KTM 790 Adventure R vs Husqvarna 701 + KTM 790 on trails with Dork in the Road Part 1

Well, hello friends. Welcome back to For the Love of Knob's channel. My name is Nathan and we are here with Dork on the Road doing a little motovlog today. We are out at his local stomping grounds getting out on the bikes. It is pretty close to freezing right now. 37 degrees according to the KTM temperature indicator and quite chilly. I've been getting some questions on the 790 so hoping to talk a little bit today about why I transitioned from 701 the Husqvarna to the KTM 790 Adventure R. The 790 is 460 some odd pounds without any luggage. It definitely feels all 460 pounds. The 701 as to contrast it is 320. I think the spec is 326 pounds or something and it feels like a big dirt bike. It is easier by a large margin to pick up. That's its strength is that it's a light bike and it's easy to manage when it comes to throwing it around off-road and the feeling of a dirt bike. You know the 790 feels heavy and big and it feels like a full-size adventure bike. That's kind of the difference. Let's talk about why I decided to switch from the 701 to a 790. Love the 701. It's a fantastic motorcycle. I would totally recommend it to you if you're looking for dual sport that can do kind of a bit of everything. If you're not going hundreds and hundreds of miles it's great for BDRs but because it's a compromise it does show its limitations in some. Oh this is gonna be fun. Yeah. Are we doing this one? You want to? Yeah I'll do it. Okay I want to get footage of you doing it. All right. I think this side's the move. The left side? I feel better about the left. Well that means I'm doing the right then. Okay. Piece of cake. I like doing things off-road. Off-road riding is fun. You guys should try it if you haven't tried it before. Bike's looking sexy. All right here comes Dork for his hill climbing opportunity. 790 versus 701. That was a little side detour. A couple of things. If you're considering the 701, fuel range can be an issue. The tank is small. I think it's three gallons something like that. Get about 130 miles of fuel range which on a BDR that's pushing that's pushing the limit. Sometimes you might have to carry extra gas you know like a giant lube gas bag or something like that. Love you guys giant lube. The tank is also the subframe which brings me to the second point about the 701 is that if you're putting a lot of luggage on the back you really have to be careful with how much weight you put on that rear tank subframe. It doesn't actually have a steel support system in there so I never had a problem but I never pack more than about 45 pounds of luggage. The risk is of course either breaking the tank or the mounting bolts off which brings me to the next point of why the 701 got replaced. Actual luggage carrying capacity even with an upgraded rear spring the bike just doesn't like more than about 50 pounds of luggage on the back. It doesn't handle that weight very well if you're doing fast technical riding. It kind of the tail is wagging it as a highway bike if you're planning on doing multi-state trips the bike is I would probably say comfortable for about a hundred miles stretch at a time with an aftermarket seat. Get off the bike stretch do another hundred miles and then maybe maybe two three hundred miles is about the limit of a day on that bike. The seating position is like a dirt bike it feels like a big dirt bike the seat is real high the pegs are high the bars are super close just not a lot of room to stretch out. You could get bar risers and aftermarket seats and lower the pegs and stuff but you know then you're talking about changing the bike's geometry around enough to where it's not as functional off-road. Let's talk about 790's strengths. Kind of all those things all those disadvantages that the 701 has. The fuel range, the luggage capacity, the comfort on the highway those are its strengths. 790 is really good on the highway you can carry luggage it doesn't really care too much about 40-50 pounds on the back. Great fuel range. I would say all in all it's a big heavy bike but it's a really capable bike both for highway travel, comfort, oh I almost forgot the cruise control that's that's an amazing development. I bought this bike to travel with. I bought this bike to do multi-state you know highway trips combined with riding a BDR in that state and then riding home. Oh we are going up. Oh this bike has so much power. Okay I can't get too close to Dork because he's kind of flinging some rock. We are above the clouds look at this. Wow all those clouds came in at the exact wrong time. It's still cool to be above the clouds look at that. Jefferson and his two sisters don't look too bad either. I mean