yepp indian conditions are hard.
But USDs that too of KTM can withstand these conditions. As all the off-road enduro motorcycles of KTM infact all of KTM bikes use USDs. KTM is profound in the motocross segments in races etc. Also the most hard Dakar rally which has been won by KTMs enduro bikes are equipped with USDs. Only protection they had were those fork covers of which pics we posted few pages earlier.
Duke has WP suspensions....they will serve well. No matter what conditions. Dont you think so mate! i mean KTMs are so advanced also they breed to off-roadism a lot.

Off-road USD forks are built significantly differently than road forks, which is why I specified USD *road* bikes. Off-road bike USD forks have many more seals internally, and have better protection in the form of hard guards and the aforementioned boots. Further, they aren't expected to last as long as road forks. Race bikes get their forks rebuilt frequently. The Dakar bikes will be torn down completely after every race, and MX bikes will usually be rebuilt at least once a year, or more if the owner can afford it. And, they are always meticulously cleaned after every race, where a street bike might get washed once a week if you're lucky.


ETA: White Power is good, yes, but not really any better than Kayaba or Showa, and Ohlins is far better. All these companies make good USD forks that are at least the equivalent of the WP unit on the Duke, and I would say the same thing about the Duke's USD no matter whose part it was. The problem is that typical road-oriented USD forks are not equipped to handle the severe environment of the Indian road.

Firstly as rightly pointed out by Rohan, you can rev the bike from day one to 10500 but naturally you should hold your horses till 1000 kms on odo and then progressively increase rpm limit
if you are not able to cross 7500 in 6th gear then most probable solution is to change gears high up the rev range i.e in your case it can be easily 8000 -8.k ( as you are already done with first service ) so that when you change the gear to 6th, the bike is already revved up to 7000-7200 rpm ( as rev will go down from 8500 rpm to 7- 8k depending on how fast you change gear as well as your gear changing technique )
In this way you will have ample leverage to rev the bike to 10-10.k.

RPM 1 is there to let you know that now you are approaching the rev range where you have decided to change gear and RPM 2 is generally there to set the warning RPM range which you should not cross, like since i am not done with first service i have set rpm 1 at 5k and RPM 2 at 6.5 so that in any eventuality i am able to shift gear by or around 7k rpm.


i have some information for you
First i read lots and lots of stuff regarding SS oils ( your own comments and link has also contributed a lot ) etc and came to conclusion that the SS oil is actually mineral albeit a higher quality mineral with additives to improve high temp, low temp performance.
i.e. The synthetic part which is not more then 30% are again higher quality pure minerals which due to GOV ruling are ambiguously sold by Companies as synthetics.

basically in short a good SS in comparison to a good Mineral is just a even better mineral with added high low temp tolerance thus helping heat transfer at high temp which should go a long way in running in period of Duke as you are already aware it does run even hotter in running in as every bike does.

Also it seems you are referring to EU KTM DUKE user manual hence 10w40 as Indian specs only allows 20w50 that too SS only so you might be better off to Change the oil without taking dealer in confidence. Again as you know EU also strongly mentions to use SS only which corroborates the facts which i mentioned above.

Secondly regarding tires i can confirm what others have already confirmed that the tires are bit sloppy on muddy roads which we commonly encounter on our roads in rains. Any idea how much the Pirellis or Metzelers cost and is to everyone , does anyone know where stock tires can be sold ?
Thirdly i am eagerly waiting when you get the bike painted as i am also planning to get trellis painted but are completely clueless about which paint and equipment to buy and how to do it as i would very much prefer it to be done by my own hands.

same as you i am really happy owning the bike but the snatchy throttle at low rpms is a let down during traffic, any way to cure it out except going for expensive kiirus ECU remap?

Please clarify regarding 50 weight being really thick for small engine and regarding winters, i.e. in my knowledge it being thinner at high temp will help fuel efficiency and 10w will naturally require less warmup time in morning but how does it help a small engine as well as with duke heating don't you think still we should keep w50 as here winters are unlike EU hovering 12-25 degrees, so not cold enough as compared to typical European/ American winters.


