Category Archives: AMH News

The Chinese travel bikes are coming

It is now 2024 and since this page was originally written in 2015, it might be better to say: The Chinese Travel Bikes are Well and Truly Here. And the Indian’s aren’t far behind either.

Each year China pumps out millions of sub-250s and scooters for users who need no-frills runabouts or workhorses. So does India, and it’s an open secret that many long-established and familiar motorcycle marques have been manufacturing in China for years, even if some high-end models may get assembled closer to home. Chinese origin isn’t considered a great selling point, but it’s easy to turn a blind eye as long as you have a familiar European logo on the tank.

Up on the right: this long article condensed into one page for AMH8.

It’s much less easy to persuade western consumers to buy a native Chinese brand, even if that machine may well have been cast in the same foundry as the marques we know and trust. To get around this, some importers invent ‘Anglo’ sounding brands like Mutt, WK, CSC, Sinnis or Mash.
On top of this, Chinese manufacturers have found a good dodge by buying the rights to once defunct or moribund European marques like SWM, Fantic, Benelli, and even Francis Barnett which older bikers will accept more readily, even if it’s all just a badge on a Chinese motor with European design input or, as in Fantic’s case, a motor bought in for their running gear.

Researching this, I’ve come across tales of early adopters getting burned by crumby assembly, irregular running or poor materials. To that you can add getting spares and suspicion when the engine indicates some obscure Chinese marque but the tank shows something else.

I suspect some western consumers are also put off by China’s ruthless manufacturing ethos that doesn’t see merry bands of workers attending communal keep-fit sessions in the company car park each morning, let alone provide the sort of workers’ rights or environmental concerns we take for granted in the West. True or not, this is mainly why established bike marques play down the Chinese connection, even if what holds most of us back from buying all-Chinese is unknown reputation and crippling depreciation, rather than a prickly social conscience.

... Some of the more famous examples [of joining forces with more famous foreign manufacturers incude…] Loncin (BMW), Zongshen (Piaggio and Norton), Qinqi (Suzuki and Peugeot), Jianshe (Yamaha), Lifan (MV Agusta), Qianjiang (owners of Benelli), Jialing (Honda), and CFMoto (KTM).
David McMullan

As far back as the early 1980s Honda established partnerships with the Chinese Jialing factory and within a decade Yamaha and Suzuki made similar arrangements. By 2011 China overtook Japan as the world’s largest bike manufacturer, with many factories based in Chongqing (left).

Around 2006 Chongqing was renowned as the white-hot epicentre of China’s urban industrial gold rush, but according to this article, the gold rush waned. The recession, adverse currency rates and the strength of other markets like India (where English is more commonly spoken) have seen China’s motorcycle production slow or even reverse.

Back in 2006 there [were] over 100 motorcycle companies operating production lines in Chongqing alone, a good proportion of them ‘one line’ export factories that provided super-cheap models for the African and domestic markets. Unlike India in which the Hero Group and Bajaj share a huge proportion of the market the Chinese market was shared by a multitude of smaller companies. The number of Chongqing motorcycle factories still operating is now less than 40 relevant companies and is likely to reduce even further over the coming years.
David McMullan

Take this all back half a century and you can imagine our bike-riding forebears (or younger selves) grappling with the same ‘Made in Hong Kong’ suspicion as Japanese bikes began to make their mark. Even when I started biking in the late 1970s you planted your boots in either the ‘Brit Shit’ or the ‘Jap Crap’ camp.

Broadly speaking, the Chinese have adopted the same strategy as Japan: start by banging out cheap, small-displacement utilitarian machines, then move in on the smaller volume, bigger-engined bikes with a higher markup, while getting into racing to speed up the R&D. Just like the Japanese in the 60s, the Chinese are on the march as they attempt to tune in to what affluent western buyers might consider, now that the load-carrying-runabout markets are saturated.

Established in the late 90s, Shineray (as in ‘Shine-Ray not ‘Shiner-ay’ if the company motto above is any guide) are one of the Chinese marques said to specialise in trail and off-road machines.
In 2014 they bought the Italian SWM name, last heard of in the 1970s. Around the same time Shineray also acquired an old factory off KTM in Italy with a batch of Husky models. That SWM Superdual on the left uses the old 600-cc Husky TE630 engine, but in the flesh was not so inspiring. Shineray/SWM have since diversified into SUVs.

Judging by what I saw at a Classic Bike show, the even older Francis Barnett marque (right) has had a similar makeover. Buy the rights to a heritage brand then design a suitably old-school look around your Chinese- or Indian-made machine. For an anonymous Chinese factory which nevertheless monthly pumps out more bikes than are sold in the UK each year, it’s a quick way of getting wary western consumers to buy your product, whether they know it or not.

In a similar vein established French motorcycle importer SIMA created the Mash Motorcycles brand. They’ve taken a proven Shineray XY400 (above) and refined it. It’s an appealing Brit-based retro look that some twenty years ago became popular in fad-prone Japan, if not in Britain itself. That early 90s GB250TT on the left was one of many similar machines made for the Japanese market and which are now cropping up as pricey and exotic UK imports.