you can't see it on the camera at all. Well you know we're doing something serious if there's trials bikes on the trail. That was awesome. Man I need to close my shield but oh man look at those clouds that is fantastic. It's like a little white fluffy blanket. I got a picture of this. That is fantastic. I got to get a picture of you. I probably can't see this on camera but the mountains are beautiful and the clouds boy that is just really cool they're just hanging there. Man this is why we come out here and do this stuff. Wow this fog it's really cool it's a shining through it. Those trees are really cool. This is fun. Trail riding the 790. Hell yeah. I don't know if I have a sticker. I certainly don't have a license plate yet. Oregon is really behind on issuing plates and stickers and all kinds of stuff. Oh these Tusk D-Sport tires for a roughly 50-60 dollar tire. I've got them on front and back and they are really good. Lots of traction so far. Hopefully I don't eat my words and show you guys a little wipe out here but oh my gosh. Very confidence-inspiring tire. So on my way down here the 80 miles on the highway I was doing 70 miles an hour. Perfect. They were fine. All right still feeling out the 790 on these new tires and wheels. Whoa that little section was slippery. The gravel just slowed down a little bit here. I'm not trying to impress anybody. I'm trying to stay alive not get hurt. Getting hurt out here would not be fun. I don't have a truck to take me back to the hospital or something. It is amazing. It's heavy. You feel it. You feel the weight but it's amazing how capable this bike is. It doesn't love the gravel. Front end likes to dig in a bit but it is a very capable bike. I don't know if you guys heard that but he said no black diamonds for me. I was like thank god. I don't really want to do a black diamond on a 790. Not today anyway. I've led us into more technical territory than I meant to. That looks exciting. Okay it's fun. See how it does. I'm sure fine. Oh yeah. Beast kick. Oh it's not too bad. It looks worse than it is. Actually I don't know what it looks like on camera but it looks to me worse than it is. Where are we going? Doesn't look like there's a road here but there is somewhere around here. I don't know if I can keep my shield down. It is getting fogged up pretty easy. There it goes. Beast kick. I want to wait till he's at the top. Here we go. A little creek. Oh okay. It's slipperier than it looks. It's slipperier than it looks. That log. Not my friend. That little tree branch. There was like a little two-inch branch right but it was like 45 to the trail. I was like well we're going over it. The front tire went sideways. Typewriter shuttle action. Yeah exactly. Good fun. It's like a web of mud. That was fun. Thanks for taking me along and showing me around. Thanks for being willing to try the interesting stuff. I gotta get footage of you doing that stuff. See if I can figure out which way we came from. I think it goes through here. It's this weird combination of like clay mud in some spots and like loamy mud there and really rocky. Like this is that clay stuff that's just knotty, slippery. And then loose rocks. Creek crossing. It's got a good variety. All right. Cool. It's fun to get out and play in January. Around here in the Pacific Northwest, usually January is a pretty... January, February. Pretty difficult months to... Well that's the cool thing about Oregon. There's just so much of this. We've got so much wilderness, woodland, forest, mountains, high desert, coastal. It's a great state. It's a huge state too. You know the more that I explore it the more I don't realize that gosh I haven't even seen it all. I want to thank Dork on the Road so much for having me along for this sort of impromptu ride that we put together. If you guys haven't subscribed to Dork on the Road's channel make sure you go on over there. There's going to be a link in the description to his channel. He's doing a lot of good stuff and we had a good time. If you like the video go ahead and drop a like on it and in the comment section below let me know if you like the motovlogging style. If this is interesting stuff for you. I want to thank you guys so much for coming along on this ride. It was super fun to get to hang out with you guys and hang out with Dork on the Road and ride the 790 on some crazy stuff. If you're not already subscribed yet please consider subscribing to the channel. We really really appreciate that. It helps us grow our channel and do fun stuff like this and share it with you guys. I want to thank you guys so much and we'll see you guys on the next ride. Peace. I'm good. Okay. I'm just stupid. How the hell? Hey. You found the stump. Got the ass ahead of me. Nice.