Yamaha have proved it with there new 700 tenere ! You do not need 100+ power .............. let alone 170 !

These big bikes should be re classed into gravel bikes !

Ditto ditto, 12,00km's around India top to bottom including Napel on a 150 Hero Hunk back in 2011. Was it an adventure, of course yes. Did I need more grunt, maybe..!!! Do I have fond memories........

I have now since scratch built a purposeful overlanding bike that has 75hp, my ideal speed is up to 50mph and 70mph on highways/open roads. The concept of my build was based on durability and function not performance or looks. As someone mentioned, the bike is the tool that enables adventure, so much more to it than BHP....!!!!

You make a valid point.

Well that’s what they are. Big adventure bikes are Super tourers that you can take on and ‘adventure’ ride around the world on bitumen and gravel ROADS.....

People simply buy the wrong tool for the job.
Travelling Australia? Big Bike = good bike. GS / Africa Twin / Multistrada
Travelling Peru? Little Bike = good bike. CRF250 / Himalayan / HunterCub
Travelling the everywhere? Middle bike = good bike.

Wot he said. It's not about the bike.

'Adventure Bike' is largely a marketing tag/slogan and in the same way that all the yummy-mummies around here 'must' have a Porsche/BMW/Merc. SUV to run their little darlings to and from school each day, there are those who 'know' that the only bike capable of surviving their weekly one-up/55mph run around the usual 70 mile loop, on sunny, summer Sundays, is 250kg of 1000cc+ 'Adventure Bike', preferably fitted with aluminium panniers, a GPS/plotter, bike to bike intercom system and any other bell or whistle which the marketing department waves in front of them. For preference it needs to be this years model and you should certainly be attired in a flip-front helmet and gortex clothing capable of withstanding any & all weather conditions between a -40C Blizzard and a +50C sand storm.
Twenty years ago you barely saw anything resembling an 'Adventure Bike', in the car parks at Box Hill, Cat & Fiddle or Hawes, they were instead full of FireBlades, ThunderRaces and 916 Dukes, with their riders adorned in colour matched-leathers & race-replica crash helmets; I suspect that they're all the same guys, but the knees, backs and reaction times just need something a little more forgiving nowadays.

That said, if they're happy and enjoying the weekly 'adventure' that they want, then good luck to them.

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BobnLes

I'm prepared to bet that the number of times you wished for 'more grunt' would've been far outweighed by the number of times you would've been wishing for 'less weight' had you done that same trip on 250kg of 'proper' Adventure Bike?
I've long held the opinion that the best all-around bike for travelling one-up beyond the easy reach of roadside recovery trucks and main-dealers is one based on the Honda OHV125cc engine that first appeared in the CG125 back in the 1970s; 40-odd years of proving itself and copies/clones (including the hero hunk) all around the world under a variety of badges - we once spotted seven different ones in less than an hour along the motorbike shops street in Cartagena, Columbia! - they're light enough to lift onto a pick-up truck (or even push) and repairable anywhere.

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BobnLes

I've never ever wanted less power.

But I've always wished for more. Why wouldn't you ?

But extra power usually means extra weight. And when it doesn't mean extra weight, it means less reliability.

So the question 'how much power do you need' really depends on the type of bike.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

In much of the world you will not be travelling at over 60mph, so power as such is not that important, torque is good MPG is good, and low weight is very good for mud and sand and the costs of transporting your bike by air or sea. Size is also good when you want to bring the bike into your hostal.



So for me, around 50 BHP/60 MPG and a wet weight of under 200Kgs without luggage, less would be better.

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Charles CCM450, BMW R90/6, BMW R50
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...a/027_27-1.jpg

I've never ridden a bike in my life that I wish I had less power. Why would you ?

However, power usually comes with either weight or less reliability. Or both.

So, like all of us , you will have to find the bike that gives you the correct balance of power/weight/reliability that suits what YOU want to do.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

So why do all these Behemoths come with ASR (marketed as "traction control")?

OK, wrong choice of rider/tyre/throttle to RPM ratio, but once power is beyond manageable levels it does seem rather pointless. Pointless power comes with weight and the combination requires further management. A downward spiral some designs seem to have hit.

My BMW R1100 had too much power. Extremely easy to ride past yellow boxes fast enough to pay for the pleasure, too heavy to be a pleasure any other way. Of course a bigger rider may take the threshold of pleasure to pain higher, but it is there IMHO.

Andy

BobnLesley
It's a good job they do as I'd never sell any clothing or accessories

I also think you'll find that most of ur power rangers are now riding Super Duke R s + Streetfighters ..........and occasionally Mt10 s if our customer base is anything to go by
.

Its of course great fun to have lots of power available but what about the old saying «Its more fun riding a slow bike fast than a fast bike slow»

I have an old acquaintance who had an obsession for old Kawasaki triple twostroke bikes. And he had a nice collection of those. We always admired the H2 750 cc, sometimes the H1 500 cc too. But he told me honestly he liked to ride the 350 cc best as he could open the throttle max now and then without risking being throwed into the surroundings by sheer power. Twisting the throttle max on the 750 was just too wild and dangerous.

So I wonder when todays big Advbikes that have more than twice the power of the old H2, what will they be like if you really open the throttle max now and then? But I do understand there are and must be (?) several censors and systems onboard that controls all these enourmous amount of power.

I wouldnt mind a bike with a nice bit of power to ride on paved roads and firm gravel. But for a travel/overland bike power numbers are not that important to me. Rideability, torque, reliability and economy are much more important - and then I adjust to the bike....

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In the end everything will be fine. If its not fine its not the end....

To answer ur question about what happens when u turn the electronics off....Jeremy McWilliams developed said Super Duke R and he described it as nearly unrideable with everything switched off Years ago I spoke to John Reynolds about his Crescent Suzuki bsb bike.....he had the power lowered as it was too powerful for the circuit at Thruxton........therefore I would humbly suggest that most riders couldn't use 100bhp fully if they were honest . A quik look at most of the telemetry stored on certain modern bikes suggests this is def the case except on a track possibly , so what on earth u do with 170bhp I have no idea

spot on. !!....at last there is another proper adventure rider !

But weight is also an issue, a 250kg dry weight would never make an adventure bike


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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Charles CCM450, BMW R90/6, BMW R50
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...a/027_27-1.jpg