazy, you could even think about supporting me on Patreon like these fine folks. Thanks, patrons. I really appreciate your support. But for now, I just want to say thank you very much. I appreciate you. And as always, please do not forget to be excellent to each other. Thank you. Excellent! Now I gotta move all these bikes back. Welcome to the dark side, where today I will expound upon the mysteries of the universe, starting with the difference between adventure and dual sport. Am I purposely making bloopers right now? Like, is that a thing? People always ask me, if I had to choose between these two bikes, what would I pick? I pick the Honda.