Submarine Motorcycles – a manufacturing sea change?

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ianhogg

Race Dog
Joined
Apr 24, 2010
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Location
34 Stanbury Street, Proserpine, QLD
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Kawasaki Versys
Submarine Motorcycles – a manufacturing sea change?

I’ve put this into the racing section because I have come to realize that unless you have actively campaigned a motorcycle that quite a few bike properties that are very important can be something that the chattering classes can talk and be knowledgeable about but are really of academic interest to them because in real life they find ways to avoid putting them to the test.

One of these is the wading depth of your bike.  At one time you could be pretty sure that every enduro would have at least one river crossing that would come up to your seat and your air box breathing and carburetor pipe routing was very important.
 
This seems to have changed. A few weeks ago I rode with a man on a Husky 125 who finished up with an engine full of water in not much more than 12 inches of water but I think something funny went on there. More recently my friend Pete mentioned duct taping the air box for snow, what he really meant was for the mountain stream run off when the snow melted. 

The thing that really brought this to the fore was yesterday I went for a ride with a new riding partner who had a KTM 300exc. On the return trip we worked our way back along the Umbogintwini valley with multiple river crossings which came up the bottom of the tank and seat level. His KTM didn’t just have a little sip, it just about drank the river dry. One time we turned it upside down it must have pumped out a couple of liters of water. I could see just by looking at the intake that the last thing on KTM’s mind was wading ability, the airbox cover was a rattling good fit and the carb sucked from right at the bottom of the airbox.

Am I missing something now? Do present enduro races not have river crossings? I know we have had dry seasons for years but this is an Austrian machine made for worldwide use.
 

 
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