Few snaps from the first photo-shoot:
Yeah, Its my new bike.
Let me learn the controls.
Another angle
My two wheeler garage
Some trivia:
Chain the key:
The BTM KTM was out of KTM key chains, so I was trawling the net to find a suitable key chain for the duke before I took the delivery, but had a hard time finding something I liked on-line. It was then my wife smsed me the URL of Team BHP store and I was like Duh!, how can I forget this. She gifted me a set of LTD key chains, which came on the very same day I took delivery of my bike.
Name Game:
What is in a name? For many, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet", but for me, choosing the name of my bikes and cars are something very intimate - it is something I love doing. My Unicorn was christened
Jeevs because the bike reminded me so much of the world's best gentleman's gentleman. The bike was ever dependable and very forgiving. But D 200 and Unicorn are two poles apart - while one is calm the other is ferocious - so much so that I did not even had to hunt for a name - I christened her
Lisbeth the Direwolf. (A tribute to
Lisbeth from the Millennium series by Steig Larsson and
Direwolves from
A Song of Ice and Fire (Or better known as Game of Thrones)).
Functional Mods:
The first thing I did after parking the bike in my parking lot is to remove that ugly sari guard. The tyre hugger will be removed once the rains are over.
Took a leaf from Doc Ebono and got the knuckle guards fitted with end weights of TVS Apache. Cost - 448 INR for two end weights and the rubber bush.
One of my major gripe with Duke is the almost non existent mirrors - I could not see anything other than my biceps in them. I replaced them with a pair of mirrors from TVS Apache. Cost - 260 INR. The mirror is not an exact fit - the thread patters are different, so I unscrewed the Duke's mirror from the stem and had to shave off a bit of Apaches mirror base to fix the flange of Duke's mirror stalk.
The new mirrors are much better and I can see the traffic behind me without flexing my neck every time.
In a nutshell:
Pros:
Looks good, goes better.
Rev it up, baby - one of the best rev happy engines out there.
Fantastic breaks
oodles of character - Duke is not for you if you like to lost in a sea of similar looking bikes out there.
Exhaust note - I love the way the exhaust sounds and cant have enough of it.
Cons:
No mechanical tacho - the digital tacho bars do not give the same feel of seeing the tacho needle race past the RPM readins. Some times, analogue is better.
Mirrors - they are a joke. Cant see anything behind me, even after adjusting them a lot. Fixed this by replacing the mirrors with that of TVS Apache.
Puny tank - be ready to be a frequent visitor to the petrol pumps.
Fit and finish - there are some rough edges like exposed wiring, uneven seating of fuel lid etc, but not a deal breaker.
Issues faced:
Mainly with the MID:
I set the time once but the clock lost couple of hours after overnight parking. Will need to set it again and have to keep a watch on it for accuracy.
Every time I switch off and switch on the bike, the display gets changed to average speed. It would have been good if the display remembered which mode was used last.
No manual way to reset the time travelled, avg mileage etc like in cars. The time travelled counter gets reset automatically if the bike is parked for an hour.
Future plans:
Horn Upgrade
Head light upgrade
Paddock stand
Tank pad \ sticker
Rim highlighter if I can find a competent guy to do it
--Anoop