The 250 Retrostar from Sinnis (left) bore a very close resemblance to the Mash 400 retros, but, Sinnis is now using Zongshen (see below), not Shineray.
In 2020 Sinnis announced the Terrain T380 Adventure twin, which is more or less a CSC.
The fact is you can spend a long time trying to untangle these Chinese whispers. But with Chinese bikes origin is important. Is it a Jap clone, licensed or otherwise, a copy, or a cheaply made fake?

At a Classic Bike show I got the chance to see some close-up. Chinese 250s are two a penny, but with a more overlandable capacity of 400cc, could a Mash retro be a contender as a base bike? I’ll admit that part of me is attracted to the idea of regressing towards a retro-styled machine: the appeal – however flawed – of a simple and inexpensive low-key, leg-over overlander that you can adapt to your needs. My 2019 Himalayan fitted that category. A close look before the crowds rolled in revealed a quality of finish that was hard to separate from a similar Japanese bike. A few days later I took a Mash for a test ride.

Many assume the motor is an XR400 clone, but it’s actually derived from the 400cc version of the similar, late-eighties kick-and-electric XBR 500 cafe retro (right), also sold in Japan as the ‘Manxified’ GB500.

I was once deliberating over a back-to-basics 400 overlander when it transpired that manufacturers in China might do the job for me, producing adventure-styled bikes but with full equipment.

One such machine is the Zongshen RX3 Cyclone sold under various badges in the UK, the US (5000-mile report) and Russian-speaking lands, but it’s just another 250. What’s wanted is a 400’s added torque so you don’t have the scream the motor when overtaking a lorry up a hill.

‘WK‘ is the UK brand of the Chinese CFMoto marque – one of the bigger players in the bike game which gets sold as ‘CFMoto’ in other western markets. They were unusual in briefly being one of the few Chinese bike makers to produce a ‘big’ 650 road bike which, bodywork aside, looked based on a Kawasaki ER-6/Versys. But neither that bike, nor anything over 125cc, still features on WK’s website in 2023.

From 2015 there was an initially over-priced WK Trail 400 (above) but within a year it was going for under £3000 and is now no longer listed.
It was the same as the slightly longer selling Moto Mash 400 Adventure (left, quick road test), except the luggage and crash bars were optional. Read how UK WK owners are getting on.
At one point Mash in France (and now in the UK) were selling off their retro-styled 400cc Scramblers and Cafe Racers from as little as 3000 euros. The retro-styled Mash Roadstar (below) has the same 400-cc engine is the same as the Adventure and Trail. I took one out for a day: more here.

At 400cc you’d hope these bikes have potentially plugged the gap between the heavier and pricier twins and an over-extended 250. The conclusion I came to reading short tests of the WK400 in Bike, Overland Magazine and Rust is that they don’t yet plug that gap. The bigger capacity doesn’t add up to any greater performance over a similarly priced Jap 250 trail bike in terms of top speed, acceleration, fuel consumption and price, while brakes and lights are said to be poor. Royal Enfield’s Himalayan (below) actually works much better because despite it also being heavy, the torque is substantially greater. That’s the whole point of a 400 over a 250.

In 2019 Mash also introduced the X-Ride Classic 650 air-cooled single (below), with unmissable cues to the much-loved XT500. With low compression, the injected motor makes a claimed 40hp and 45Nm of torque @ 4500 (the heavier Himalayan is 25hp and 32Nm at the same rpm). Gearbox is 5 speed, the tank holds 12 litres, wet weight is about 187kg and wheels are fat 17s, though it looks like there’s room to lace in a 21″ up front. Since the announcement no one appears to have actually ridden the X-Ride.

SWM 440
Shineray bought former Italian off-road marque SWM in 2014, a way of slipping into the European market which otherwise wouldn’t look twice at a ‘Shineray’ or even a Mash/WK badged machine.

SWM produced the Italian-designed 440cc retros shown above, all based on a different engine to the XY400 used by Mash/WK. It’s described as a 435cc; 6-speed, SOHC air-cooled wet sump with no kick.
These early models were sold off then restyled, and it’s unlikely that SWM will produce an adventure model as that clearly didn’t work for Mash or WK. In this capacity there’s much more demand for retro-styled machines.

Above left, the SWM Silver Vase 440. Conceived at the end of BMWs involvement with Husky, some of its iterations faintly recall the Husky 650-based Baja concept bike (right) that was seen a year or two earlier. But by 2019, when Overland Magazine and MCN tested them, the 440s were being heavily discounted and maybe even discontinued in the UK.

Fantic Motor is another reborn Italian brand whose frantic sports mopeds and cringe-inducing 125cc chopper I recall from the 1970s. Things are looking up: they now have the Caballero range including ‘500s’ in Scrambler (below), Rally and Flat Tracker form (below), plus the latter two as 250s and 125s, and a 700 using a Yamaha CP2 motor.

These Fantics appear much higher spec than the air-cooled SWMs, using Zongshen’s water-cooled NC450 motor (right) claiming around 42hp.
Could this be the first truly modern Chinese motor in this capacity? I tried out a Scrambler and it sure felt like it. Trouble is, from £6400 up to £7000, the Caballero 500s cost more than a new Honda CB500X in the UK. But maybe not in a year or two.