Thanks for the info as it reminded me that i too need this mod as i am blessed with small fingers and i find it difficult to reach clutch lever comfortably. Can you please guide me towards a link or store where i can buy them in India and yes orange ones looks cool too..
So everyone guide me towards a store where i can buy adjustable levers or suggest me a lover which will be closer to grip .

First, I know that one page I linked to basically says SS oils are not really any better (or different) than mineral, and for long-term use, I agree. However, for break-in, a low-quality oil actually helps the break-in process. SS oils get that SS designation by, as you point out, added high-quality lubricant and oil molecule packages. It makes the oil a better lubricant than straight mineral, while being cheaper than full-synthetic. During the break-in process, you want the engine internals to have as much opportunity as possible to fit themselves together, so a lower-quality oil (in the short term) actually helps this process. Since you should be changing out the "break-in" oil at 500km, and then again 1000km later, spending the extra for SS oil is a waste.

Regarding the manual, and what it says about oil, yes I was looking at the EU manual, but it's still the same bike, so it presumably is still valid. In any event, even if the EU version adds in another grade, the Duke still has the same motor, so using a 40-weight is still valid, and for owners in Dehradun and other higher-altitude/colder regions, the 10W40 rating should still be valid as well. Also, nowhere does the manual specify semi-synthetic only; it just gives the standard that must be met (JASO MA). Semi-synthetic is given as a guideline, but is not a requirement. In any event, I'm only going to run the 20W40 during break-in, in the winter, and I should be well past the 3000km mark by the time the weather gets hot here again, so by then I will be switching to 20W50 full-synthetic anyway. I plan to run two different grades of oil, depending on the time of year: a 15W40 in the winter, and 20W50 in the summer.

Regarding the "snatchy" throttle, I recommend you use the clutch more. Wet clutches can be "slipped" much more than a dry clutch without any risk of damage. In low-speed maneuvers, it is often better to keep the throttle fixed, and use the clutch to regulate your speed. This relates to a habit I have seen in Indian drivers, that they tend to allow the engine RPMs to drop much more before disengaging the clutch, and they shift less frequently. When riding a motorcycle, the RPMs should generally be kept up at least into the "meat" of the torque band, so you can take better advantage of the snappier acceleration, and you should be less reluctant to shift up or down to keep in that band, especially on such a low-powered bike. This goes against the widespread conditioning of driving/riding for maximum fuel efficiency, but will make the bike feel much smoother.

Regarding the thickness of oil, it is true that much of India is temperate even during the winter, but for example, in Delhi on winter mornings the temp is often not much above freezing, maybe 8 or 10C. In that kind of climate, 20W50 is IMHO going to be too heavy; even once it's "warmed up", the engine will be running cooler, and therefore the oil will be thicker, and thus you will see some loss of efficiency, possibly as much as 1-2hp (which in such a small engine can be a noticeable amount). Even in the hottest part of the summer in the US, driving a vehicle with a much more powerful engine that was also older and had wider internal tolerances, I never had the need for a 50-weight engine oil.

Lastly, I don't know where you can get either Pirelli or Metzeler tires, or those levers. I contacted Pazzo, and they told me that since the Duke isn't available in Canada, they don't plan to make levers for it. They did tell me that if I provided them with clear pictures of the levers, particularly removed from the bike so the shape of the hinge area is visible, they might be able to recommend something from another bike that would fit. I know someone on this board has put Pirellis on his bike already, so they may be available; I have never heard of any place that can get Metzelers though.

what about ppl who own Ducati Multistrada or monster? ...dont they go to replacement of their USDs ...I guess not. Possible answer people might give will be that there are no such roads like India...definitelty there arent but they do go through severe conditions. What about people who own in India. Nobody goes through USD replacement. Yah dirt bikes might but that is not the platform to raise a question over Duke's suspension. Yaah ppl have been coming by with their respective oil leaks even i might face someday...but that can be worked upon.
Fork covers provide good protection. That can work and if an oil seal gets damaged i can change it on every service doesnt costs much.

