36 MOTORCYCLE MOJO SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
available: comfort, street and sport.
These are obtained via a Suspension
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feedback from accelerometers and
stroke sensors front and rear, adapts the
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fork and rear monoshock to best suit
the road’s surface as well as the rider’s
style. However, impressive as that was
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years ago on the GT, the improvement
on the newer model is immediately
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by swapping to the older model for a
ride over similar broken road surfaces.
Okay, so it’s a cliché to say that the
2019 model delivers a “magic carpet
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over bumps and broken tarmac in
a way I wasn’t expecting. I saw the
imperfections in the road surface,
but I hardly felt them when riding
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we could achieve this improvement
using the same hardware as before
TEST RIDE 2019 KTM 1290 SUPER DUKE GT
just by developing new software with
different algorithms,” says Greiner. “So,
the accuracy is more than three times
greater in monitoring the street surface
and analyzing the result than before.”
Suspension travel is unchanged, at
125 mm up front and a massive 156 mm
at the rear; it’s the damping that
is vastly improved.
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suspension, you can choose via the
dash the appropriate rear pre-load
adjustment according to the load
the shocks have, whether for rider
only with or without luggage or for
two people with or without bags.
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and cast aluminum wheels are
unchanged, as on the Super Duke R,
with twin radially-mounted four-piston
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front discs and a large 240 mm rear. The
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supermoto. This is a tourer done the
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A Few Engine Upgrades
The GT boasts the same latest-
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LC8 engine with a capacity of 1,301 cc
as its R-model sibling does, but with
different tuning and uprated hardware.
The engine has same size of inlet valves
but now in titanium, the lighter weight
of which are largely responsible for
that 500 rpm higher rev limiter, and
with revised resonator chambers on
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means that the previously best-selling
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silencer in the GT aftermarket catalogue
will now be a hard sell; the 2019
model’s stocker sounds great, muscular
and sporty, if inevitably slightly muted.
However, while all these features have
resulted in a 2 hp decrease in power, to
173 hp at 9,750 rpm, the biggest differ-
ence is in the way that it’s delivered –
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forth between the outgoing version and
the new GT. The new GT has a greater
spread of grunt through the entire rev
range, with torque peaking at 7,000 rpm
with 104 lb-ft on tap.
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it a little bit for the GT,” says Tobias
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snorkel where it enters the airbox, all
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in respecting the needs of a touring
bike, we slightly reduced the maximum
horsepower, but worked on the way
the power is delivered. So, the torque
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and that’s what you actually feel on the
road.”
This is a sports tourer with serious
attitude and a much fatter hit of
midrange torque than on the GT’s
predecessor from 4,000 rpm upward.
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shaft is now 0.5 kg heavier, so there’s a
bigger rotating mass, which helps retain
momentum and adds to the sense of