Rebuild or Part Out? Wrecked KTM Super Duke Dilemma

Today I need to decide if I want to rebuild this wrecked Super Duke or part it out, because there isn't much left of it. It didn't look quite this bad in the auction photos, so I bought it sight unseen. But when it showed up, I knew I was in trouble. I have never had a project this big before, and honestly I don't know where to start, because I am not a qualified mechanic. So either way I think I need to strip it down to see what damage is hiding, see what is usable, take a peek in that valve cover, and then make up my mind. Thank you to Insta360 for helping me capture all my rides and sponsoring this video. From looking at the auction photos, I thought this bike had high sided and barrel rolled down the road. But after seeing it in person, I'm pretty sure that it was rear ended. Judging by the exploded rear wheel, the subframe that is completely missing, and all of these dents in the fuel tank that sort of originate from the back of the bike. Now I'm no different from the next guy. I want my dream bike as cheaply as possible. But I'm willing to put the work in, and that is what attracts me to crash damaged bikes. But I've already overpaid for what is left of this 2020 1290 Super Duke. Final call. I think we're buying a Super Duke for quite a lot of money. Sold. You won the auction. Crap, I didn't mean to. So the only option might be to sell the usable parts to try and get my money back. There are also so few secondhand parts here where I live, and buying parts brand new directly from KTM costs a fortune. But beyond that, I already have two main concerns. The first thing I'd like to know is if this bike even starts. However, there is a hole in the valve cover, the wiring harness, and fuel injection module is destroyed. The block-off plates here are missing, and the battery was completely ripped off. So that is not happening today, and it's going to take a considerable amount of work to even get to that point. My second biggest concern is the swingarm and frame. I have no idea if it's even possible or not, but one of my concerns is that the swingarm is bent from the impact, or that the frame itself is damaged from the impact where it connects to the swingarm. But I guess at some point I have to stop procrastinating and start working. The Super Duke has been a pain to move around my workshop, but at least once it's in a million pieces, it should be easier. It even has an oil leak, and I have no idea where it's leaking from, because the only hole in the engine that I'm aware of is the valve cover, and it can't be leaking out of there. For some reason, I really want to take this destroyed rear wheel off, but the first problem is that my paddock stand doesn't fit in this swingarm. It's actually a different sized pin from my Speed Triple. I have ordered the correct size, but it's only going to get here in about three weeks time. So in the meantime, we have to make a plan. And here's the plan. I've got this threaded rod that I can slide through the axle, and then I should be able to use a regular paddock stand for the time being. That dismounted rear tyre did put up a fight, but this setup is arguably less wobbly than a proper single-sided swingarm stand anyway. If you have one, you'll know exactly what I mean. After moving some wiring out of the way, as I'm sure we all do, I also had to remove the silencer, since it's blocking the rear wheel. So this is the big ass 55mm socket that you need to take the rear wheel off of the single-sided swingarm on my Triumph. But this was not big enough for the Super Duke. I needed an even bigger 60mm socket. Now, my dad actually has one of these, so I didn't need to waste the money, except that he lives in England and I don't. So I had to buy one anyway. These nuts are torqued to 176Nm, which I used to think was a lot, but they're actually rookie numbers compared to my Triumph's 230Nm torque spec. So if you are weak like me, then rather buy the Super Duke. That was way easier than the Triumph. When I finished rebuilding my Triumph Speed Triple, I actually took it 1400km back to the mountain pass it originally crashed on to get redemption. And that is what makes these projects so satisfying. My wife and I actually turned that trip with the Triumph into our honeymoon, and it was a lot of fun to see a new place, buy a bike together. But the coolest part is that we now have all of those memories captured in 360° 8K to watch back whenever we want. I also used the X5 for off-the-bike scenarios like hiking, just with a selfie stick, and it automatically gets rid of the stick that it's mounted to. And then for on-the-bike shots, I simply clamped it to the handlebars like this. There's no faffing around wondering which angle it's filming at or trying to set it perfectly, because it's capturing everything around you. So my wife can appreciate the gorgeous scenery, and I can relive that epic road. She also doesn't really care about how my exhaust sounds, but I do, which is exactly why there is a built-in wind guard on the X5. Plus, we didn't have to worry if we accidentally broke one of these lenses by dropping the camera, because they're easily replaceable, so filming for the trip wouldn't be over. So if you have a fun trip or an epic ride planned that you'd like to capture the memories of, those are just a few reasons why I highly recommend the Insta360 X5. This is how I film all the ride videos on this channel. And you can even still get the older X4, which is 90% as good as this X5, but cheaper. And then you'll even get a free gift with your camera order, like a selfie stick, if you use my affiliate links down below. So that's the motivation behind the Super Duke, but getting the rear wheel off was a bit trickier. First, I used a floor jack