Why I Hate Tech on Motorcycles - Honda Africa Twin Review

Come on. This video is brought to you by Defender. If you've ever found yourself in deep water needing a bit of help, then maybe copy and save that link below. Call that deep water? It's like 300 feet. It's where BC halibut are supposed to live, allegedly. But frankly, I'd be astounded if I even found flounder out here in Howe Sound in a sound pounder when no one's around. More likely to run aground with the water all brown and my sounder's down. Anyway, Defender sells fishing gear. You know, one of the reasons I started free diving and just shooting fish in the face is because all I do out here is lose tackle. Defender's got Penn, Daiwa, Shimano, all the big brands, plus a bunch of obscure stuff too, so professional, serious anglers can get everything they need and soak in chumps like me for when I inevitably snag. It's big. Must be a Africa Twin. Could be rock bottom Honda for sure. See how Ryan's doing with his snag. Now, before this became U49, it was a Honda Africa Twin, the bike I first reviewed in 2016. Back when riding around in asbestos mines still seemed like a good idea. Anyway, we concluded that the then brand new Africa Twin was the best adventure bike off-road and the worst one on it. The simple reason is the same now as it was then. Africa Twins are sprung more like a big dirt bike than any of the other tankers. 9 inches up front and 8.7 in the rear, while GSs and MV4s are skulking around the mid 7s. Tall springs make for a tall ground clearance too, nearly 10 inches, thanks in no short part to the dry sump engine that leaves no oil pan hanging underneath. All while Vstrom 1050s bogged down at 6.5 inches, and Tigers have been known to scrape against certain taller species of marmot. It's also very easy to cheat enduro skills on an Africa Twin by putting your feet down, since it's a mere 5 inches between the legs. Not that there's anything wrong with that, except there is. See, Honda shaved the gas tank to 18.8 liters to make that seat so narrow. Realistically, you're using about 15 liters before panicking to find a gas station every 250 kilometers or every hour and 45 minutes at highway pace. If the bike can't outlast an episode of the Bro Rogan in Sufferance, can you really call it a Grand Tourer? But for better or worse, the Africa Twin does deserve its CRF1100L model designation for really being set up like a big dirt bike. There are subtle gnarlities too. Most people feel confident sliding an Africa Twin since it carries its 510 pounds relatively low, though I admit Honda did some annoying engineering to make that weight distribution happen, like shoving the battery and emasculating screwdrivers length into the engine crevice. Even more atypical is their unicam system. Do you see how the valve cover slants down on the foreside? That's because there is no exhaust cam in an Africa Twin. Honda uses the single intake cam to bump these rocker arms that actuate the exhaust valves too. That lets Honda shave a bit off of the exhaust side of the head so the engine can be set lower down in the frame and is also lighter up top for the missing camshaft. But unicam also means that you have to do shim adjusters on the normal side and screw adjusters on the rocker side, which is a little bit funny. Of course, no one cares because the Africa Twin enables the most off-pavement frivolity you can get with 100 horsepower. No one cares at all in 2016. ****. See, the recent decade has not been kind to Honda. A whole class of middleweights arrived ready to squeeze their lemons. Desert Xs make over 100 horsepower now. F900s, KTM 890s, Nordens. The Kovei 800 makes 100 hp for 100 pounds less weight, leaving Honda like Blackberry in the 2010s. A market leader that suddenly finds themselves in the bottom third below a bunch of skinny bitch copycats. And while the off-road ranking has tumbled, the on-road lackluster hasn't gotten any shinier. I know Honda tweaked the engine and chassis and suspension since 2016, but it feels exactly as vague as I remember, like riding on slush. I've always suspected that Honda purposely weakens their front brake bite to compensate for divingly cushy springs. As a result, the Africa Twin rocks fore and aft like a playground toy. It's plenty comfortable. I'd don't ask me to catch in the twisties a GS, or a Multi, or a Tiger, or a Versys, or a V-Strom, or even a Desert X. The only big adventure bike I'd be confident about catching in the corners is the KTM Super Adventure, and that's only because I can play the