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying, but most people who own the more expensive bikes here in India aren't going to ride them the way smaller, cheaper bikes get ridden, especially since in India "superbikes" are more of a status symbol than a daily means of transportation. Yes, bikes like the Multistrada might go up the occasional unpaved road, but there again, the Multistrada is, by definition, not a full road bike. It's an "adventure" bike and is going to have a fork better-equipped to handle the occasional splatter of mud. The Monster is not an "adventure" bike, it's a "streetfighter", and is a paved-road-only bike everywhere else in the world.

In the rest of the world, bikes that are expected to go off-road or to experience dirty/severe conditions are generally equipped appropriately. Bikes like the Monster are never expected to go off-road or to be ridden in deep mud/water. The Duke was fitted with a "street" USD fork, and for most countries, that's fine. No one in the UK or Europe is going to use this bike as an off-roader, or have much reason even to ride muddy/dusty roads (there are very few roads like that in Europe). However, for India use, KTM should have developed a short-stroke MX-based fork, with the extra seals, since the environment is known to be much harsher.

And yes, most people aren't going to tear down their forks on a regular basis to replace the internal seals. That's why KTM should never have put a road-oriented USD fork on the Duke. Road USD forks generally have 2-3 oil seals inside, in addition to the dust wiper that you can see at the opening on the fork slider. Dirt forks have 4-5, sometimes more. I mentioned the comparison to MX bikes, because you brought up the use of the USD fork on those very bikes. I simply pointed out that the only reason they can get away with using an USD fork is that such bikes are expected to be maintained much more thoroughly and frequently than they typical street bike.

As to changing oil seals, it's not something I will willingly trust the service center to do, particularly not on a regular basis. Note that the oil seals are not that rubber bit at the opening of the fork slider; that's the dust wiper. The seals themselves are inside the fork, and require complete disassembly to replace. This is an expensive process that requires skill and special tools, and takes at least a couple of days, and I would be wary of any but the largest service centers having all the proper tools available to do the work, to say nothing of a technician properly trained to handle it.

Here's the first of two diagrams I'll put up to help explain what I mean about the difference between dirt and street USD forks, and why a street fork is not the right choice. This is the "exploded" diagram for a KTM motocross bike fork. The fork "outer", which is the part held by the triple-clamps on the bike, is marked in blue. The slider, the part that the wheel is attached to and which moves in and out, is marked in green. The various seals, including the dust wiper, are marked in red. You can see that the dirt fork has easily 4-5 seals inside, as well as that wiper. The wiper is at the bottom of the long "stack" I have marked out, and is number 19. Number 13, down at the bottom of the picture, is the o-ring that sits inside the dust wiper.



This picture is the diagram of the internals of a Hayabusa fork. The colors are the same: blue for fork outer, green for the slider, and red for the seals. Note that there are only two seals plus the dust wiper. This is likely very similar to the internals on the Duke.



As you can see, the road fork has far fewer internal oil seals, two to be exact, so it won't take much contamination to get a leak. The MX bike, on the other hand, has more than twice as many, and so is much less likely to start leaking.

Note that the KTM diagram is more complex since it also shows exploded views of the adjustment mechanisms and of the fork damper rod, where the Hayabusa diagram does not.

hey mountain nice drawings up there and well illustrated posts and you have shown us how good you are at knowing the shock absorbers, but all this made me curious do you really want us to believe that KTM should have installed the shock usd of a MX bike< as you mentioned that those usd's have 4 to 5 seals to protect any damage from dirt or grime, so we are to belive that are indian road conditions are so bad that they can be compared to a dirt track. cuz i dn't think so. and as far as the street usd on KTM by wp are u must be knowing that KTM is owned by Bajaj atleast 45% of it, and Duke 200 was specifically designed for asian and specifically Indian market so dn't you think that the world renowned manufacturer wuld have been wise enough to think over this issue. secondly, KTM Duke is a street fighter so it correctly justifies the use street usd and to think that the fork would be ruined by dirt and grime on indian conditions in short period of time is my friend nothing but paranoia. and how many of duke owners are you seriously going to see on the way to leh to experience really tough situation or a dirt track, and normal road use stunting power riding you won't get anything better. so i appreciate your technical knowledge but please dn't waste it in justifying a paranoia. and finally to all the dukers who really feel that there usd's will be ruined by road use i would suggest two simple solution
1. take a cloth and clean that mud from the forks which is rather easy.
2. for others store your dukes in a vaccum chamber away from sun and water and the whole bike should last for more then 200 thousand years.