to get the bike's weight off the paddock stand. But the only suitable jack point was the linkage, so I had to use one hand to stop the bike from falling over the entire time. Then I could pull the threaded rod out of the axle, kick the stand out of the way, and while still balancing the bike upright, I spun the nut off, removed the rear wheel, and finally had to get the bike back on the makeshift paddock stand. That was sketchy. What a waste of a beautiful wheel. You can see that there's even shards of glass inside the tyre. Do you think that could be from the windshield of the car that rear-ended him? If so, that must have hurt. However, I think we can reuse the tyre pressure sensor, and maybe even the valve if we're desperate. Next, I wanted to take the tank off, and with this shattered cover removed, you can really see how dented and wrinkled the tank is from behind. I'm not sure what the ECU had to do with removing the tank. I guess I got distracted. But this fake aftermarket wing had to go because it was bolted to one of the trim pieces. That's right, a wing intended for downforce was held on by one tiny bolt and velcro. Now, I am only a rocket scientist on the weekends these days, and even I know that won't work. With all of those trim pieces gone, I could access the tank mounting bolts. I also made sure to edit the part out where I forgot to disconnect the fuel pump connector, breather hoses, and wire for the keyless fuel cap. Okay, damage report update. Let's start with the good things. For starters, it has a BMC air filter, so just imagine how much money we're going to save by not having to buy one of those. Then this is the steering lock motor, and the outer plastic has a little piece sliced off. Nothing too serious. Then the ABS pump, that bracket has been damaged and dislodged. But if you look up here to this orange bracket here, that is where the fuel tank bolts to the frame. And you can see it's a little bit crooked. And if you look on the side here, the paint is actually flaking off of it. That's because when the tank got hit, this mount bent. If you look at the one on the other side here, this one is still perfectly straight. So the good news is, this is a steel frame, so you could potentially put it back in place, get it painted, and it'll look good. But who knows, I've never done anything like that before, nor can I weld. Over at the tank, I found more bad news underneath it. So after doing a bit of research, for starters, we have our fuel pump, which this connector is broken, but that's not too hard to replace. But then we have this sensor here. This is the fuel level sensor apparently, and this has been completely sheared off. So we would need to replace that, not to mention the entire tank. I think these plastic bits are designed to protect it if it falls over. That didn't really help in this case. The exhaust was really easy to remove, since someone reinstalled the stock exhaust after the crash, and only used a few bolts. But it was really heavy. What the hell? This was just hung up on the exhaust. I doubt it's important, right? Opening the airbox revealed some futuristic looking stuff. At first, I thought it might be aftermarket, since it looks kind of DIY. But I think it's just the standard second injector setup. However, I don't think being able to see your fingers through the airbox base is standard. That is definitely an aftermarket feature. My first approach was to disassemble the entire airbox, so I loosened off the velocity stacks. But since the crash had already dislodged the throttle bodies from the intakes, it was actually faster and easier to dislodge the rubber intake ducts, disconnect all the connectors and simply pull the whole assembly off as is. Even the sensor on the rear throttle body here has a crack in it. Hardly anything got away unscathed, not to mention pieces of the airbox. And then even more disturbingly, if you look down here in the intake valves, you can actually see a piece of glass sitting on the top of the valve. Fortunately, on the front cylinder here, the intake valves are closed in this position, so it hasn't fallen in, but I have no idea what got in there first. But now I have to get it out. This is exactly why you don't want a hole in your airbox. There it is. I couldn't reach it with my fingers or pliers, so I put some duct tape on the end of a screwdriver, and here it is. I hope this is the only one. I then turned my attention to the only piece left of the subframe. But to make things more interesting, the threads that were originally welded to the frame had snapped off, so I had to jam it up with a screwdriver to stop it spinning. This was welded on the back of it. Not anymore, but an easy fix if you know how to weld. A lot of the wiring was still attached to the subframe through what was left of the battery tray, so there were a few bolts to be undone to set it free. So that seemed like a good time to attempt to remove the wiring harness altogether. There was this sort of wiring housing that I removed first. Then I got rid of the fragments of battery tray that were still attached in various ways. I slowly went around the bike, disconnecting any grounds, disconnecting every connector that attached the main harness to the engine, modules or switches, and cutting every zip tie securing the wiring to the frame, or just there to make things neater. And when I went to open the lever on the ABS connector, it just shattered. I wasn't even being rough. By now, the only thing left in the way of the last few connectors was the intake duct. So with that out of the way, I officially got the main wiring harness out, and I really hope they invent wireless bikes soon because this was annoying, and I'd say it weighs about 4kg. However, it revealed my unexpected worst