There used to be a super Duke parked in the offices on my walk into work, well I think it was the Super - it was a naked anyway, and I was always surprised how little paraphernalia there was on it. It was just a seat, tank & engine the latter of which seemed to have really clean lines with miles of space in & around it. And I hear the LC8 was a torque fest.
Many of my riding buddies have KTM over the last 15 years and no issues at all of note. Now how many fuel senders and gearbox sensors have I been through in that time!!!
The LC8 was a good engine,……when it was going ! I ran this 990 SMT for 26,000 miles and had more problems with it than any other bike I’ve owned, worst one was a stator pick up sensor that packed in right in the middle of our French tour, bike spent 3 days in a KTM dealership in Frejus South of France, you’d be overtaking a lorry or something and the bike would just start misfiring, leaving you hung out to dry,…bloody dangerous ! It wasn’t brilliant on petrol either ( high 30’s mpg ) but in its defence, I thought the bike looked pretty good ( mainly because it wasn’t Orange ! ) it was comfy and a decent exciting ride, the engine was very characterful and I did my longest day ever on this bike , over 860 miles ! I also used to race this KTM 250 exc two stroke in enduro’s… This was even worse for reliability, but then again it was a competition bike No more KTM’s for me thanks very much
I have a gen 1 Superduke R 1290 and I was on the verge of pulling the trigger on a brand new one as they were so heavily discounted. But all the stories of reliability issues with the latest generation put me off, as it stands I sometimes get random warning lights on the dash of my gen 1, but the bike still runs fine and the fault usually clears itself, on the latest generation it seems the bike goes into limp mode every time there's an issue, I knew that would drive me mad. Having said that, the 1290 engine has more torque than anything else I've ridden, it makes my 1098s feel like a 600 in comparison, it handles like a big supermoto as well, definitely the most fun bike I've had.
