VOLUME ISSUE JANUARY , P81
I
t's the question our industry has
seemingly been grappling with for
ages: how do you make a capable
off-road bike with an approachable
seat height? How do you allow an
easy reach to the ground without
sacrificing ground clearance and
overall chassis performance? As
it is, so many small-displacement
dual-sport motorcycles have butter-
soft suspension, and simply chop
-
ping the suspension will result in
less travel, leaving you to bottom
out at every bump in the road, right?
This was the suspicion in the back
of my head as I attended the Kawa-
saki launch of the all-new KLX230
S. After all, this was not actually a
new model, per se, but rather a low
seat-height variant.
Yet from the first night of the
launch, at a fireside chat with Ka-
wasaki marketing and R&D mem-
bers, it became clear that there was
more to this model. Far more time
and effort were put into this design
than a simple suspension lowering
job that you can often find from a
local suspension shop. You know
the one, swap out the link and raise
the fork tubes in the triple clamp.
Done. In cases like these, not only
is the overall geometry not taken
into account, but overall execution
suffers, evidenced by the fact that
your kick stand is now too long.
BY JEAN TURNER I PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEVIN WING
LOWERING
EXPECTATIONS
