VOLUME 58 ISSUE 35 AUGUST 31, 2021 P95
(Above) Easy,
upright ride
position means
long days are
not a problem.
My four months of custody were mainly
commuter runs—jumping on the MT to
grab take-out, meeting some mates for
a beer (only one, I had to ride home),
riding to my kid's daycare to show the
funky orange wheels to the kids (whose
minds were absolutely blown away).
You can take off from the lights in
third gear and the little 689cc parallel
twin will chug you up to speed without
you hammering the clutch, and it'll do
wheelies with the absolute best liter
bikes out there. In fact, it probably does
them better.
On the engine side, there's very,
very little to fault. The gearbox action is
lovely; it's quiet; the throttle response is
excellent—no wonder this thing is such a
hit in Tenere 700 form.
When we change over to the chas-
sis, that's where a few personality traits
became slightly annoying. Those 41mm
non-adjustable forks are very softly
sprung and will plunge to the bottom
of the stroke if you push even remotely
hard. The plus side is these forks offer a
beautifully smooth ride if you're just cruis-
ing sedately, which, as you've just read,
was where most of my time was spent.
You can play around a bit with the
shock in the preload and rebound
damping circuits, and with a bit of time
you can find a setup that'll work for you
(for me, it was simply more preload).
There's 5.1 inches front and rear of
suspension travel, so you'll have all the
travel you need this side of a supermoto
track, where I've seen a few MT-07s get-
ting thrashed around.
It's a very utilitarian ride position. The
seat gets pretty hard if you're on it for
any longer than an hour, although the
32mm wider and 19mm higher handle-
bar position makes a big difference if
you're six-feet tall or more.
(Top) New face
looks a bit buggish
but illuminates
really well at night.
(Above) Front
brakes aren't the
best but should be
good enough for
new riders.