I know bro ive a degree too..its good to see your effort though. Ill read that all.
But the price had to be kept in control that would have kept the performance shocks away.
We can install those fork covers and get rid of seal problems upto an extent. More ways to do dat are welcomed. But ktm abd their R&D surely must be way above all this stuff they have thought of it...even we can inform them.
But that doesnt hold for us claiming poor shock absorbers on ktm. Authenticity speaks for a good company shocks might b having problems it happens.
Bro a guy saw a fork leak on Duke...and he bought another bike instead of duke. Also he was dissapointed with the exhaust pipe color..and the mud catching property of duke.p
Such things make the repo of the bike and company go down....so if theres a problem we'll deal with a it if its a little one.
Thats what d thing is. People come by say stupid things like it catches a lot of mud. it has a side stand no center. What if liquid cooling shuts how will i know.
these things make people stay away from duke. I heared a lot such too. But i bought it a week ago.
its doing awsumm. Hope it does so forever.

Yes, I really believe that KTM should have either developed a Duke-specific fork modeled on their MX units, or adapted an existing off-road USD fork for the Duke. Between the potholes and poor road surfaces, the amount of sand/dust/pollution in the air, and the amount of dirty water on the roads during the monsoon season, there is ample reason to use a fork with more than the usual "road" complement of oil seals. I believe they underestimated the conditions on the roads here; it wouldn't be the first time a manufacturer did their design work based on assumptions and incomplete data. We already know KTM is putting out a new version of the MFD for the Duke, because the original model turned out to be too vulnerable to moisture incursion during the monsoon. They also redesigned the chain slider. This alone proves that the design engineers' imaginations didn't match up to reality. In addition, I am sure KTM included a USD fork at least partly because it is unusual for a bike in this class to have one, and that becomes a marketing/selling point. They obviously felt that they would make more money (by selling more bikes) than they'll have to spend on warranty claims on fork seals.

As to the conditions of Indian roads, you obviously haven't seen the lane I have to follow to get to my house. More than half of it is unpaved, and what is paved is so broken up and potholed that it is barely traversable. Even the main roads here are filthy during the rains. Most bikes accumulate significant cakings of sand and mud on the fenders and rear swingarm. If KTM/Bajaj had really designed the bike for Indian conditions, they would have had to include places other than Delhi and Bangalore. My guess is that the Duke is "engineered" for the Indian *marketplace*, as in being a small-displacement bike that's not prohibitively expensive. They made some nods to things like the engine not stalling in water that overtops the exhaust, but the Duke is also engineered as a beginner bike for the rest of the world. As a beginner bike, the expectation is that the rider will likely put no more than 2000-3000km on the bike at all before they trade up, and that most of the riding will be done on clean, modern city streets and in suburbs.

Also, the Duke may *look" like a streetfighter, but never forget that in reality, it's a toy. A beginner bike for first-time riders that at least has some of the styling cues of bigger bikes. Only here in India, and a couple of other countries where bikes are displacement-restricted, is this a machine someone might buy for long-term use. My use of the term "streetfighter" was intended to indicate a bike derived from a sportbike chassis that is used almost exclusively for in-city riding, and therefore has no need for anything other than a roadrace-type fork. The Duke, however, as a beginner bike, has no need for a USD fork, other than looks, and this is borne out by the fact that KTM fitted the bike with a non-adjustable fork. If you go back a ways in this thread, I explain all of this, but to make a long story short, USD forks first showed up in racing. In that environment, every ounce of unsprung weight matters, so the USD helped make suspensions more efficient. In order for certain race bikes to be allowed to use USD forks, the production versions of those bikes had to be sold with USD forks, and thus USD entered the consumer market. It's not really needed for 99% of the riding the public does, but it sells because it looks cool and "it's just like the race bikes". The Duke can't even come close to the kinds of speeds and cornering that would justify a USD fork, so it can only be for looks (like that ridiculous 150-width back tire).

