you can have the air running straight into your face for cooling and at higher speeds put the screen up and let the air flow over the top of your helmet. Even with the screen down though, your body doesn’ t get buffeted by the wind, yet there’ s still enough air going around your legs not to get too hot. The comfort lasts for the duration of the decently-sized fuel tank, a tad over 22 litres, giving a range of about 400km. If you’ re feeding it big mouthfuls of throttle, though, expect to be looking at something more around the 300km mark. In low-speed city riding, there’ s an optional cylinder deactivation mode. If you’ re sitting in lots of traffic, the rear cylinder will deactivate while idling so your legs and the liquid cooling don’ t get too hot while you’ re sitting at the lights. Clever stuff.
SAFETY GAINS New safety enhancements fitted to this are definitely useful. The blind spot monitoring goes off on a regular basis on the motorway, giving an orange warning signal on the mirrors and dash to let you know there’ s something there you might not have seen. I’ m not quite as enamoured with the Rear Collision Warning, if that thing is going off, I would say it’ s too late. However, maybe that’ s getting ready for when the bike gets radar-controlled cruise control? The Brake Hold Assist when parked on hills is very handy, I appreciated that feature on several occasions. But the main electronic assistance is what I talked about earlier- the Bosch six-way ABS traction control and lean control. That’ s a real game changer for a big, grunty bike like this which eats corners.
CINEMA SCREEN
The large 7-inch LED screen has five scrollable screens which can be customised to show... whatever you fancy. There are a huge amount of options. I like having a screen showing both the digital rev counter and digital speedo’ for easy
88 KIWI RIDER