The new 2022 Kawasaki KLR650 is the best KLR ever. Here's why. (detailed changes)

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] there has been a lot of criticism lobbed at this bike kawasaki's brand new for 2022 totally redesigned klr 650 and the criticism goes something like this kawasaki should have brought it into the modern world of competitive adventure bikes by lowering the weight giving it better suspension adding a twin cylinder adding a six gear and more electronics however the reality is if they had done that the price would have increased dramatically and possibly even exceeded everyone's kind of current favorite affordable adventure bike yamaha's ten array 700. what i want to show you in today's short video is a little bit of a different opinion i want to show you the changes that kawasaki has made to the new klr because when you read the press materials when you watch some of the press launch videos from the other journalists out there you don't quite get the full picture of all the changes that kawasaki did to this and how they add up to really make it a much better motorcycle for the way the average person is going to use it the klr remains the really only choice for an affordable full-featured big bore adventure bike because it simply doesn't compete with motorcycles like suzuki's dr 650 or honda's xr650l those bikes are more dirt oriented they're older fashion bikes although they have their place as people have pointed out in the comments but they don't have the touring capabilities the large gas tank the large windshield the large fairing the led lighting the comfortable seat the rear rack they don't have the features that this bike does for the same price they simply cannot compete with it for somebody who's going to travel while there are other alternatives out there ktm has a 390 adventure honda has a cb500x there's a royal enfield himalayan there's kawasaki's own versus 300x which is the parallel twin engine i am going to have a video comparing the klr in terms of features and specs and how it rides to those bikes but you're going to have to wait a few more weeks for that what i want to show right now is why i believe kawasaki did the right thing with the klr and how they made it a far superior motorcycle for the way the average klr rider is going to ride it here's what i mean by the average klr rider the five or ten percent of you who want to do hardcore off-road trails with your klr you are not the people that kawasaki is worried about sorry to have to tell you that but they are worried about the average buyer and the average buyer is somebody who commutes during the week and on the weekends maybe they go on some light off-road adventuring or maybe they use the bike to tour there's also going to be a group of people who look to this bike as a good platform for around the world type travel and personally if i was doing around the world type travel if i was lucky enough to do something like that this would probably be in my top three choices for a bike to do something like that on so enough with the intro let's delve into some of the features and let me show you why this bike is so much better than the gen 1 and the gen 2 klrs let me start this by addressing the elephant in the room the literal elephant in the room in this discussion yes the klr keeps gaining weight every time they change it so it gained around 20 or 25 pounds when they went from the gen 1 to the gen 2 it gained another 25 pounds unfortunately when they went from the gen 2 to this bike the gen 3 bike of course that's comparing apples to apples if you look at the bikes without abs and without the extra bags and lights and stuff that this adventure model has here's what i want to say about the weight first of all i honestly cannot notice the difference in weight now it could just be that the center of gravity is maybe a little bit different or the gen 2 this that i had in the gen 1's they had so much extra stuff on them that they weighed as much as this or i just can't notice it because it's not that big of a difference i don't know but i'm telling you riding it and pushing it around the garage doing filming doing the stuff i'm doing with it can't tell the difference in weight so maybe that'll help you a little bit there if you're thinking about getting one the other point about the weight in my opinion is that all the stuff i'm about to talk about is why it gained weight and i think that the improvements they've made to the motorcycle to make it a better motorcycle for everybody is definitely worth the small gain and weight and the fact that they kept the price the same is really incredible because most manufacturers would take the opportunity to bring the bike up market and increase the price but kawasaki said no we need to make this the adventure bike to keep this the adventure bike for the average person who you know can afford 6 500 or 7 thousand dollars but not 10 000 15 000 20 000 so i think it's great that they did that so the first reason i think this klr is the best klr ever is fuel injection i think that's probably the biggest and most noteworthy change and the reason that fuel injection is really important is that it increases reliability because you have a lot less going on you don't have carburetor jets that clog up you don't have issues with traveling at different elevations right so going from sea