Guys, you’ve always featured our bikes as more extreme Rally type machines, why not come and grab two of them, go for a normal ride and tell people what you think.
We roped in Donovan from The Bike Show and trundled on down to Offroad Cycles in Pretoria, where two bikes were waiting.
One was brand new and freshly run-in. The other was a well used (12000KM) Demo model.
The ever friendly Sirk was on hand to hand the bikes over and with no clear idea of a destination, we swung a leg over the tall saddles and headed out into the morning traffic.
Was it a breakfast run or a liaison stage?
A lightweight, go-anywhere enduro bike merged with the practicality and range of a full-blown adventure bike.
The Kove 450 Rally is tall and comfortable and gives a commanding view of the world around you. The 450 engine has more than enough pep to drill anything from traffic light to traffic light – and the fact that the bike is compact makes it easy to filter between the cars and trucks.Â
The suspension is soft and the brakes are excellent.
The higher mileage demo was fitted with more aggressive knobblies, the stock tyres are 50/50 rubber which – for the sake of everyday use make a lot of sense.
We worked our way through the Daspoort Tunnel and onwards towards Hartebeespoort. The roads opened up and so were the throttles as we easily and comfortably saw speeds that exceed the general national speed limits without any of that annoying single cylinder buzz that you sometimes get through the seat and bars.Â
The bikes don’t vibrate, shake, rattle or roll, the odd pothjole was a non-event… it was a cool journey.
The only confusion arose was with the fuel gauge on the TFT display. It started showing empty and we scrambled to figure out which tank we needed to refuel. In case you are wondering, the bike has 3 tanks, two up front and one out back with a combined 30 litre capacity.Â
So it’s virtually impossible to run out. If you do happen to ride one of these, just ask the respective dealership how it all works.
Lets face it, a bike like this needs to see the dirt. That’s the beauty of investing in something like this. We turned off on the canal road that leads out towards Brits, a smooth, well maintained stretch of gravel that services the farming and rural communities in the area. It’s beautiful and the people and traffic in the area are mindful of motorcycles.Â
Naturally, this is where a bike like this shines, stand up, open the throttle and it’s a 450 dirtbike as you whizz along over the corrugations and make jumps out of the speedbumps, all the while trying not to end up in the actual canal. We do live in a fantastic country – we saw kids diving into the water to cool off and when we stopped off at the spaza shop for a softie, a few guys wandered across to have a look at the bikes and see what we were up to.
If you’ve never been to Mulligans, look them up and go and stop in. Top notch burgers, ice cold cokes under the trees with bokkies, ducks and cats wandering around to bum a chip or two.
It’s a great place to shoot the breeze and refuel the body.
All too soon, the shadows grew longer and it was time to get the Kove’s back home. We retraced our route through the evening traffic and wound our way back to the shop. No complaints. Fat smiles all around.
Here’s the question:
Can you live with a bike like this every day?Â
The answer is a resounding yes.Â
We’d go with a tyre like Pirelli’s Scorpion ST because that rubber works so well both on tar – and off the beaten trails.Â
We’d do a bit of work on the stock suspension. Standard is pretty firm with a tall saddle height while the Offroad Cycles much mileage demo bike is a bit lower, plusher and more comfortable.Â
This is normal on any new bike you need to set the suspension up to your personal preference.
The Kove 450 Rally is, absolutely a tool well worth considering for that tougher little ADV outing, or for an actual Rally – but it’s also a lot of fun as a day to day ride.Â
For the long trips make sure that you take the roughest, most gnarly back roads that you can find. We guarantee you’ll have a lot of fun.
If you are a person who is perhaps considering converting a thumper into a more road oriented machine, Kove has done it for you.
These bikes came from Offroad Cycles.
