KTM 690 SMCR Long Term Test | Power Parts Fitted!

Welcome along guys and welcome to a very overdue update on the 690 SMCR. She's all fully serviced, it's had its first service, it's fully running, just gone over a thousand miles now, so the fun really has started on this bike. So it's a beautiful day, ish, well it's not raining anyway, so we're going to take this bike out, I'm going to talk you through what's happened, I've got some new blingy parts as you can see, so I'll talk you through all the updates and how I'm getting on with this machine and what I think to it. It's been an interesting few months in the world, but something like this can really cheer you up. Let's hit the road and roll that intro chopsy. Oh look at her, we'll do a little walk around in a bit and I'll show you some of the the bits in detail, but basically I've now got the comfort seat, the KTM comfort seat just improves the overall comfort of the bike basically, it's much more comfortable than the standard one. I've also now got the official Akrapovic, now this is the official street line system, so it's got all baffled, it's all baffled up, so she's not particularly noisy because it's got all the baffles in. I've got some bling, blingy ding ding, more blingy bling ding ding down here and some blingy ding ding ding on the rear reservoir, so she's got some bling on, she's got the mirrors off, got rid of those terrible mirrors, sort of a tail tidy, I'll talk you through that a bit later on, but she's an absolute beauty. I love this bike, absolutely love this bike. Thank goodness the hope of Otage taking so long, I'll come on to why we've got delays on that in another video, but we've got delays, so thank god I've had this to thrash around on, have a bit of fun on. Yeah, the standard Akrapovic, the street line ones, not particularly noisy, but anyway let's go. 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, bang, traction off. I've read a few things, I had a bit of trouble, so let's start off with some of the little troubles I've had. The traction control, you know, this is a, this is an SMCR, this is a supermoto, you're gonna want to do some wheelies on this bike, you know, if you bought a supermoto, really you want to do some wheelies, that's what it boils down to. This bike has got the electronic suite, so it's got traction control, quick shifter, blipper, you know, anti-wheelie, rider mode, so you've got a mode one, mode two, mode two is the more aggressive mode, so I'll leave it in mode two, but the traction control will stop you. Well, you could still do with, what I do like about this bike, is with the traction control on, you could still do some very reasonable wheelies, and it gives you a good safety net for learning how to do wheelies. Like I say, this is a supermoto, you're going to want to experiment with some wheelies at some point, and that traction control, that wheelie control, does give you a little bit of a safety net, shall we call it. But, hoonage! If you want to do some proper wheelies, you're going to want to turn that off. That wasn't a proper wheelie, by the way, I'm not on the wheelie criticism on this video, no, the wheelie police said, we don't want the wheelie police commenting on wheelies, wheelies are highly illegal, you should not be doing wheelies on the public highway, let me just get that out there. But if you do want to do some wheelies, I recommend you turn off the traction control. It took me a while to work out how to actually turn off the traction control. You don't just hold that button down and it won't do anything, you have to really hold it down for five seconds, and five seconds only, and then let go. So it can be a bit intermittent with actually turning off the traction and turning off the anti-wheelie. It's almost like KTM don't really want you to be messing with that. Before all the Covid situation hit, I was talking about getting the suspension done, going to KTM, having new spring weights fitted on the bike, doing an interview with the head of WP, setting all the sag up for me. Well because of Covid, you're not allowed into KTM HQ. When I pick bikes up, you have to wait, they wheel it out, all of the documentation you have to sign is done online, so you can't go in. I can't do that, that video with the suspension upgrades, but that hasn't stopped the suspension being done. When the bike went in for its first service, the lovely bods at KTM actually fitted that spring kit, so I've got a slightly more robust rear shock, shall we say, for the larger gentleman. So I've got a slight increase... What is going on here? I'm 18, or 18 and a half stone now after lockdown. You know, this bike is set up, it's actually set quite nice and firm, but me being 18 and a half stone, I'm certainly heavier than the average rider. So they asked me what the weight was, I told them 16 stone obviously. They ordered the springs in for the forks and for the shock. WP do uprated springs for this bike, so that's fantastic. So they ordered all that in, and when they went in for the first service, they put on the bling and they also fitted the fork springs and new shock spring. So it's basically shock out, obviously, the whole of the tail of the bike is raised in the air to get the rear shock out. The forks, they managed to just lower them under the caps and then just lower the bike down, so the forks push up through the yokes, and then they just extracted the standard springs and then reversed the process and fitted my new springs, uprated springs, back into the bike again and then buttoned everything up. When you're a larger guy like me, if you're non-standard, if you're larger than standard or if you're smaller than standard, actually changing the springs to match your weight actually does make a massive difference to how a bike rides. As I want to take this on track, I want to book this on a brand track day, I wanted the spring rates uprated, so when I'm on track I'm going to really notice it. On the road, it definitely feels more