Choosing the Right Motorcycle

You wouldn’t run the Indy 500 in a minivan, and you wouldn’t pick the kids up from school in a race car. Similarly choosing a motorcycle depends on what you want to do with it. Some are built for speed, some for long-distance cruising, some  for off-road use, and some purely as works of art. What we needed was a hybrid.

For most of the past 30 years I’ve ridden a succession of Honda Gold Wings, logging over 400,000 km. The Wing is an incredible cruising machine – smooth, quiet, huge luggage capacity and bullet-proof engineering. But the Gold Wing looses it’s advantages when the pavement ends. I should know, because I’ve taken mine where no Wing has any business going – off-road in the Mohave desert, where I buried the back wheel axle deep in loose sand… along the Labrador Highway when it was still a 1,700 km gravel road with crater sized potholes and punishing corrugations. I blew my front fork seals out on that one – fork oil running down all over the front brakes. Oil and brakes are a bad combination.

Dave, being more sensible (for the most part), usually rides what is known as a “dual-sport” motorcycle. Dual-sports or adventure bikes, as they’re sometimes called, are a hybrid between a street bike and an off-road dirt bike. When motorized bicycles first appeared around 1900, there were few paved roads and all motorcycles were essentially dual-sports. As pavement became more common, most motorcycles evolved toward either street riding or off-road riding.

BMW changed all that in 1980 when they introduced the first true modern dual-sport, the R80 G/S. The R80 won the brutal Paris-Dakar Rally 4 out of 5 years in the early 80’s. It’s place in history was cemented by the legendary Helge Pedersen, who rode one on a 10 year/400,000 km (250,000 miles) odyssey around the world, through 77 countries, on all 6 inhabited continents, including the first motorcycle crossing of the Darien Gap.

Enough history.

A Gold Wing was simply the wrong bike for the South America trip – and mine was 20 years old. Dave decided his BMW R1200 GS was too heavy. We wanted bikes that were light enough to manoeuvre easily on bad roads , but still had enough power for highway riding, and could carry us and our gear. We considered several models. The models from BMW and KTM had more doodads and electronics than we really needed. The Kawasaki KLR 650 has an illustrious history, but it’s single cylinder engine produces a lot of vibration making it uncomfortable on long rides. There were literally dozens of bikes to chose from. Some were better on the highway, some were better off-road.

Eventually we settled on the Yamaha Ténéré 700, which for simplicity I’ll refer to as the T700. We chose the T700 for several reasons – a smooth, parallel twin cylinder engine that delivers 63 horse power to a bike that weighs only 200 kg (450 lbs); a large 21″ front wheel for getting over bumps; switchable ABS; large (282 mm) twin front disc brakes; 24 cm (9.4) inches of ground clearance with 21 cm (8.3 inches) of front fork travel; a wide choice of luggage & accessories; and a reasonable price. The only real drawback is the T700’s 16L (4.2 US gal) fuel tank, smaller than most bikes in its class. Dave and I have addressed this by adding small jerrycans with 4L of auxiliary fuel, extending our range to over 400 km (250 miles).

In the end, it’s a subjective choice. The T700 does everything we want, offers good value for money and all the reviews we read said it was the best all-around dual-sport to come out in the last few years. We proved that to ourselves this past May (2022) when we took the bikes on a shake down trip to the end of the James Bay/Billy Diamond Hwy in northern Quebec – 3,500 km (2,000 miles) in 8 days, including 800 km on gravel, through rain, snow, mud and gale force winds. In many ways the bikes performed better than we did. For a video of that trip, check out the James Bay tab at the top of this page.

I’m fairly confident we made the right choice. We’ll see if I still feel the same way next April, at the end of the trip.

I read a lot of books by other long-distance motorcyclists, while planning for this trip. I appreciated the detailed lists many of them added as appendices, so I have done the same. Hence the tabs under the heading “The Lists” at the top of this page. Over the past year Dave and I have modified our bikes a fair bit, adding hard cases (luggage), extra lights and several other items, large and small. For a complete list of all the modifications I’ve made, please click on the “Tenere 700 Modifications” tab. There are also lists of “Tools & Spare Parts” we’re taking, as well my person stuff – riding gear, clothes, electronics, etc.

(NOTE:  We don’t receive any sponsorship, promotional fees or other considerations for mentioning products or services. Any opinions or recommendations are purely our own.)