level to 10 000 feet the bike is going to run just about the same you're still going to have a drop in power because that's the law of physics air is less dense at those high altitudes but the bike will start normally and run normally even at high elevation without having to worry about changing jetting in the carburetor fuel injection also increases the bike's efficiency so i'm noticing about 50 to 55 miles a gallon maybe a little bit better on this gen 3 bike whereas with my experience owning a lot of the different gen 1 and gen 2 klrs is that they would get between 40 45 maybe high 40s if they were tuned really well so this is a 5 to 10 mile per gallon increase over those old bikes which extends the driving range the next reason i think this new klr is better than ever before is that they've made the frame stronger and more rigid you can notice the increased rigidity when you're riding the bike to the twisties or off road you can definitely notice it doesn't have that kind of noodly feel the other big thing is that if you're a klr person or you've gone on the forums you might know that the earlier klr's had a really nasty habit of breaking the subframe bolt so the subframe bolts would actually sheer off under excessive weight which most kill our riders a lot of killer riders do they load up a lot of weight on the back passengers luggage touring and the subframe the two-piece subframe the bolts would actually break and there was a lot of upgrade kits to try to address that we don't have to worry about that anymore on the new bike it's a one-piece much more rigid frame to make it stronger let's talk a little bit about the the way that they improve the handling and the stability of the bike so they've raked out the suspension from 28 degrees up to 30 degrees of rake so by increasing the rake they're changing the caster angle and essentially they're making the bike have a little bit more stability at higher speeds and i notice that right away even though the old kill r was very stable off-road and on the street this new one feels very very planted it has a very very stable feeling on dirt roads and also going through the twisties on the highway or going down the freeway they've also changed the suspension by making the springs a little bit stiffer and changing the damping a little bit so it's still a very basic suspension with very limited adjustments the forks are totally non-adjustable the rear shock has adjustable preload and adjustable rebound damping which does have an effect and you should tune in those settings if you get one of these bikes so they've made the suspension better it feels a little firmer a little bit more controlled but i still will tell you it's still way too undersprung for the way most people are going to ride it and the what the average person weighs in the luggage they're going to carry the springs are too weak and you're going to have to still upgrade that the other change they made to the handling is that they lengthen the swing arm so lengthening the swing arm is another attempt to make the bike more stable and give it a little bit better handling so they've they've lengthened it by i think about 30 millimeters which is quite a bit and it just adds to the increased stability that you feel when you ride it let's talk about the lighting for a second so i'll put the video here but the the lighting on this bike is one of the best that i've seen on any modern motorcycle and i've been riding a lot of different high-end bikes these days very fortunate to do that and these driving lights these extra lights that the adventure model has are very effective and the main beams are also very effective although they were pointed way too high i did have to aim them down by using the screw adjusters but they're very very good light so that was a great improvement again that may have been something that added weight but they managed to do it without increasing the cost and it greatly increases your safety of driving at night the old klrs did not have the best headlights the gen 1 headlights were absolutely a joke and downright dangerous the gen 2 headlights were a big improvement but the gen 3 blows them both away the next thing that i think makes the klr a lot better than the old klr's is that the fuel tank has a more usable volume and have other reviewers have tested this and i've been testing this myself too and i can confirm that you can actually get around six gallons out of the tank now whereas before it was more like it seemed like it was a five and a half gallon tank now you get that whole six gallons so if you combine that with the increased miles per gallon the uh 50 to 55 miles per gallon i talked about you're talking about a real world range of on the low end 250 miles on the high end more like 300 miles it's wonderful to have that this is one of the longest range bikes on a single tank of fuel that i've ridden lately with the exception of course of my gsa which has that huge eight gallon tank another thing that really no one else talked about is they've changed the way the battery is positioned so when you take off the side panel over here and i'll put a video of this here it's easier to get to the battery terminals because they mounted it like lengthwise in the bike instead of having to pull it out they've also upgraded the battery to be a maintenance-free battery so on the old klr's