tortoise and simply wait for it to blow up. But that is something, isn't it? Because after 121,000 sales, the Africa has the fewest warranty issues of any adventure bike. And it looks very exciting. And dealerships cannot keep these on the floor for $18,000 because Honda has spent the last decade not massively re-engineering it, but re-teching it to be the most featureful option for your dollar. And that's why motorcycle companies love adding tech so much nowadays. It lets them stay competitive in the rapidly changing segments without actually having to redesign anything. You just buy a new dongle from Bosch every few years and plug it in. Everything begins with the new ride-by-wire throttle. Making the connection between your wrist and your fuel injectors electric lets a computer interpret between them, like cruise control. No hand input, the bike holds its speed. Another easy example is power modes. None of these change the maximum 101 horsepower, but they change how much throttle roll it takes to get there. Then we have the new six-axis inertial measurement units, so X, Y, and Z, but there are also sensors that extend into the spiritual and sexual realms. So the bike knows the state of your soul and whether your loins are aflame. Just kidding, it's actually an accelerometer in X, Y, Z plus a gyroscope in X, Y, Z. So the bike knows exactly where it is, but also where it's going to be, enabling things like wheelie control. A more impactful opportunity is lean-sensitive ABS. All ABS systems can allow various amounts of slip, but only lean-sensitive ones know to dial it back as the bike rolls over, since tires have less grip to spare when they're braking and turning. Lean-sensitive traction control works the same way, allowing more slip upright for maximum drive, but less slip when turning so you don't low-side. Lean-sensitive engine braking is even more overlooked, because suddenly rolling off the throttle will throw out the rear just as much as suddenly rolling on, so three modes let me find that sweet spot for inclement surfaces. Without all this tech, I'd be spinning my wheels out here, but with it, I can keep going despite the snow, despite the water, despite the- This is the problem with tech on motorcycles. To give riders six knobs to turn with six positions each, you need 36 nested menus, and that's only possible with a touchscreen TFT. Honda tried to give some features physical buttons, but that's a disaster in itself. Enter is backwards, and back is forward, and forward is on the bottom, and reverse is up. It's unusable for a thumb. Even if it weren't, I still can't see, and therefore can't use the tech settings without this. And this isn't waterproof. You can drop your iPhone in the toilet, but never a motorcycle dash, because it has to interface with 32 different prongs. Honda does surround these multi-plugs with rubber boots, but they can never be watertight either. See, a screen this large, running significant computing power that has to sit in the sun all day, is going to overheat if you seal these airtight. Honda already had a massive recall on their overheating TFTs, as porous as they are. If you own an Africa Twin, I'd actually be careful washing it, because it's entirely possible to hose your own dash, which costs... See, it's not just one dash, it's two, because the Africa Twin enables Apple CarPlay. No motorcycle company will ever do navigation better than Apple, but the reason only a few Hondas and Harleys offer it is because it takes over your entire screen. It's not actually legal to have no speedometer or odometer showing, meaning you need a whole secondary screen, which is also permeable and also expensive. When I tried in vain to open the circuit boards and dry them out, I noticed that they were labeled Garmin all over the inside. But the fact that Honda buys these in for $200 won't stop them from charging you $5,000. And there's no way around that, because TFT dashes are passkey. This holds your VIN, your odometer, so only a dealership can unlock it and pair it with a specific motorcycle. And it's poignant that to remove the TFT, you also have to take off the side panel and reveal the snorkel. On old adventure bikes, you could push yourself as deep as you wanted to go. Worst case scenario, you tip the water out of the exhaust, pull the plugs, squirt it out of there, dry the filter, and laugh all the way home. But nowadays, we have to be cognizant of this invisible fine line between having a fun day and having your bike unusable and financially totaled. Thanks for watching.