Living With KTM Duke 390 BS-IV (2017)

[sacbiker]

Same here

Only Japanese

I finally managed to remove the rear mud guard of the bike since one allen bolt rounded off from right side with the help of a friend.

Later, the wheel was removed and taken to replace the rear tyre with Ceat Zoom Rad again for the second time. The last rear tyre lasted about 13K-14K before going fully bald.
The new tyre has indeed made a huge change on the bike's character.

This is a circumference of the new tyre is considerably more than the old tyre. So, it's as if the gearing has been changed. The bike feels less jerky in low end RPM. My bike was having a hard time hitting 103kmph in 3rd gear and I initially thought it would be clutch plate slipping. But, now that the plates are fine, my guess is that it was the worn out tyre causing this.
While at it, I also replaced the rear brake pads since the old pads were down to the last 25%.

 

[sacbiker]

Update on using Motul 7100 after several years of using other oils.
As previously written in this thread, 7100 used to mysteriously disappear without any trace. I have used Shell, Gulf, and Castrol oils and they all were far better with oil consumption with the Castrol showing almost 0 drop in levels despite running it for 3500 km.

Since I did the timing chain replacement and valve clearance check from outside, they used Motul 7100 again in this bike as they had no other oils in stock.

Yesterday, I got stuck in crawling traffic for 15 minutes. With the summer temperatures soaring close to 40 deg here, the bike got so hot and the temperature gauge went 1 bar higher than normal, which haven't happened in years. Soon, the dash threw a low oil pressure light. I blipped the throttle a few times and the low oil pressure light disappeared. This happened a few times before I was out of the congestion and the warning never came back.
On reaching home, I checked the oil level and Lo and behold, as expected the oil level was below minimum level.
This bike has run only 1000 km and the already about 200ml + oil have disappeared. This is in line with my previous experiences with the Motul 7100.
After 8 years of trial and error with my own bike and other bikes in my friend circle, I have conclusively came to the conclusion that the Motul 7100 oil is not good for the KTM 390 or any other engine which runs hot. The noack volatility of the oil is poor and it gets evaporated and gets sucked into the throttle body via PCV and burn in the combustion chamber. I am not going to use Motul oils ever in any of my vehicles again.