a lot of people would spill the water out or the acid out when they tipped it over or they would never check it and the battery would go dry and it would die and they wouldn't be able to start their bike now you don't have to worry about that so hopefully it'll give you a nice long life and you never have to open it and add water to it moving around to the front of the bike let's talk about the wind protection so a lot of kl riders use their bike for long distance touring and it's a good bike for that surprisingly the windshield on the gen 3 is vastly superior to either the gen 2 or the gen 1 and again i know from experience because i have a lot of miles on those older klrs they've made the fairing the whole fairing wider and more effective more aerodynamic they've put a very aerodynamic and nice looking windshield which i personally find is better in the high position than the low position i have it in a high position here this spoiler is not stock i just i'm testing this right now and it is very effective it's a pue's clip-on spoiler the medium size if you're interested because i know people will ask makes the wind protection on this bike with the spoiler like as good as my gsa but even without the spoiler and the stock form the wind protection is very very good with minimal buffeting and that's wearing a dual sport helmet so good job kawasaki on finally figuring out the aerodynamics a little bit better all right coming down here there's a couple things i want to talk about they've increased the size of the axle so the actual diameters are wider so that for more stability more rigidity let's talk about the brakes um the brakes were a very sore point for previous klr's especially the gen ones which had downright dangerous brakes because they were so bad they've put on a larger rotor so they've gone up to a 300 millimeter rotor on the gen 3 which is better they've also on the rear brake they've made they've changed the piston or not the piston inside the caliper and they've also made the rotor uh thicker for better heat dissipation i guess or a better strength so overall the changes they made to the brakes the brakes are a noticeable improvement from the gen 2. they're still not great to be honest but they're at least like acceptable they still feel a bit wooden they're still a bit spongy but they're they're okay i think you could get by if you were riding two up with a passenger a lot you might want to consider some sort of braking upgrade still let's talk about what they did to improve some of the other comfort abilities of the bike so they've put rubber mounting on the foot pegs they've also rubber mounted the handlebar so what they're doing there and it's working because i've been riding this is definitely smoother than the gen twos they're reducing the vibration that the engine transmits to the rider so the rubber mounts and the foot pegs isolate your feet and legs from the vibrations from the single cylinder and the rubber mounted handlebars from your arms and your upper body and they do a good job at doing that in terms of the seat here they've made the seat wider they've changed the shape they've changed the padding and it's one of the most comfortable stock seats that i've experienced on any uh modern motorcycle so good job there kawasaki with the seat and this is the bike that i would not hesitate to take off for a cross-country trip there's a few more changes that you can't really see from the outside one of the other big upgrades that they've done to separate it from the old klrs they've increased the alternator or the standard the charging capacity the electrical capacity of the bike from 18 to 26 amps what they're saying is that even if you're running all the lights and stuff that the bikes come comes with you still have about 80 watts left over to power things like uh heated grips or heated uh vast heated riding gear or whatever you want to use so that's a great improvement from the old bike another thing that you can't see but you will experience when you ride is that they've made the transmission uh they've revised the internals of the transmission and also the clutch and one of the first things i noticed when riding this gen 3 for the first time is that it shifts a lot smoother like dramatically smoother shifting and no more sort of mischiefs or false neutrals that i experienced a lot on the older klr so good job there even though it's still a five speed they've made the transmission a lot smoother one other thing they've done that you can't really see and honestly it's a little bit hard to feel but they've changed the cam profiles um and in order to get a little more mid-range power so combined with the fuel injection and slightly different cams the bike has a little bit better acceleration but you'd kind of be hard-pressed to tell it still feels kind of like the same old klr acceleration which is to say pretty slow another thing i'd be remiss if i didn't mention is that you can now get the klr with abs for an extra 300 and an extra four pounds in weight which i think is a small price to pay for the safety of abs you can add abs to your klr the downside is that it doesn't have an off switch but if you want to learn more about the abs on the klr and how you can disable it go watch my video which i'll link here in the card and down in the description about the abs system on the klr 650. my