The Zongshen RX4 Cyclone sells in the US under the CSC brand. It uses the same NC450 single, but gets restyled as a chunky travel bike alongside their established RX3 250 Cyclone. The 450cc RX4 weighs well over 200kg, but maybe that depends on the full luggage option.

Tank is 20 litres (5.3 USg), the alternator puts out 300w, seat is a friendly 32 inches (813mm) and all for $5795 delivered.
In France, Cyclone Moto sell the Zongshen RX3S 380-cc twin (below). Power, weight and styling are similar to the 450 single; price is from €5000 and in 2020 Sinnis in the UK introduced the near identical bike as the Terrain 380 Adventure.

Versys 650

I picked up the Versys unseen and rushed back down the A1 to East London to meet the Mrs for a movie. First impressions: clutch and gear change not as light or as slick as the TDM sold the day before. Scorpion pipe a bit on the noisy side but the OE can came with. Steering drop-in almost as intuitive as the TDM but the upright seating position was much more what I’m used to, giving an impression of agility the strung-out Yam couldn’t quite muster no matter how high the bar risers. This alone is what shows potential in the Versys. Brake felt less good than the TDM’s brilliant Blue Spots and suspension was OK, hard to tell on smooth roads. Fuelling is flawless – much better than the glitchy TDM, especially after I fitted some cans on it. I did my bathroom-scale weight test which came in at 199kg with the tank about a quarter full. Call that 212kg wet. Not so light then. Back home I did the sort of close inspection I used to do before buying a bike in the time before internet. Instead, this time I’d trusted in close and repeated scrutiny of the ebay pics and ‘decoded’ the pitch of the seller. All in all the bike looked on the money so I got stuck in.

“Now you’re gonna think that I’m completely nutz, but this thing works! No more monkey butt!” XC Rider

The optional gel seat looked well made, and so it should be, going for well over 300 quid new. But it’s the same stepped shape as the OE unit and once slotted in you’ve no room to move around. There’s talk of the OE seats being terrible but it seems OK to me. Also, I believe that gel may sound cool and techy but has been discredited as a suitable medium for seats. Gel does not compress enough; it merely deforms a little and is too dense to shed heat.

Now on their third bike, my trusty Barkbuster Storms went on without a hitch, the end-bar Barkbolts screwed straight into the bar-weight threads. We’ll see if I miss those bar weights.
I added a couple of RAM mounts under the mirror stalks and raised the screen two inches with a bit of inelegant bodging (right). Chances are it will still be too low and I’ll need to buy something taller. I also wired in a DIN plug to run my Aerostich Kanetsu electric jacket and tyre pump. No toolkit came with the bike but at the very least I needed the C-spanner to back the over-stiff shock off one notch. A near-new one turned up on ebay for £20. Better than a hammer and chisel.

At ~2kg that Scorpion noisepipe may be only a third of the weight of the OE silencer but it makes just a little too much racket. I tried to refit the proper silencer but found the short link tube between the downpipes and the can was rust-welded to the downpipe. I dare say I could have persevered but to save 4 kgs I tried to shut the pipe up a bit.
Talking about after-market pipes, I’d not done this for years but learned while researching a set for the TDM that at the lower end of the price range, a silencer is just a can – one size and shape fits many and it’s just the link pipe between the can and the bike’s downpipe that differs from bike to bike. It makes the prices they ask all the more galling as any impression of tunability for your particular machine is a fantasy. Just choose the look you like: long, short, oval, black, round or square, and hope your bike runs well on it. Though it sounded just right – characterful but without an anti-social din – the TDM’s fuelling was worsened at in-town near-closed throttle speeds. That could easily have been tuned out with a Power Commander (more expense). Meanwhile, the Versys seems to fuel fine as it is.

The Scorpion’s baffle or ‘db killer’ screwed out easily and looking at it, I wondered what I could do to deaden the din. I contacted Scorpion but got no reply so wondered it the ‘slap’ of the exhaust pulses against the flat end of the perforated baffle might be reduced by fitting a flow-diverting cone (left). That may well work but I didn’t have one of those lying around so I settled for riveting a big washer over the end (inset, left) and hoped for the best. I think it may have worked a little but not enough so I may try the cone or a bigger washer before freeing up that seized on link pipe and refitting the OE silencer.

I’m a fan of Tutoro bump ‘n’ pump chain oilers and had one waiting in the wings. This time I knew how to fit the twin-nozzle oil feeder correctly, biting into the rear sprocket (inset, left), and found a tucked in frame rail to mount the reservoir (left). The feed tube routing is not so elegant but it seems to have survived the first tankful. With the adjuster screwed out one turn it’s feeding oil at just the right rate.

Put out a red light
On collecting the bike I noticed a red light on the dash that didn’t go out down the road. I didn’t know what it was but as the bike ran fine I wasn’t worried. At home after a bit of RTFM I realised it was an FI warning light and thought it might be some Lambda/O2 sensor playing up due to the Scorpion pipe. It turned out the Lambda was still there, attached to the downpipe. Exchanges with the seller claimed it had never happened before which seemed a tall story as it lit up on starting the bike in his yard. It’s one of the perils of buying a bike unseen. A bit of internetting on the V forums brought up owners with FI lights on due to burned-out fan motors which wasn’t the end of the world. I tried to book myself into a couple of local Kawa dealers for some diagnostic therapy, but no replies. It seems despite all your fake palms and coffee machines and ‘three-bags-full, sir’, nothing’s changed in DealerWorld. With a few exceptions, to me going to a bike shop will forever remain a last resort.

