KTM 450 EXCF Six Days 2013

Yet another project bike to play with. I've been thinking about a KTM 450/500 as an adventure bike base for awhile now. I tossed up for a long time between the KTM 690, 500 & 450 before eventually settling on the 690. I've now completed 60k miles on that 2014 690, so I can say quite easily what its pros and cons are. 

The 500's are really hard to find and when I have found them, they have sold within a week, usually before I can get to go see them. Their selling price also seems to start at around £4500. Whereas 450's are much more common and cheaper. 

On the KTM forums and in general chat, the 450 has a shorter bore stroke and as such is a bit more punchy/revvy than the 500. They are also raced a fair bit in the UK, so finding one that hasn't been thrashed to within an inch of its life is a challenge. 

The one I've just bought seems to have been reasonably looked after upto its last owner. He didn't register it and says he just rode it with his son in the local woods. Who knows for sure. The bike showed some of its lack of short term care with some kind of sticky clay/chalk stuck to all the metal and a generally grubby look about it. But underneath that, it looked pretty good and at £2500, seemed a sensible price given what it needed.

Once I got it home and stripped down, I found the following; It hadn't been serviced, washed or fettled for maybe the whole year of his ownership. It had the wrong air filter in, both brake discs were heavily worn, the rear calliper piston is missing its ceramic cap, (the bit that butts against the brake disc). Both brakes and clutch haven't been bled in a long time, so the fluid is knackered. The front wheel has a hell of a ding in it and the rear shock lower bearing had gone. 

However, the engine & suspension was sweet. It started on the button, it soon warmed up and sounded nice. It felt perky and responsive, which made me think that the recorded 220 hrs might be about right. The suspension clearly needs a service, but it was plush, with both rebound and compression feeling about right for my weight. The plastics weren't in bad condition for a 2013 bike and were the original ones. Engine and frame numbers all matched to the V5 and no dodginess was found with an online vehicle check. 

I had to buy some of the parts for this service which cost around £250, but things like discs, fluids, replacement bolts/nuts and various other parts, I had in a box from the days of owning the 350 EXCF's. I ended up taking about three weeks to strip, clean and sort each problem out. I changed out all the fluids, filters and replaced the missing air filter cage and installed the correct oiled air filter. A fresh spark plug went in out of habit. Next up was to strip out the swing arm, check all the other bearings and re-grease as needed. As I stripped down the wheels to replace wheel bearings and brake discs, I found the front rim with a slight buckle. The tyres and the mousses were in reasonable condition though, so no cost to replace these, just re-lube the mousses. 

The lower rear shock bearing was next. After a good hammering session to get the old spherical bearing out, the shiny new one that replaced it made the suspension even better. At the same time, I cleaned and checked the rest of the shock out. At some point, I'll send both front and rear suspension off for a proper service, but it can wait for now. I'll just change the fork oil for some fresh stuff. 500 ml of 5w oil and an air gap of around 120mm apparently for my weight. 

I took it for an MOT before replacing the rear shock bearing and it passed with two advisories. the dink in the front wheel and the rear shock bearing, no surprises there then. 

Next up is to change the fuel pump filters, the rear calliper piston and seals and the fork oil. Then I'll get it insured and taxed and off we go for a play. I have a 15 litre fuel tank in the shed for this and whilst it was stripped down, I tried it on. It fits really well. So long range trips are sorted already!

The plan is to make sure it is all sorted, then do a couple of weekends of trail riding with maybe some camping/touring in the Lakes. Then a Wales weekend camping trip and in June a trip to Albania with a mate who is house hunting over there. So we'll see how it goes and what mods I do to the bike to test out whether it will be a good platform for longer trips. 

2025: Post Trip Report

I've been back in the UK for about a week now. Everything is unpacked and put it away until the next trip. The Landy has had a service which has included all fluids & filters, auxiliary belt, rear brake pads and some minor little bits. It now needs two new rear tyres, so that'll get sorted soon enough. The first couple of days back in the UK were spent at a mates place, drinking a lot of wine and whiskey, then planning trips to Albania for the summer!

I'm really impressed with how the Landy has behaved as a vehicle for this trip. Its been over a lot of rough ground, some long stretches of tarmac and lots of ferries. It's just soaked everything up and kept on ploughing through though. I feel a bit of a camper van conversion coming on for future trips! There are pro's and cons to using a 4x4 vs a bike. Here's what I think... 

The Pro's;
1. Easy to park up anywhere and crawl in the back for a sleep, so less accommodation needed.
2. Carry more kit.
3. More comfy and easier to travel over longer distances.
4. Less tiring from a concentration point of view.
5. Weather protection.
6. Travel slower.

The Cons;
1. More expensive at borders, ferries etc.
2. Can't go as many places as on a bike.
3. More conspicuous. (Its a big thing to hide in the mountains or a forest).
4. Needs more kit in terms of maintenance, management etc.
5. Harder to repair in remote places.
6. Travel slower.
7. Less sense of freedom as cooped up in a metal box and no feel of air, weather etc.

