What happens if you take a fence and nail a huge gas tank to it? That's right, you'll get a dual-sport motorcycle.
And if KTM, with a weight of 154 dry kilograms, also has a 600-odd-cc single-barrel, capable of shaking out all the fillings from teeth with vibration, but is very peppy and lively, easily putting it to shame at road speeds? The result is a KTM 640 Adventure. But we love him not only for this.
The KTM 640 Adventure is one of those motorcycles that has remained almost unchanged over the years because it immediately became cool. True, its ancestor, the 620 Adventure, lasted only a year, from 1997 to 1998. The very next year, its cubic capacity was slightly increased (from 609 to 625 cubic meters) ... and was produced almost unchanged until 2003. There they installed two front brake discs, repainted it red and produced it for several more years until it was discontinued in 2007.
Remember the joke “And God created a woman... the creature turned out to be evil, but funny”? This is something that comes to mind when talking about the KTM 640 Adventure. Moreover, he is not only and not so much evil as capricious, and the engineers built this quality into him quite deliberately. Well, if we accept that they were conscious when it was designed, and this is not a fact, oh, not a fact...
Its characteristics are quite pleasant: 55 Nm of thrust, 54 hp at peak, carburetor, wet clutch, capacious tank, two 300 brake discs at the front, enduro wheels. The tank is pants, that is, the gasoline does not hang over the frame like a huge tank, but is distributed along the sides of the motorcycle, quite low. Everything seems fine? But you still don’t know a few facts about him.
A few facts about the KTM 640 Adventure
Here's fact number one: the oil on the KTM 640 Adventure is in the frame, and that frame is notorious for cracking along the weld. But this is just a production mistake, why do you think they made a dry sump? There are two options here: to ride in the back and so that it is safe (for the engine) to lie on your side. Moreover, on the back - it’s more like Adventure’s brother, the SM version - that is, a supermoto. Another crazy motorcycle on the same base. By the way, the early Duke was also made on it - long-legged and awkward, on a clearly high off-road platform. Looked very strange.
Fact two: the height of the saddle is 945mm. I wasn't joking about the fence, if anything. True, the ground clearance is notable - 315mm. There is an inverted 48 fork with 275mm of travel and a rear monoshock that provides 300mm of wheel travel. This will be the third fact: the rear suspension has significantly more travel than the front, and even has a full range of adjustments.
Little things? OK, here's another thing for you: there are two oil filters, one of which is unscrewed with a special puller - a huge hexagon. Filters are changed along with the oil, preferably every 3000 or a little less often. Someone told me that they made a puller from a bolt and a couple of nuts welded to it. When changing, the oil is drained from several holes and poured into a 7mm diameter neck located on the side of the frame. Don't even try without a large syringe with a straw.