It took a lot more internetting, including getting bogged down in irrelevant, complex and expensive official, dealer-spec Kawasaki Diagnostic System (KDS) software, before I found out I could run a self-diagnosis with just a bit of wire. No bootleg KDS software, no ODB2 readers (mandatory on bikes from 2016) and no expensive visits to can’t-be-arsed dealers.

The Versys appears to have an astonishingly user-friendly system where you simply plug in a bit of wire into an unmarked female bullet connector under the seat (see above left) and then, with the engine running, ground the wire anywhere on the frame. A workshop manual may be different, but there’s nothing about any of this in the handbook. Once you ground the wire as instructed, instead of the ECU going BANG! followed by a puff of acrid smoke, the FI light on the dash flashes up a sequence: long = #10, short = #1. Translate those flashing codes and work it out from there. The print out pictured left and the pdf version here are based on posts like this buried on various forums.
Must say I’ve never come across this before but am gratified such useful roadside self-diagnosis is even possible in this ‘contact your authorised service provider’ world. I feel quite differently about CPU-reliant machines now, as easily establishing the cause of a red FI light is a long way to fixing a problem.

In my case I got 6+7 which equals 67: ‘Oxygen sensor heater (Europe)’ spoken in an annoying robotic voice. Don’t know what that actually means but I soon tracked it down to a missing fuse. You’d think the previous owner knew it was missing and time will tell if that 10A O2 fuse blows again, but now I know the bike runs fine with that ‘fault’, it matters less.

While the seat was off I took the chance to move some chunky space-wasting connectors and big fuses to make room for a Cycle Pump and tubeless repair kit (above right).

Before I’d fixed the FI light I went for a run down to Bexhill-on-Sea (below left) on the south coast to check out a Ladybird Book exhibition on the seafront. It was of course just an excuse for a ride but once there it was great to recall the images (above) which I’d not seen for some fifty years. What a wonderful 2D world it would be in Ladybird Land.

On the way I popped into another Kawasaki dealer in Heathfield, Sussex on the off-chance of an on-the-spot plug-in diagnosis. They were at least helpful but in the end the brief advent of spring-like weather has the sole mechanic up to his neck. While there I spotted the latest, 3rd generation Versys (above right) which came out this year. Among other things they’ve got rid of the Medusa Eye and added a simple adjustable screen.

I let the sat-nav bundle me onwards through Sussex following whatever came my way. As it was little use in the Sahara, I’m a relatively late-adopter to sat-nav but I like that you can throw yourself into unknown backroads and, providing you’re not a 40-ton lorry, know that you can easily work your way out while discovering interesting new places. A-roads lead to grubby, leaf-splattered single trackers and it was here I marvelled at the smooth fuelling but also how harsh the hitherto adequate suspension could be.
The Versys shock has no linkage or even a spring to give a progressive rate. Is all this progressive suspension business pie in the sky, then? It seems not; the progression is in the unseen ‘two-stage damping’ which doesn’t sound so progressive. The 1000 Versys does have the usual linkage, but the 650’s direct link from swingarm to subframe means any sudden hits make quite an impact. The usual case of over-sprung and under-damped? Feels like it and no great surprise.

Even though I’ve seen the light with proper suspension on the XCountry, that was a one-off deal. But on the bright side it’s said a shock off an ‘08 Yamaha R1 is a close fit, and over the years plenty of well-heeled R1 pilots have upgraded to aftermarket items or terminally planted their pocket rockets into the scenery, so used they go from 70 quid in the UK. And a stock R1 shock is a high-spec unit, with a remote reservoir and damping adjustments in all directions.
To fit one on a Versys there’s a bit of faffing with the bushes as well as the need to get a much stiffer custom spring made up due to the lack of a progressive linkage (the Versys spring won’t fit). But providing you don’t buy a totally shagged-out R1 unit, for about 150 quid all up you get plush and fully adjustable ‘£600’ suspension on the back. I bought an ’08 removed from a new R1 for racing for £150 off ebay so at least know it won’t be shagged.
So that was a start on my Adversysing which I looked forward to riding this summer and probably taking to Morocco in November. First mpg was a rather poor 20.3kpl (57.5 UKmpg) Long before that other things that will need attention including some sort of tail rack and something for the front end: a 19-inch V-Strom Thou wheel is resting on the landing.
Then, a couple of months later I decided I really wanted a similar but lighter bike, so I flogged the Versys and got a CB500X, the more modern bike which I’d been interested in all along. Adversys project ends.

Kawasaki 650 Versys project bike

Index Page
Versys 650 – Stage 1

Next up, Kawasaki’s 650 Versys as I continue my lifelong quest of an optimal mid-weight travel bike. As you may have read, I had a short affair with a TDM 900 but, great motor though it was, it soon became clear the TDM had gone too far down roadbike road to be hauled back towards its Super Tenere and Dakar Rally origins.

