General reliability

• No major problem. No problem with African petrol, often of questionable quality (we got it of any colour – red, green, yellow – from jerrycans and drums).
• The engine did not burn any oil.
• After the first 50 km of serious offload we lost one fairing bolt (one of the four located close to the tank cap). However, our fear of loosing the bike on the piste piece by piece vanished quickly: no other part got loose afterwards.
• On a very stony piste, the sidestand springs got unhooked. Luckily we did not loose them, and simply hooked them back at the first stop. Not a big deal, but that can be dangerous, so it’s definitely a detail worth some fix. That’s apparently a real issue, not just bad luck: it was reported to have happened to Ugo Filosa during the Hellas Rallye.
• The air filters did not get particularly dirty. We were just two bikes, so we never had to ride in each other’s dust cloud; still, the desert calls for special attention for air filters. On the CRF, the air intakes are strategically located in a high and advanced position, so they don’t collect dust from the wheels, and don’t become clogged up. That’s good news, since removing the fairing to clean or replace the filters is a long and tedious matter on this bike. Here’s a picture of the state of one of the two filters of the CRF at the end of the trip, compared with the XRV’s filter.

Fuel consumption and mileage

Fuel range was a recurring worry for our whole trip. The tank is beautiful, but too small: for a bike pretending to be an African cruiser, 18 liters are simply not enough. There’s little room to fit extra tanks, and once we saw the complex structure of the tail and rear fairing we gave up with the idea of building custom rear tanks in time for our departure. We just fitted a 5 l Acerbis tank on the left side, which was anyhow not enough to reach peace of mind. On sand, the bike claims 9 to 15 l per 100 km. On tarmac that was 5-6 l per 100 km. Next time we’ll definitely fit large rear tanks somehow.

 Engine

The engine is there and when you need it, it delivers. Even without a chassis dynamometer, you can feel the 95 hp when riding in the sand: the XRV pales in comparison. But there’s no “big bang”, no feeling of an explosive power. It does not tear your arms off: no emotion, no adrenaline rush. Still, there’s plenty of power down there. On steep stony slopes, the bike climbs without feeling like a crazy horse, so at the end of the day our arms were thankful. Despite the impression of a smooth power output, the hps did hurt our rear tyre, which was completely over in just one week, even if we were riding rather conservatively.

Suspensions

Rims

Exhaust

Dashboard and controls

Maintenance

Construction details

• Fairings are fixed with a system that is more suited to a big scooter than for an off-road bike. They require a lot of time and care to disassemble and reassemble. This is something you definitely don’t want to have to do in the middle of nowhere. The rear fender and carrier are not modular, so that any modification (e.g. to fit large rear tanks) is problematic.
• The rear brake pedal, the gear lever and the right footpeg support are made of cast aluminum, which can easily break as a consequence of a fall (this happened to Motociclismo Fuoristrada’s testers as reported in the February 2016 issue). Old-style steel would have been a better choice as it bends without breaking. Likewise, we don’t like the cast aluminum side stand, which cannot easily extended or have a wider foot plate soldered.
• The engine’s bottom is very wide and exposed to damage (we got a small crack on the left crankcase cover due to a rock, which we repaired with epoxy the BMW way…)
• The fuel filter is integrated with the fuel pump, which is located inside the tank. Disassembling it for cleaning is a one-afternoon endeavour, and probably requires the tank to be emptied. A clogged fuel filter during a trip is thus a nightmare scenario…
• The loss of windscreen rubber fixings inside the depths of the front fairing, which we described in one of our early posts, is a sort of rite of passage every CRF1000 owner has to undertake.
• The tool box is simply ridiculous. We would jail the guy who could imagine, design and approve such a colossal failure. It’s tiny, it’s uncomfortable, and to open it you need a hex key that by logic should stay inside it. Getting the hex key under the seat, disassembling the box and reassembling it afterwards is too impractical for an offroad trip, where tools are used on a daily basis.
• As already mentioned, the tank is small. The front fender is too close to the wheel (as actually on all modern bikes in this market segment). We think the front brake lines are a bit too exposed.

Accessories

We fitted Honda’s original crashbars, since they were the only ones readily available when we left in February. They’re very expensive compared to aftermarket ones, but we eventually liked them: they are made of a single piece (unlike all other competitors), and are very light. They don’t form a very rigid system, which is disappointing at first, but that can possibly be an advantage. We used the bars to fasten two bags in the beginning, and two 5 l plastic tanks for fuel later on. Apart for scratches, they did their job well. Aesthetically they are questionable, but we can say that they worked fine.
We fitted some generic handlebar risers and cheap Acerbis closed handguards. We did not have time to look for find perfect solutions, and we’ve to say that those we used don’t fit very well.
Since we did not modify the suspensions we did not have to extend the side stand, which would have been problematic given it’s made of aluminium. We just added a larger footplate, bolted on two holes drilled in the original foot.
We also enlarged the footpegs, which are too small and short, soldering an hand-crafted iron extension.
(More details on the bike preparation can be found on the technical section and in this post).

The final verdict