nightmare. The good news is that the damaged wiring harness is now out of the bike, so I can see things more clearly. The bad news is that I found frame damage, and this suggests that the frame itself is now out of alignment. You can see there where the paint is peeling. That side is all bent. I suspect the forces from the impact in the rear, especially with the single-sided swingarm, the forces went up the left-hand side of the bike, and somehow that was the weakest point. Up until that point, I'd been having fun, but with that game-changing news, all I wanted to do was stop. Yet, I hadn't even gotten to the point where I had originally expected frame damage, so I had to keep going. With the wiring gone, the only other lines in the way were the brake lines, so I disconnected all of them from the ABS pump so I could remove the front calipers and lines altogether, and then feed the rear calipers line out of the frame so it wouldn't snag when I removed the swingarm. I also had to unbolt the preload adjuster from the frame since I wanted the shock to come out with the swingarm, and all the pivot bolts going through the frame get these nice rubber covers. Then, the concept is simple. There's the swingarm pivot bolt, the bolt where the linkage attaches to the frame, and the top shock bolt that also goes through the frame. So with those all loosened, I put the bike on a front stand to make it more stable, and used the floor jack to take the weight off the swingarm. And since the engine has a pretty flat bottom, it was nice and easy. But that was the last easy thing for a few hours. You know, I was just thinking, this is my third swingarm, I'm really getting better at this, much faster than usual. And then I realised that I forgot to take the chain off. Real amateur move. For now, I just took some slack off so I can remove the front sprocket later on and don't have to break the chain right now. The shock and linkage bolts came out easily, but the swingarm pivot didn't. I started off gently tapping it since I didn't want to damage it. Then I thought it might be some fancy bolt I'd never seen before and I'd missed something. But that wasn't it. It turned out to basically be what I had feared from the start. The pivot was bent from the impact. You can see it's not centred here. I even tried a ratchet strap to see if that would take some load off of it and get it to move. I used my impact gun to spin it. And eventually I did get it to move. But not for long. In these shots it looks really easy, but it took me an hour to get it this far. And then at one point it stopped moving altogether no matter what I did. So I came up with another plan. It was clearly getting hung up on something. So I cut the head of the bolt off and hid it out back the way it came. And after about 3 hours, using every tool I own, and literal blood, sweat and tears, I got this stupid **** of a swingarm off. And now you can see why it wouldn't come out. Your eyes are not deceiving you. It really is S-shaped now. All that remained was the front end now. So naturally I had to loosen off my turn signals to get the forks out. And no, I didn't check if the forks are bent or not, because I can't stand any more bad news today. The same goes for the handlebars. But not before the hydraulic clutch line gave me attitude, since I forgot to disconnect it first. And there it is, looking pretty strange. All that remains are the clamps, a steering damper, the steering lock motor with security bolts. Then there are things like the rear sets with the rear master cylinder, and the same on this side with the kickstand. But for now, I don't think there's any reason to strip it any further, or to strip the motor out, because I can see everything that I need to see. So all that's left to inspect is this damaged valve cover. Let's open this up and see what's going on inside there. Also, I don't know what this is, but it's broken. I need another one. The one on this side is still good. That one, not so much. Luckily, that's easy with just one bolt on the ignition coil, and four bolts on the cover itself. This bike is just the gift that keeps on giving. Again, there's good news, there's bad news, but it keeps giving me damage that I just don't see coming. So the good news is, one of my fears was that this chain guide or slider went deep into the engine and I'd have to open it up to unbolt it. So the good news is, it's just these two little bolts. It's quick and easy to replace. The bad news is that it needs a new timing chain. There's an outer link on this cam chain completely missing. Other than that, I'm sure it cuts out as it crashed, judging by the fact that even the battery got ripped off of it. And I mean, the Triumph was the same. It had a hole in the crank cover. We just pulled the metal out of the engine and it ran fine. So I'm pretty sure I can do the same with this, but I've never swapped out a cam chain. But for now, I'm going to leave the cover on to stop dust getting in there. Well, as much dust as possible with that giant hole. So after everything that I've discovered here, it's pretty obvious that this is a terrible idea. But I have one problem. I've already started buying replacement parts. The fuel tank and headlights are two of the most expensive parts I'm going to need. And I managed to get these secondhand from some mystery guy who also enjoys rebuilding motorcycles. I've also ordered some parts directly from KTM. And I've even ordered parts on eBay to be sent to my parents' house in the UK, even though I have no idea how I'm going to get them here. Did you really think that I was going to give up? It's definitely not going to be a quick or easy project, but I have time and I've been keen to try a more daunting project. So subscribe if you don't want to miss it.