15.000 miles before rebuild is extremely good for an engine of this type, my EXC was more or less toast before 4.000 miles.

It will get you to Cape Town (from Europe), but not back.

From what I hear there is a long skirt piston for the 450 engine available - maybe ccm have chosen to fit this in the final set up - who knows ? has anyone asked that would extend engine life a bit - along with the fact they have dropped 1500 revs from the top end with the limiter, remapped the ignition and advance all of which softens the stress on an engine - one designed to be revved to the limit all out, so i would think those factors alone would extend the bottom end life by a huge amount, if they do fit the long skirt piston that would also make a massive difference to wear on the barrel and piston - still not sure about the 1.25 oil capacity seems small but I am used to bigger bikes air cooled etc - yet with the above softening of the engine the oil is not going to get the same pounding and burning and with high quality modern oil the life span is petty good, but with that quantity I would be changing it every 2 - 3000 miles anyway - top gear featured a car last year that had oil change intervile of 100,000 so maybe 5000 in a detuned 450 is not as bad as they say. The 15000 mile rebuild if thats a reality would be a pain but i assume its only top end - piston valves and guides - which would not be a show stopper in reality a days work - the word is that the bmw g450x was warrantied for 36 month as an enduro machine - thus the reason for the massive maintenance schedule from BMW could it be in place so that they maybe never had to pay out for a warranty claim ?.I also see that there is an aussie lad has done over 30,000 on a 52hp g450x without a strip down - maybe he doesnt ride that till its screaming for mercy - so maybe all the rebuild stuff is just hot air and wind - scaremongering about the unknown !. I dont know till i talk to them in a few weeks time at the factory.

I think if it actually took off then CCM or another company might start knocking out auxiliary oil tanks.. Along with plenty of other 'life extending' goodies such as relaxed cams, pistons and injection mapping.

oil quantity doesn't bother me too much. My DRZ took under 2L and that was fine. I'd just change oil twice as often as they recommend.

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

IIRC, the XT225, serow, engine contains 0.9L in the wet sump design.
It's an old tech, air cooled, engine design with soft delivery of power but they seem to work well on this - the rider just has to keep an eye on the oil level.

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Dave

where can I get me one of those...

Good point by Ali B too.

Surely the whole engine wont be shagged in 15k, they never are, that's what's so annoying.
But if it's an exchange deal like a car alternator, sounds like good recycling practice to me.
I've come back from 5000-mile desert trips with a Tenere motor in poor shape and have heard of a typical air-cooled 250 being rooted after an AK to TdF.

Best outcome (for us) might be if the Japs take up the 450 adv concept.

Ch

Like a long life, large oil volume WR450 that looks like this?

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Yes, or the KTM 390 Allrad I just noticed in another HU post. Looks a bit heavy.

Ch

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Morocco Overland 4 (2025) • Trans Morocco Trail

Yes ... looks a bit heavy in that pic, cause they used a pic of an 1190 Adventure with the 390 Allroad article :confused1:

There's nothing like quality journalism ... and that indeed was nothing like quality journalism

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You can see why KTM would go for it. An existing range of engines in the baby Dukes, a production plant in India to make the most of, a burgeoning bike market in the sub-continent, a customer base not inculcated to believe that you need big engines to have a better bike and poor roads.

I'm surprised it took them so long.

Incidentally why don't more bike manufacturers follow KTM's lead with the baby Duke range. One bike, three different engine sizes. After all cars have been like that for years.

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My wife's Mini has an oil change interval of 20,000 miles. What in God's name are we considering with this go anywhere bike - I buy one and change the engine at the same time as I'm doing an oil change on the car. All I'd be asking the thing to do is propel itself down the road at fairly mediocre speeds. I don't want to ride it to the moon, just to Tesco's. If it can't do that without the core part converting itself to scrap before the car engine is run in then there's something fundamentally wrong with it.

Back at the dawn of time when I started traveling / touring etc we used small air cooled two strokes and we'd get about 25,000+ miles out of them before they needed rebuilding. Forty years later we're considering a service life of half that on an engine twice the size!

Is there really a long life piston available? If there is presumably the long skirt bit means it weighs more. How's that going to affect the engine balance - am I going to get double vision riding it? Do I get an extra 10K miles at the cost of my fillings falling out? My current CCM really did give me double vision from wheel imbalance when I bought it. Good luck with trying to get an engine balance problem sorted out.

