Oh I agree ... totally. You can find plenty of threads of me criticising KTM for dumbing down their Adventure bikes ... That they used to put their best quality forks and rims on them, and now they put their cheapest forks and rims on them. Having said that, it still seems the cheapest WP forks are a long way better than BMWs cheapest tho. Rims? I think both 990 rims and F800 rims come from Behr ... not sure if there is any difference in spec. KTM also go too far when it comes to saving money on outsourced components (rims, fuel pumps etc), but it seems not always quite to the extreme level BMW do.

If you get a 990, its one of things you need to change before you go offroading. Again, its something that someone who buys a 990 and wants to ride to Magadan should be aware of. My reference to the 990 earlier in the thread was more regarding suspension than rims.

A friend of mine, Joe Pichler (http://www.josef-pichler.at/), does a lot of marketing rides for KTM on the adventure side ... rides across Africa, Siberia and South America for promotional and marketing pics ... has been using 950s and 990 from 2003 till 2011 ... and the main change (and first change) KTM marketing guys made to his bikes before each trip was the rims - changing to either the DID dirtstar rims or any Excel rims.

See also:

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ehr-rims-22519

and my post on the same topic on another forum:

ADVrider - View Single Post - Sibirsky Extreme 2012 - The Toughest Ride of Them All

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