KTM 700 Adventure

[Alan RootsMember]

Copied and pasted from email received this morning .

KTM700RR Adventure Update 26/11/13
Hello,

After an absolutely overwhelming response to the official release of the KTM700RR Adventure at the Sydney Motorcycle Show, I thought it was only fitting to give the 55 prospective buyers of the kit, plus all other adventure riders on our database and update of exactly where we are at.

I will be contacting everyone who has verbally purchased a kit personally, as soon as we are close to having the first 10 kits available, but in the meantime I will just give regular updates, due to time restraints to do with also running Dalby Moto.

I do apologise for not contacting you personally, but that will come soon.

For those who did not attend the motorcycle show here are a few comments that came our way.

At the show on the Adventure Rider Magazine stand we also had a genuine Repsol KTM 690 Rally beside our 700RR Adventure to show people how close our design is to the genuine bike.

From the KTM stand next door to us, we had dealers coming over and saying that people who had seen our bike but not spoken to us, were asking when the new KTM700 Adventure was going to be released. Other people said to them that they could not believe the finish of the bike.

We had other people saying things like, “I just have to have one”, or “you have really nailed it” or “ I have always wanted a KTM Rally bike, but the cost and availability was too out of touch”.

Other people who already had other kits fitted mentioned that they would sell their kit and buy one of our HARD kits for the larger fuel capacity, Rally looks and better quality.

Ok, now some info on the kits, Darren Wilson and I have formed the company Horizons Adventure Rally Designs (HARD). Every component in the 700 Adventure kit is made from the best quality materials available so as to be able to withstand punishment that the worst of Australia can dish out.

In 2014 we will be marketing the kit worldwide. It is my plan to sell Dalby Moto so as to be able to concentrate more heavily on our new company. ( I might even have to attend more adventure rides, bugger)

Where are we up to and how long before the kits are available, taking into account that we do not want to rush the supply of the kits which could lower the end quality of the product that you, the customers are buying.

In a first for aftermarket fuel tanks, Mick Carey from Nomad Tanks has designed a billet alloy thread insert to go in to the top of the tanks, this is so that the fuel caps are always easy to screw on and off. Anyone who has owned plastic fuel tanks will know that as the fuel tanks expand which cannot be stopped, the fuel caps become exceptionally tight to an annoying level to screw on and off. This also happened on the cross Oz shakedown run. Hopefully we will have 10 sets of fuel tanks completed and sold by Christmas.

The graphics on the bike at the Motor Show were only of a low quality, we are currently sourcing a good supplier of heavy grade thick contact graphics that go on the rear side covers and the front fairings. We are hoping to have this finalised in 7 to 14 days.

The first 10 header pipes are being built by Tranzac Pipes. We have gone for 1.8 mm wall stainless steel pipe and have gone for slightly larger diameter 48 mm pipe. This is firstly for strength and secondly for performance.

We are close to receiving the first order of fairings, carbon fibre/Kevlar bash plates and carbon fibre dashboard inserts.

The genuine KTM 950 Adventure/Rally tank spaces and rubbers are costing us a total of $500 which is a little bit exorbitant, and that’s coming from a KTM dealer, we will go that way if that is all that we can procure, but we are also looking at sourcing those at a lower price. All bolts and parts like this just mentioned are genuine KTM parts, to further enhance the quality of the build.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, we have gone for the 690 Rally Hella headlights due to the low quality light from the original.

The complete kit with all parts including bolts, rubbers, spaces, electrical plugs and extensions and fuel line fittings is selling for $5990. Darren and I are personally fitting the first 25 kits for an extra $500. The reason for this is so that while we are fitting the kits we are also fine tuning the fitment instructions so that when we do sell the completed kit in kit form, we do not get bad press from people not understanding how to assemble the bike. I know that most of you would have no problem working out how to fit it, but it only takes one person to bag us on the Internet to give the kit a bad name. We have put way too much money and time into creating this quality product to allow this to happen.

As you can see we are juggling a few balls to finalise the kit, so this is another reason I have not contacted many of you personally by phone or e-mail yet, as when I do I would like to have solid supply dates to talk about as well.

For anyone who did not see us at Sydney, we will be at the Brisbane Motorcycle Expo in March or you can contact me personally on 0428 621 211 or e-mail to chartley@dalbymoto.com.au

Look forward to speaking to you soon.

Regards

Craig Hartley

I spoke to one of the Guys who maned the KTM stand at the show , he said he was very impressed with the quality and sturdyness of the” Hard ” KTM kit , should be the bees knees , the boulder bros and I saw the preproduction bike testing this kit back in August and it looked quite good in Craigs shed at Dalby . Great to see some Aussies producing what the potential customers are asking for .

Cheers
Alan

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