planted, it felt a little bit harsh to start with, the front seemed to bounce quite a lot, but I've had a little play around with the compression and rebound dampening and now I've got it really sweet, so now this thing absolutely handles. It was a little bit soft before, now it's just... Nationals! This is the sort of road this bike's made for, little B-roads, tight twisty B-roads, it's got the braking power of... there's no bike which brakes faster than this, the brakes are unbelievable on this, it's just a single 320mm disc, but it's so so much feel, so much power, which gives you amazing confidence. Some bikes can be just too serious, my H2s are a very prime example of that. 250 horsepower now, I go out on that, it's not fun, it's fast, it's not fun. This isn't... it's moderately fast, it's not the fastest thing in the world, it's as fast as a road bike needs to be, in all honesty, but it's not about going fast, it's about the fun factor. Right up here, oh, more twisties! Absolutely love it. You've got to be a bit careful down these sorts of roads, you can't just go absolutely banzai, you know, you do get tractors, horses, cyclists, you get, you know, there's other road users here to think of. There we go, into the 30, slow it down, keep everyone happy. Yeah, I can't go up here, I thought I was going the wrong way then. Yes, this road, Dippenhall, sounds like something out of Harry Potter. Great on the road there. This is what they call resurfacing a road in the UK, just chucking a load of chippings, putting a bit of tarmac down and then just chucking a load of chippings on top and hope they stick. If they don't stick, just let them all build up in the road. There's some sort of lethal death trap for motorcyclists like that, right on the corner, look, a load of loose chippings, so you can come flying round, get the front tyre over and go sliding off across the beautifully sharp chippings and spend three days in hospital, another three months recovery, all because they won't spend money and resurface roads properly and I've missed the turning now. I've ranted and I've missed my turning. Just come to do the walk around and my battery's flat on my camera, which is quite annoying, so I thought I charged it this morning, so I'm going to have to do the walk around. He's on the phone. Walk around on the GoPro I'm afraid. It's not good enough, I know, but it's the only option. So, here it is, the SMCR. What I've done to this now is I've taken the mirrors off. I didn't like the mirrors. I'm perfectly used to riding without mirrors. I've done it for years on the old beastie. Just got to do your observations, check behind you all the time and the bike just looks a million times better without any mirrors on it. It sort of finishes the look. Also, the tail, I no longer have the number plate right down here and the beauty of these bikes, you don't really need a tail tidy. All you have to do, all of this section which was here, you just unbolt it all. This thing is six bolts and you can take all that off and then just stick the number plate directly onto what's left and you've got a little mini tail tidy. Okay, it may not be 100% legal but it's good enough. You've got the light illuminated from the tail light. The bike looks a million times better. You can see all the back tyre and you don't have to buy a tail tidy. You can just unscrew it and it comes to MOT time. Six bolts, it's back on again. So, that is a top tip. What is rather tasty is the little guard, the little cover carbon fibre. Again, the Kropovic carbon which ain't cheap but we've got one of those on there as well. The seat though, the seat really is where it's at. That is much more foam in there. It's also a better finish. The other one looks very plasticky. It looks much, much nicer than the standard seat and it's much more importantly, you've got much more padding there. It's much more comfortable. I think the seat is about £170 but it's not just a cover, it's a whole new seat. So, it's a lot of money but I think that is definitely worth getting. You can pay £120 just for a cover and some foam or even just for cover in some circumstances. To get the whole seat with the backing and everything for £170, I don't think that is too bad. Another thing I've noticed with these new bikes, they don't use oil anymore. My old 701 used to be quite thirsty. I used to use about a litre every 1,000 miles. I've not had to put any oil in this yet. That's 400 miles since the service and it actually looks like it's a little over full still. It looks like it could be, you know, it's certainly not in need of any. So, that's 400 miles about any top up. So, I'll keep you posted on oil consumption but it seems these new engines, they've absolutely sorted the oil burning. It didn't, you know, it was acceptable but like I say, at worst, you were putting in like a litre every 1,000 miles. Sorted now. I just chatted some guys on push bikes. They were saying down this road is really good. So, as I've got the bike for it, I'm just going to go and have a look. That's the beauty of these bikes. Just explore. Check out those lanes. You know, it's such a comfortable place to be. It's just, it's no problem just to go out your way and have a little look. Ever wondered what was down a lane by you but never got around to checking it out? Perfect bike for it. Follow the road for 0.9 miles. Nah, I don't think so. This isn't for me. Yeah, thanks for the recommendation guys. I'll pass on that one. So, there we go guys. I think that's about it really. A little update for the SMCR. I'm going to take this on track. I'm going to do a lot of other stuff with this bike so stay tuned for more SMCR action. We're not finished with this bike by any stretch of the imagination. So, take care. Ride safe and I'll see you again on the next video. See you later guys. This is power level one which is full power. What have you done here? I told you I'm scared back there. I've never dropped a bike before in my life. That's it. That's it.