The origins of the Versys are less glamourous. Also known as a KLE650, before it came the KLE500 (left, below) which in its brief final form I came close to buying. The 500’s motor was based on the sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing GPz500 or Ninja (right) which dates way back to 1987. For reasons I forget, it wasn’t a contender when it came to making my Gs500R project bike a couple of years ago. I think there was something about a dodgy top end compared to the Suzuki’s better record?

But looking at KLE500s again a few weeks ago, they now rather obviously resembled what I eventually produced in the GS500R: 18/21-inch wheels; decent tank capacity and suspension travel; a bit of fairing protection and a flat seat. Plus the last model in blue with gold frame and wheels looked downright elegant compared to some of the earlier KLE’s challenging colour combos.
There’s a certain ‘honest old school hack’ appeal about a KLE500 that you don’t get with a modern electronic bike, but rosy-specs aside, carbs, tubed tyres and 21-inch front wheels are things I prefer to leave behind. Then it dawned on me that a KLE was in fact a last-gasp, emissions-choked spin on the old 500 engine, just as the paint was drying on the brand new Euro 3-compliant Versys back in Japan. So it was just another affable dinosaur with a motor necessarily strangled by all sorts of clumsily emissions claptrap prior to the whole KLE concept getting redesigned from the ground up as a 650. Recognising this, the KLE500 didn’t look so appealing any more, especially when you consider UK prices for a decent, last-model example start in the high teens and occasionally run up to nearly three grand! Of course I never actually got to ride one, but I don’t think it would have been too much of an improvement over my GS-R.

Some KLE500 builds: here • here • here and here

Why a Versys?
I remember taking that picture on the right at the 2012 NEC Show and thinking ‘man, that is one ugly bike: too tall, too plasticy and too darn lardy on its ill-proportioned 17-inch wheels. You’ll never catch me on one of those’. It was some way from the 99-kilo KTM Freeride which was the ‘bike de jour’ at the time. Two and a bit years later I find myself reappraising the Versys. It was an interesting lesson in how initial prejudices based on looks can be overcome once you look a bit deeper. That happens to me a lot.

Much of the V-bike’s new-found appeal came down to the used prices when compared to similar offerings like TAs, V-Stroms, the KLE500 and the newer CB500-X which I tested a few weeks back. Bide your time and you can find a good, late 1st-gen (2007-09) Versys for a little over two grand. Especially alongside a 500, that’s a whole lot more bike for the money. The main flaw is of course that, just as with the Super Tenere-to-TDM evolution, the supposedly all-dancing Versys actually became less ‘versytile’ by adopting fat 17s front and rear. IMO like Ducati’s Hyperstrada (right), it doesn’t do the bike’s aesthetic proportions any favours at all but is probably another example of me mistakenly judging a book by its cover.
With the 650s ground-up makeover came the typical 20 extra kilos, but also tubeless tyres √, efi √, what looks like a chunky subframe (above right) √, optional ABS √, easy to adjust shock √, easy-switch km/miles speedo and you’d hope a general refinement plus enough plastic to melt down into a giant Rubik’s Cube. The deeply stepped seat looked less promising (though worked well enough on my 660Z Tenere), as did the under-engine silencer’s vulnerability, even if it kept the back-end slim for saddlebags. At 19 litres, the tank has a near-ballpark capacity of 250-miles/400kms assuming 60mpg (21.2kpl) without the need to carry extra fuel, even if that weight isn’t low, as it was on my XCountry.
Pictured left are two Adversii built by a guy calling himself jdrocks on the advrider forum. He spends his winters building up V-bikes for something to do and has an admirable ‘keep it simple and costs low’ attitude, stalking craigslist for as long as it takes to snag used parts from crashed 650s, rather than hosing his rig down with a Touratech catalogue. I can relate to that.

The red one on the left is actually an ER-6n/Ninja, the road bike which the GPz became. If you’re planning to turn your 650 Versys or Ninja into a lunar rover, set a rainy weekend aside to read jd’s posts. You’ll learn that he’s unearthed benefits in adventurising a 650 Ninja over a Versys (chiefly better power from cams, compression and CPU in the otherwise identical engines). But here in the UK comparable ERs go for a bit more than a Versys. With nowhere to work and looking for a bargain, I wasn’t planning anywhere near as radical a transformation as his, so was happy to settle on a Versys.

Uncovering all this brought up another benefit of adapting a Versys into what jd calls a ‘gravel bike’: they’ve been around since 2008 in the US where similar XT-Zs, ATs and Transalps aren’t sold and F-series BMs are pricey. Because of that, enough people have Adversys’ed their 650 Kawas. Be it simply slapping a ‘rear’ TKC on the front (blue bike, above) Advrider is awash with ideas and know-how which all saves money, frustration and time.