vote is that i would 100 only get the klr with abs because it's a huge safety improvement for riding on the road so my argument is and let me know if you disagree with me down below in the comments my argument is that kawasaki has done a good job of realizing how the average klr rider uses their bike and have catered the improvements to them and i think that's you know obviously the smart business decision and the smart decision that's going to benefit the riders who actually buy these things so while initially i think a lot of us were underwhelmed when they came out with the revised specs and the improvements to the bike i think after some of us have spent more time riding it more time looking at it and appreciating what they've done we really can understand that you know what kawasaki kind of gets it like how people are using it touring commuting light off-road riding around the world trips that they've really tried to improve the bike for the next 5 10 15 years for those kinds of riders did they make it a better dirt bike no absolutely not i would argue its off-road capabilities are they haven't reduced from they haven't gone down from the gen 1 or the gen 2 but they haven't improved it either and like i said i couldn't notice the extra weight although your mileage may vary on that are there issues with the klr yeah there's quite a few actually and we're going to have videos covering that so please subscribe if you haven't already but just to make it brief the duhiki which is the counter balancer tensioner system is still a problem it's still not going to be able to properly tension the counterbalance or chain and have detailed videos about that oil consumption is still a potential issue because they still have a really bad piston uh design for oil control which i have a video either it's already been published or publishing very soon about that so stay tuned and the suspension like i mentioned is very very soft which leads you to bottoming off-road a lot but if you're riding mostly on the street or commuting or you're not charging that hard off-road through dips and ruts and things like that then i don't you might not have a problem with the suspension spring rate so i think to sum up the klr is not intended to compete with the more expensive more powerful adventure bikes it's designed to be the everyman's adventure bike and you know what maybe the truth is maybe it's not even an adventure bike in the way that those other bikes are it doesn't have the level of performance so what it's still an incredibly utilitarian comfortable motorcycle that is going to carry people from everything their daily commute to round the world adventures to riding back country discovery routes whatever it might be and they're gonna get it done and you can go anywhere on this that you could on your ktm 890 your yamaha t7 your whatever fill in the blank fancy adventure bike you're going to go anywhere that those people can on this bike you're just going to be going a little bit slower but you know what at the end of the day you might have the last laugh because by slowing down you might get to see more of the scenery and just enjoy riding a little bit more instead of always having to you know try to go as fast as possible so there's a lot to be said for the klr i think they did a great job in updating it it's not without its weaknesses which we're going to talk about very soon but anyway let me know what you think are you going to sell your gen 1 or gen 2 and upgrade to the third generation bike i know if it was me personally if i had a gen 1 or gen 2 i would upgrade as soon as possible because i really think it's a better motorcycle i think you're going to enjoy it more and i think it's going to be a better ownership experience in the long run than the older bikes were so that's my two cents on this as a proud long time klr owner and will i have a gen 3 in my garage as my personal bike i don't know my friends think that i might because they know me but uh i'm not sure i have a lot of bikes right now we'll have to find out later but uh thanks again for watching thanks for your support please subscribe consider patreon support uh leave a comment hit the thumbs up and thank you we're right around 50 000 subscribers and maybe we already passed it when this is going out i never thought i'd be here but i appreciate it please ride safe and we'll see you in a few days we'll see out on the [Music] so we trail have our first zip tie incident on the lr so brandon what's happening the hand guard already fell off so there's we've been riding for half an hour you can see there's no bolt here yet there's one here on the left so yeah i just tightened that one because that was halfway out and i noticed this one was gone if the mass of 34 horsepower has managed to work please fix my klr please zip tie is the only approved fix for this problem [Music] i wonder what else is rattled out

Channel: Big Rock Moto

Views: 31,955

Rating: 4.9464526 out of 5

Keywords: motorcycle, adv bikes, dual sport bikes, adventure bike, big rock media, big rock outdoors, klr650, 2022 klr, 2022 klr650, klr 650, klr650 vs t7, tenere 700, dr650, xr650, drz400, ktm 390, royal enfield himalayan, ktm 790, ktm 890, tiger 900, cb500x, small adv bikes, lightweight adv bike

Id: n426xiKTTvI

Length: 19min 47sec (1187 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 11 2021