![]() Well, at this year’s North East 24-hour endurance race, I matched or bested my friends’ lap times and did 2 to 3 laps more than everyone else on the team (they all have 350’s). But, it makes you feel like Graham Jarvis as you yell “Jarvis” while blasting by your friends struggling to hold up a full-size dirt bike.The KTM is my “full size” dirt bike that everyone told me would be too small. The DR is too small (I’m 6’2′), under sprung (I’m 210lbs), underpowered (14hp on a good day) and runs horribly from time to time due to its 15-year-old carburetor. Both are perfect reference points to conduct this test. ![]() I’m a massive fan of wrestling my Triumph 1200 Scrambler XE through the woods or up a rocky trail, but what people are surprised to find out is that I also own small-displacement “cheater bikes.” Mine happen to be an air-cooled 200cc Suzuki DR and a KTM 250 EXC-F. This brings us right back to the parameters of whether this small dual sport is enough motorcycle for ‘your’ style of adventure. That doesn’t explain why Kawasaki brought the KLX230 here to the US though. Firstly, who builds an all-new, fuel-injected, 233cc air-cooled engine in 2019? Kawasaki did and the obvious answer to “why” is for the Asian Markets. Is the KLX230 enough? Enough to be a lightweight Adventure Bike? The short answer, hell yeah it can be! There are a few parameters to that enthusiasm, but we’ll get into that as we go through the new 2020 Kawasaki KLX230.
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