AdvMoto magazine were among the first to set the ball rolling, as usual spending what looked like the cost of a second bike adapting a used 2008 Versys with hand-built wheels and every accessory under the sun (left). The result was not a value for money dirt tourer, but then trying new ideas can be costly.
I did think about getting a V-Strom, but part of this whole AMH project bike game is exploring less obvious ideas without spending a fortune. There’s nothing much to prove with the much admired Suzuki and anyway, in the UK they cost more than a similar or even a younger Versys.
It only took a week of so to find one nearby for an unlikely £3000, but offered a chance to have a closer look and see how it rode. This was one of the full black versions which I find the least ugly. With chrome only present on the forks and pipe, it all blends away like a black cat in a coal cellar. All you have to do is be careful not to look that Fiat-ugly headlight in the eye. Do so and, like clocking the Medusa (right – don’t look!), you’ll turn to stone.

Another all-black V-bike (left) turned up up north where all the used bikes seem to be. I picked it up unseen one chilly Sunday morning and by the time I got home and then flogged the overpriced ‘gel seat’ that came with it, it came in at £2100 with hot grips; light-but-noisy pipe + original; hugger; 12v plug; new back tyre and 28,028 miles on the clock. On the surface all good but some rust behind the scenes. More about it in the next post.

Honda CRF250L vs XR250 Tornado

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CRF250L Index Page
CRF300L Index Page
Yamaha Serow Index Page (soon)

updated 2025

Two 250 Honda trail bikes: one which I tried in the UK then owned in the US; the other which I’ve rented in Morocco several times. How do they compare? First, some stats, mostly gathered from the web and referring to the pre-2017 CRF. ymmv.

Scan over them and there looks to be little in it: same weight; same number of gears; suspension travel within an inch. Even the power’s the same, though the XR’s tank is half as big again and there’s 10% more claimed torque at 1000 less rpm on the Tornado (23.7Nm @6000rpm).

That could be down to the Tornado’s 1980s carb-and-air-cooled technology which makes the same claimed power as the modern water-cooled, fuel-injected pre-2017 CRF. But as you may have guessed, any benefits of the CRF’s greater compression and modern efficiencies are swallowed up by the catalyser and other gubbins to meet today’s demanding emissions legislation.

And that’s the biggest difference of all. Both are inexpensive bikes, but as far as I know, there’s no place in the world where you can choose between one or the other, well not new. The Thai-built CRF met Euro-3 emissions requirements in richer (or should that be ‘leaner’) western countries. The Brazilian-made Tornado won’t, so got sold where bike emissions were less strict.

Riding the 250s
Although I rode them a few months apart, my impression was the XR was a more agile machine that lived up to its XR prefix. Much of that may have been because most of the time my CRF was loaded with some 15-20kg of baggage plus a rack, bashplate and screen, all which adds some 15% to kerb weight – quite significant on a 23-hp 250. But even unloaded on Utah’s fabulous White Rim Trail (left), I still feel the XR would have been a nippier and better-sprung machine. Fuel consumption is the same – so much for the mileage benefits of efi. Rider weight and payload will have a bearing on this: one light Tornado rider in Morocco was getting close to 100mpg (35.5kpl). I only got close to that a couple of times on my CRF in the US and – interestingly – nowhere near that on a UK test bike direct from Honda.

Suspension felt longer and more supple on the Tornado (in RSA they did a low seat model some 40mm lower; see table above left), the back disc is much better on the CRF. Both can sit on 100kph all day until you encounter steep inclines, headwinds or high altitude.
Though it ran up to 10,000′ (3050m) without issues, some days my CRF certainly felt the elevations in Nevada and Utah at half that elevation. Add an incline and it struggled to do 80kph at times, though it might have been the local fuel which, in my experience, varies greatly in USA. At 2300m (7300′) on a rough track in the Moroccan Atlas, the CV-carb Tornado also gets strung out between first and second gear but still fuels surprisingly well once off the pilot jet.

Conclusion
The Tornado felt better all round and were it available in the UK cheap I’m sure I’d have bought one by now**. But maybe that’s the way it is with an ‘exotic’ unobtainable machine, let alone one whose old school technology recalls a simpler era which someone my age can relate to. Apart from being annoyingly tall for some, it was everything you want from a 250 trail bike: light, good brakes, economical, fast enough and well sprung. For travelling the weak point on both 250s will be the subframe, but people have managed, so long as you don’t load a bike like a refugee’s GS12.

** Fast forward a few months.
I met a TRFer last week and he told me 250 Tornados from around 2003–4 are found in the UK and as I check the usual places I find he’s right. The one on the right had 8000 miles on the clock and looked in great nick but was going for a rather optimistic £2200. In 2016 a UK dealer was even looking for £3500 for a near-new 2004 Tornado! There was another one on gumtree, same age and mileage for a more reasonable £1400.

And in 2015 they stopped importing the Tornado into Morocco where the all-conquering CRF250L joined the line up. In Brazil the XR250 Tornado has become the XRE300 (left) – a Tornado engine bored to 291 plus efi, rear disc, optional ABS and cool, rally styling for same price as the CRF250L. However, the 300 has a poor reputation in Brazil; riders even lower the compression to try and make it last. More here.

Alternatives

If you like it old style you can still get a similarly basic XR250Rs until 2004, or TTR250 (right) in the UK until around the same time. They sold new in Australia right up to 2012 but elsewhere are getting on.