I agree with you if the engine does have ridiculous short life then the engine is wrong for the bikes proposed usage as a long travel adventure bike and then it becomes limited to a short distance travel bike crossover with a green laner. ( which i think it is anyway no matter what label we stick on it) What we do not yet know are if any changes have been made to the engine prior to production and how engine life is expected to pan out after those changes have been done, I am told that Mr Clews said that some top end changes had or were being made. As for the long skirt piston I have looked and can't find it anywhere but it is referred to in the g450x forums as well as a 480 big bore racing kit and not topical for this bike really. I simply do not know and think it unlikely that the design has been changed but know one knows at this time. If it was it does not mean it needs to vibrate or upset engine balance - I have fitted different pistons (bigger bore) in engines before - but they have weighed less than the originals - so sorting out balance / weight etc is for the piston manufacturer and would make a none starter of an argument I think.
I also wonder why everyone seems to think this or every bike on this forum has to be good and able to go round the world ? to be honest most modern bikes in my opinion are worse than useless for this task as they are too complex. More so I have always said that some peoples idea of an adventure may be very different to another persons maybe a trip to Scotland, to France or to Russia and beyond we are all different with different time, money and targets. So the bike we choose or not choose will meet our different needs. I have changed direction on the bikes i have always favoured - I now want a small lightweight bike with enough power to use on the roads around the UK, to travel a few thousand mile here abroad on back roads and light trails and maybe go around Iceland or into the fringes of Northern Russia, I do not need or require the bigger bikes i used to ride as I wont travel too far nor will i ever have a passenger as i always did before - so if I can sort out the life of the engine as being reasonable and affordable in return giving really good power then this bike may well fit my needs. Then again it may not I will know in a few weeks time.

Well, it's all fairly academic for me because unless my lottery numbers come up I won't be in the market for one until they're cheap enough secondhand that I could buy one without my wife noticing. Which if previous CCM depreciation kicks in should be about Xmas. I just think we've been talking about the biking equivalent of one of my daughter's friends - very pretty to look at but highly strung and expensive to run.

Ted mentioned earlier the list of things that he needed to do to his DRZ to get it to survive a trip down the length of Africa - a whole bunch of parts that needed to be replaced with upgrades to fix shortcomings in the original. All of these came from the aftermarket world but DRZs are so common you trip over them in the street so there's a market there to be served. What's CCM's predicted production run? - 2/3/400? No one's going to produce parts for 50 early adopters and 200 bikes stuck in showrooms, or if they do it's going to be for the market they know - racing. Someone coming back with the bike smoking like a WW2 destroyer after a 10K miles trip to India and back is going to be queuing for overpriced parts alongside some hot shot weekend racer spending all his "T-Bone, Family Butcher Race Team" sponsorship money.

Everyone, I'm sure, has their own idea of what makes an ideal overlanding bike. Bitter experience makes mine something that I know will start and move under its own power when I stagger out of a tent in the middle of the Sahara with a hangover to find it buried up the wheel spindles in sand and no memory of how it got there. The CCM may do that, I just don't think it will do it for long enough to make it down to the part of the market I inhabit.

If you buy a bike with a slightly detuned race-engine you should buy it for having fun and not for longevity.
My guess is that 99% of the adventure-trips (whatever that is) is shorter then 15.000 miles anyway.

It's not the kind of bike I would have bought but I find it interesting, and it's cool that someone make a cheap version of a PD-bike.

I used to spend a lot of money on bikes (and snowmobiles and ATVs and so on), but now I'm living a lot more frugally, so the projected price is fairly significant.

And 15k isn't a lot of miles, I used to do that and more per year when I commuted part time on the bike (northern New England winters aren't conducive to 250 mile cimmutes).

I've put on that much in a 3rd world environment over the last year I've been in-country. I can buy either of the bikes I've been using for less than the cost of the CCM motor.

For what some are stating, the CCM will work great for them, basically limited distance touring and fun rides.

Those just aren't my needs anymore, I need something 3rd world robust (can take handle heavy loads and bad road conditions), is easy to service, has good parts availability, is cheap to run and that's reliable day in, day out.
There aren't many machines like that sold in the West anymore.

Sent from my A898 Duo using Tapatalk 2

There must be a long list of questions that you have written down by now.
I hope you can get satisfactory answers to them all from one factory visit/test ride.

I have been wondering if this bike will turn up on the PD in South America in 2014; cheap it is compared with the exotic stuff in that race. After all, the prototype has CCM-racing in the logos (on the swingarm), IIRC from the video.

They are available in the UK; there are plenty of dealers selling 125cc bikes including the YBR that you favour at present.
+ the Chinese are coming, if one believes some of the press - there has always been a (small) market in the west for Chinese bikes, but it is reported that the importers will "up their game" in the near future.
Then there is the manufacturing that is going on in India, which may well export in this direction.

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Dave