With KTM soon to release a 390 adventure bike just wondering if anyone has tried putting the 390 engine into an enduro rolling chassis, making a great lightweight all rounder?

I think such a bike could just about tick all the boxes I’m looking for; small, light, reliable, frugal and able to tackle everything in its stride, from hard off road to long road stints and tours when needed, a Perfect RTW adventure bike that you can add luggage to for adventure or remove for pure off road fun.

These type of bikes used to exist but the only one left seems to be the crf250l.

I’d have thought for a company the size of ktm, this would be an easy project that they could have done years ago, there seems to be lots of riders that ride fairly hard off road but don’t want the high service levels of the competition engines

The problem you [by that I mean a manufacturer] get as soon as you put a lower powered and more 'road' tuned engine into a high-end chassis, is it is inevitably compared to the high-performance offerings... even if it's not being aimed at exactly the same market, it still doesn't stop the press and online pundits making the inevitable comparison based simply on similar engine capacity - just look at the reception the CRF450L got from the nobbers comparing it with their KTM 500EXCs - saying it was rubbish and heavy and yada yada yada...

Your suggestion of building something yourself (like a handful of people have done with a CB500 engine in the CRF250L chassis) is feasible if you could get your hands on two suitable donor bikes, but again - why would you particularly choose that 390cc engine at all? If you're going to use an EXC as the chassis anyway, then I'd suggest the 500 with an oil cooler and a big tank would be every bit as 'nice' to ride on the road, and a lot less faffing around to try and make it all work together?

I think the best thing you could do is wait and see what KTM come up with with regard to their official 390 'Adventure' model... recent photos suggest there will be at least one version (with cast tubeless wheels), but there seems to a number of photos going around of essentially the same [pre production] bike with what appears to be 18/21 spoked wheels on it too.

Don't get me wrong, your idea of a softer tune 'enduro' is not a bad idea - it's just the market and engineering/technology moves on... The reason the DR350 and XR400 and DRZ400 are now considered 'reliable' is because that was all the [performance] engineers could get out of their designs at the time - they were all competition enduro bikes too back in their day.

Jx

Jenny you’re absolutely right, I just worry that by the time KTM release the official 390 Adventure R it will be silly money, probably £6k plus but then I guess the only other bike similar would be the frantic Cabalerro Rally which is also £7K or of course a BMW 310 with the full rally raid kit like you proved in the US.

Just spotted a nice looking TTR600 with WR 400 front end, them lumps go on forever.