In the meantime, costs for the trip work out at around £2500.00 all in. There was 7600 miles covered in total over the six weeks, so roughly £3 per mile or £57 per day.

The breakdown is:
Fuel: £1016.00
Food: £246.00
Ferries: £371.00
Tolls & Tunnels: £60.00
Accommodation: £89.00
Sundries: £215.00
Total: £1997.00

On top of the above, I also used about £500 in Tunisia. I withdrew money at a cashpoint in local currency, (Dinar) on two occasions. It is a cash based economy and virtually no receipts. I didn't bother to record my spending details whilst there to be honest. I also came out with a small amount of currency for my next trip there, which is a bit naughty as they don't allow any money back out of the country.
A full tank of fuel at 70 litres worked out around £38.00. Food was around £4 per day for me there and that was because I shopped at their supermarkets as opposed to local markets which would have made things cheaper. Their insurance was 80 Dinar for 14 days. It's a set rate for every vehicle as far as I could tell. 

Since I've been back home, its either been frozen, windy or really wet, so I've just gone back through the blog to look up some names for the films and found that Blogger has had a few melt downs whilst I've been writing the blog and posting via a phone. This is the third time this has happened. A lot of the pictures are all over the place, different formats & sizes, weird spacings, etc etc. And they were all taken on the same phone and uploaded via the same phone. Another computer based oddity. 

On top of this, I normally don't bother to allow comments on the posts as it often turns into a SPAM fest of utter crap. Blogger seems to have ignored the settings for this and allowed a load of both abusive and  sales shite. So, this may well be the time to look at other platforms once I've done the final posts for this trip. Time will tell. Its a shame as Blogger is an easy platform to use, but since Google took it on, they aren't supporting it properly it seems. 

2025 Trip Films

 As I gathered a lot of footage as I went, I've created some films into a montage of photos and film clips in a trio of films.

1. Italy & Sicily

2. Tunisia

3. Sardinia

Hope you enjoy them. Just follow the links to the YouTube page and watch at your leisure....

Sardinia: Day 6

After checking the engine oil, I left the field this morning. Once back on the main road, I decided to follow the coast north to go see if the Corsica ferry was running. There is no website for this particular ferry that I've found, so the timetable remains a bit of guesswork.

After Porto Torres, which is a main shipping port as well as a ferry terminal, there is a long line of sandy beaches running up to Valledoria. From there rocky headlands take over and the road turns inland.

I turned down to go look at Isula Rossa, which I remember as being a pretty place. The foundations are still there, the red granite, the fishing port, but it's become a heavily regulated tourist trap. I left within 10 minutes.

Cala Sairraina is old school. One cafe, a beach, red rocks and blue sea. Perfect. It was also completely empty and silent for the time I spent there. There is a lovely place for sale on the way down to the bay, but no details are on the card. 

At Capu Testa, it's possible to see the Isles des Lavezzu and the southern coast of Corsica. The chalk cliffs below Bonifatu in Corsica are home to the WW2 German U Boat pens. They were dug out of the cliffs and an old walkway still exists to go wander through them. 

The Isle Lavezzu are a reserve for protected marine and wildlife. You can get boat trips out to them from either main island and the scuba diving is stunning.

This part of Sardinia's coast is where the granite boulders can be seen. Wind and water carve them into fantastic shapes. The continue up the Corsican coast and generally form some beautiful crescent moon bays with white sand.

The ferry wasn't running until the end of Feb, so Olbia was next call. I followed the coast up past Fortezza Monte Altura near Palau. There is plenty of land and property for sale up around this area, I suspect it'll be expensive with this being a heavily touristic area. But there is no doubt that there would be worse places in the world to be. 

I passed through San Pantaleo, which is a bit of a climbing spot. Nice big granite rocks sit above the town. They stand out for miles. From there, it was a winding drive down through boulder fields to the coast and the huge bay where Olbia sits. 

Once at the ferry port, I managed to sort an overnight ferry to Livorno for 110 euros. Leaving at 22.00 and arriving at 7.00am. So food and entertainment required for another night on a ferry. 

To kill a couple of hours, the lowering sun caught the light on a huge line of cliffs. So I went to investigate. It turned out to be the island of Punta Cannone. It's basically a limestone oblong sticking out of the sea. What catches the sun is the steep lines and ridges of its too half. Impressive faces that must have some great routes on them. I also wandered around a couple of marinas looking at boats again. 

Sardinia is a beautiful place. It's much easier to travel around than Sicily and the weather has been kinder whilst I've been here. The two biggest positives are the complete lack of rubbish in every corner of the place and the clean public toilets.  Sardinians seem to take genuine pride in their island which is great to see. The rest of Italy could certainly learn a lesson here me thinks. 

Their wine is good too, so is their charcuterie,  but I never got to try much of their cheese for some reason. Hey ho. Another trip one day.