Yamaha’s much-loved air-cooled Serow is an other one. Dating from the 1980s as a 225, it shot up to 250cc in the Noughties, got efi in 2008 then discontinued in 2019.
Left is Lois ‘on-the-Loose’ Pryce on her Serow heading down the Americas. A cult bike they say, a lot of people rate the Serow’s air-cooled, light-weight, low-saddled simplicity against the ubiquitous CRFs. In 2025 I bought myself a 2011 250 Adventure model (below) for Morocco. We’ll see how we get on.

As an alternative to the CRF, the injected Kawasaki KLX250 has been around for years, but for some reason, never created the impact of the CRF when it came out, even if the suspension is way better than the Honda. Now injected, it’s said to be power restricted in the upper gears, but there’s a dodge or two to get round that here.

Used prices of the more powerful and unrestricted WR250R make it a less obvious choice for a travel bike as opposed to a fun weekend dirt bike. They were pretty rare in the UK which stopped importing them in 2008, and got discontinued globally in 2020. Both the EFI Kawa and especially the Yam WR are significantly pricier used in the UK, but they’re more sophisticated and come with a higher spec than the CRF which seems to have caught up, price wise.

Rally and L – with a tad more power. Then in 2021 they became 300s.

In 2016 I got a WR250R in the UK and also bought a carb’d Kawasaki KLX250S (left) in the American Southwest, a well put together machine – an efi ought to be even better. More news on my WR here.

• Dual Sport shootout (CRF, KLX, WR_R)
• Tornado thread on Horizons
• Ed’s Yamaha WR250R in Russia
• My CRF travels in SW USA
• Honda RSA Tornado brochure
• My KLX-S in SW USA

Tenerising a TDM900

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“It all started back in the beginning of the nineties, when we wanted to create a bike, which would be ultimate fun on bumpy small roads…” [Link]

I was recently reading an article by Brett Smith about a documentary on American dirt legend John Penton which included the line: ‘… studying his life will offer one key lesson: make your bike into what you need it to be…’

With something like that in mind, a couple of months ago I got myself a cheap TDM900 with a view to adapting it into a gravel and travel bike with my usual low-tech and inexpensive tricks. The word out there was that TDMs were a much under-rated road bikes, one of the many ‘sleepers’ which meet with high approval from actual owners but slip under the radar with most of the conservative buying public and performance-obsessed mags. ‘Only 86.2hp @ 7500rpm’ they scoff. Clearly not worth getting out of bed for then.

Mine came with hand guards, hot grips plus a tall screen (√, √ and √) but also an ugly Givi clip-on top box and an annoying Datatool alarm which was as old as the bike and playing up. It cost me sixty quid to get it professionally extracted. DIY is not so easy but I made some back selling the reprogrammable key fobs.

Action with the project was initially slow, partly because with 50k on the clock, I wanted to ride it around a bit first to make sure everything went up and down and round and round like it should. I don’t recall ever owning a bike with such a high mileage but the word was that, especially with the low-stressed 900 motor and providing it had been looked after, there were at least as many miles and another decade left in it.

Another cause for hesitation was that in establishing the Yam was in surprisingly great shape, I discovered it was actually a very nice handling road bike of the kind I don’t recall ever owning. Is it the ‘small’ wide wheels; low-profile rubber; relative lowness; a Fibonacci-like trail/rake/fork angle combo? Who knows, but for a heavy bike it dropped into bends with no bar input required. Throttle and clutch were light and the gearbox was snickety-snick. Only the suspension felt a bit harsh on the knackered suburban roads round here, but had plenty of settings to meddle with.

Looking on the web it’s no surprise to find I’m not the first person to want to adapt their TDM into more of an all-roader (see gallery bottom of the page). After all, Yamaha’s TDM evolved from the original late 1980s, 21/17 wheeled 750 Super Tenere (left) which at 200-kilos and with a 26-litre tank was inspired by the Sonauto YZE 750T Paris-Dakar bikes (below).

Peterhansel in the ’89 Dak and quite possibly in the Tenere desert. Who wouldn’t want something like that in the garage?

In the early 90s the 750 Super Tenere was transformed into the TDM 850 (below left, in red), taking a regrettably big step away from the 75o’s desert racing aspirations towards what I suppose what they call sports tourers. It’s said the 850 was a solid hit in Europe and Australia, but a flop in the US where the 850 was dropped within a couple of years (quite possibly to the regret of this guy).

By the mid-90s we got the MkII 850 with a few improvements, most of which I forget but which included a less lent-forward engine (reducing carb needle wear) and best of all, the crank offset by 90° to give the motor an uneven ‘Ducati’ beat and crossplane power characteristics. This pulse and sound remain one of the TDM’s main attractions, especially once you fit some fruity, free-breathing slip-ons.

In Europe alone over 60,000 850s were sold in the decade before the lighter, alloy-framed and fuel-injected 900 came on the scene in 2002 [good article]. And by all the accounts I scoured (and not least to due to the 850s’ age these days), the 900 seems to be the one to get. It’s still in Yamaha’s line-up today, at least in Australia. In Europe it looks like the 900 may have been quietly dropped.

What would a TDM need to make it into more of an XTZ750? Would it be worthwhile simply extending the suspension, slapping on a bashplate and fitting some knobbly rubber before shoving it out the hatch over gnarly territory?