As to paranoia, we've already seen 3-4 bikes here on this board develop fork leaks in less than a year. None of the bikes I owned ever blew a fork seal in the several years I owned each. This alone is proof enough that Indian road conditions, whether that is the environment or the way they are ridden, are bad enough to damage fork seals.

Thread Approved and Merged with Ownership Thread

i agree that USDs are a bit too much for a 200cc 25bhp bike...
but i have no doubt that it contributes to the amazing handling,the composure during hard braking & the rock solid stability of the bike...

The only advantage a K&N style filter gives you is that it is re-usable and washable. When it is clean, it will flow slightly more air than a paper filter, but not enough to be noticeable on such a small bike, and the extra flow is achieved by having bigger holes in the filter material, so more crap gets through as well (dust/dirt). And, when it starts to get dirty, it actually flows less than a paper filter would in the same condition. Don't waste your money.

I hate to burst your bubble, but not really. Any modern fork, properly valved, and of equivalent thickness (stanchion diameter), will do the same, even if it's conventional. If TVS put something thicker than those toothpicks it calls fork stanchions on the Apache, it would be a much better-handling bike (not to mention replacing those antiquated twin rear shocks with a modern monoshock). As I pointed out upthread, the *only* advantage USD has over conventional forks is a slight reduction in unsprung weight. Handling on a motorcycle is largely a function of how well compression and rebound are handled by the suspension, and whether the springs are properly chosen with regard to weight rating. There have been plenty of USD bikes with poorly-chosen valve rates that ended up handling worse than similar but conventionally-suspended bikes.

Where you start to see real improvements in suspension performance is when you have things like the BMW telelever and the Duolever on the K1300R. Or, on the old Yamaha GTS1000 which had a real swimgarm front suspension (the Bimota Tesi sort of counts too, but the hubcenter steering is problematic).

god seriously u got to write things in short u know it gets boring after a paragraph or so, and really if the roads around your locality are so bad well you should write to your civic authorities to either repair the roads or organise a off road events on those roads, secondly coming to the point where you said KTM is a starter bike well not untill u r living in great britain, which i suppose u aren't and that too a KTM 125, and seriously usd a marketing gimmick guess you don't see much bikes aur you wuld have known other smaller capacity bike do exist where you can see usd's for instance 125 cc RS 4 offered by Aprillia. And if you seriously think that KTM should have developed a Duke specific usd just for INDIAN condition well take up the issue up to them why do you keep ranting about it here on the forum. And seriously a toy that's hilarious man, surely u have reached the point where you wuld say anything to justify yourself< common man accept the reality.

USD is one form of telescopic suspension system itself and not designed for racing in particular.



The main advantage is to reduce unsprung weight by having the lighter components suspended, and to improve the strength and rigidity of the assembly by having the strong large-diameter "sliders" clamped in the yokes

The main disadvantage of this USD design is that the entire reservoir of damping oil is above the slider seal so that, if the slider seal were to leak, the oil could drain out, rendering any damping ineffective. Manufacturers do not prefer USD for lower capacity bikes, especially in India because of the cost, quality and complexity involved. Since Duke operates at a premium price band its an added feather to its hat.

Bubble on my head.

Whatever people i heared a lot of statements which seriously make the repo and the authenticity of a technically advanced bike and consequently the company. Such few statements are -
1) The bike dont has a centre stand so the engine oil clings to one side.
2) It costs 1.28lakhs and its only 200cc i can get a p220 or bullet 350cc.
3) Rear disc brake will cause a serious accident other indian bikes dont have these so are safe.
4) Liquid cooling may fail then how will i know...air cooling cannot fail. Its risky.
5) It has a plastic! tank. Others have metal one. Still ktm is costing so much.
6) Ive heared people claiming front fork leakage p200ns doesnt has USDs so no leakage.
7) He will be a fool if he goes for 1.28 lakh KTM when i can get p200ns for 1lakh.
8) Duke and any other superbike not meant for indian roads.(blame d PWD)
Such statements !!!