Wheels are 17 and 18-inchers but tall-sidewall tyres are an easy way to an inch or so of clearance. Some 4.10 x 18 or 120/90/18 tyres would actually be taller than a 19er and theoretically provide lots of dirt cushioning for the rims while probably giving less secure roadholding on fast bumpy bends. The two Aussie bikes above left are running high-wall fronts.

A more lateral solution to increase clearance was to reroute the under-engine pipes (left). But a quick look proved there was no easy way of bend them round the sump and centre-stand. The whole TDM motor is packed in tight with a 5-litre oil tank jammed between the gearbox and EFI.

Off-the-shelf crash bars do exist (right) and making a home-made bashplate wouldn’t be too hard. My 900 came with a kerb-mashed belly pan which I soon ditched but left the brackets in place for later. As it is, you can ding an exhaust without the sky falling in (plenty of used ones on ebay), but it only takes one rock with a mission to hole the cases, so it does need something down there which takes back the inch of clearance you gain from the high-wall tyres.

‘Better five inches of good, progressive suspension than eight inches of ill-sprung, underdamped movement’ you hear said, but I looked into lengthening it anyway. The back is easily done of course: find a used shock that’s a tad longer than the R1-type unit, buy an over-length aftermarket unit, or meddle with the dog bones.

On the front I had the idea of ‘fork extenders‘ before I realised they actually existed. Seems they’re a bodger’s hangover from the twilight years of the 70s chopper craze. You get either slip-on sleeves (far left) or screw-ins (left) to give your USU fork a few extra inches. You then either fill out the slack spring with spacers (chopped off ‘bar ends between coins we used to use) or splash out on longer progressives.
Some claim these extenders were outlawed years ago or that they’re dangerous, and even I have to admit that on a hefty gravel roader like a TDM, creaking, wearing slip-ons might eventually strain the lower triple clamps under repeated hard braking. Screw-ons in a modest ≤ two-inches seemed a better solution. This guy on xrv.org got some made for ATs and a mate offered to lathe me a set.
One problem with the TDM forks was it wasn’t simply a matter of packing out or slipping in longer springs – the fork damper adjustment rods running down from the fork caps (top left) would need extending too.

Thant’s not too hard but it was all getting a little more complicated and pricey for my low-tech, low-budget resolve. The next step was to track down a longer used forks off something else. The TDM runs 43-mm tubes and the slider tubes are 621mm long. First I wondered about simply buying a same-diameter but slightly longer set of replacement fork tubes off tube makers Tarozzi, but wasn’t sure if the milled fork tube ends differed from bike to bike. Probably, so then with the help of this handy Tarozzi fork tube length / diametre webpage I found that the twin-disc forks off an XT660Z Tenere came closest with an additional 90mm (3.5″) of exposed slider compared to the TDM. Like I said I wouldn’t want anything more than a two-inch rise which would leave 1.4 inches sticking out on top so it might have needed bar risers. I soon found a near-new pair of used 660 Paiolis.

And that’s about as far as I got with the TDM Super Tenere project. The acquisition of the longer forks required a call to action, including a suitable wheel; a spoked wheel on a Tenere hub would have been easy enough, though I’d rather stick with native tubeless. But the more I rode the TDM the more I thought this was not some worthless old hack like my GS500R. It seemed a real shame to quite probably snuff out TDMs exceptional road manners by converting it into a top-heavy dirt tank which, without the investment of high-end suspension, would lack any real-world off-road agility. One thing I learned with the GS500R (and the Benele from 1984 come to that, above left) was that it’s easy to make a bike taller to add ground clearance. It’s less easy or more costly to gain good-quality suspension.

TDM (yellow) overlaid on a XT660Z with key points marked to show just how much higher the red XT is.

On top of that I suspected the height difference between footrest and bars was too small for easy standing up (see animated gif left) and a stack of bar-risers to dodge that would create cable-length issues. Plus early on the scales had revealed a rather shocking 230kgs fully fuelled which I wasn’t sure equated with the claimed 190kgs dry (though the handbook claims 221kg wet). And they say the 900 was lighter than the 850.

I enjoyed tooling around on my mid-winter TDM, but great road bike though it was, I think I’ve become too conditioned to trail bikes: the stance and the impression of go-anywhere agility. I couldn’t see the TDM ever delivering that on jacked-up suspension. Despite its qualities it’s too heavy for my sort of riding which I’m reminded wants a bike that’s <200kg wet.

Below, a few examples pinched from the web of what could have been (mostly from this advrider TDM thread). Some are 850s and some are based on the same-engined, trellis-framed TRM 850 road bike or XTZ750s with TRM / TDM 850 motors.

Meanwhile, I may have a better idea of how to ‘make a bike what I want it to be’.

Adventure Motorcycling Handbook

The Website of the Book

Category Archives: AMH News

The Chinese travel bikes are coming

Versys 650

Kawasaki 650 Versys project bike

Index Page
Versys 650 – Stage 1

Some KLE500 builds: here • here • here and here

Honda CRF250L vs XR250 Tornado

updated 2025

Tenerising a TDM900

Index PageVersys 650 – Stage 1

Some KLE500 builds: here • here • here and here

updated 2025

Index Page
Versys 650 – Stage 1