Tiger 660 Sport

[Mrski1]

Having ridden the Trident 660 last year and coming away disappointed, I went along to the Tiger 660 Sport demo at the weekend, and was able to sample a mixture of town / country / dual roads. I was interested to see if there were any noticeable differences, for starters it fitted me a lot better than the Trident, it was easy and straight forward to ride, with nimble handling, seriously sharp brakes, and that lovely revvy engine.

Downsides for me, well thankfully not too many. The suspension is on the firm side and would on occasion struggle to deal with hollows in the road at speed, providing an unexpected thump through the bike, but the thing I liked the least, and this was the same on the Trident, is the mapping of the electronic throttle. Its woolly at low speeds (novice friendly supposedly), making it a pain to judge how much throttle to use when pulling away, and the throttle tube has little to no resistance, I always compare it to an old playstation steering wheel, so it feels incredibly artificial.

As the owner of a gen1 Tiger 800, are the later Tiger 800/900's with the electronic throttles the same?

[fac191]

I really like the look of that bike don't know why they didn't make it before. As for the throttle i rode an Explorer which had a similar feel. Personally i don't like it that light as its difficult to control. Some do prefer it though.

[Stevie.P]

I liked the look of the bike as soon as it was shown, but for me 2 things let it down .... I wanted it to be lighter as a 660 compared to the 800 and they haven't fitted it with cruise control.

[Mrski1]

Originally Posted by fac191

I really like the look of that bike don't know why they didn't make it before. As for the throttle i rode an Explorer which had a similar feel. Personally i don't like it that light as its difficult to control. Some do prefer it though.

Snap, to the point I don't know if I would be happy owning the bike with it like that. Really noticeable when riding through a series of bumps, especially with the firm suspension, making your hand rotate around on the light throttle.

There is always something though, I recently spent a week riding a Versys 650 on holiday, quite a nice handling bike BUT, completely ruined by the lumpy, chuggy engine.

[K1W1]

Hopefully the ADV version of the 660 platform with a 21” front wheel will be introduced at some stage this year. It could be an interesting bike if they give it a more off road focus like the T7 or Aprilia but if they continue to leave the cruise control off that would be an absolute no go for me these days.

[Mrski1]

I have only ever used cruise control on a bike once, and that was on a demo of a Kawasaki ZX10R of all things! I tend not to use the main roads on my bike, even on a trip, so cruise control being missing isn't too much of an issue for me. I might be wrong but I don't think any of its direct competitors have cruise control either?

[Derchef1962]

Originally Posted by Mrski1

As the owner of a gen1 Tiger 800, are the later Tiger 800/900's with the electronic throttles the same?

I do not see much of a difference between the cable throttle of my old 800 to my new 900

[Mrski1]

Originally Posted by Derchef1962

I do not see much of a difference between the cable throttle of my old 800 to my new 900

I took out a 900 rally last week, I was glad to see the throttle was not as bad as that on the Tiger 660/Trident 

[PapaTom]

I had a Gen1 explorer with a similar throttle feel. The easy fix most of us used was a fancy grease, can't quite remember the name, on the throttle tube which sorted it.
I had a good test on a 660, most of a day, and really enjoyed it. The downside for me was the lack of anchors for fastening my luggage bag to the pillion seat.

[Stevie.P]

Originally Posted by PapaTom

The easy fix most of us used was a fancy grease, can't quite remember the name, ...

It would take a while to find but I still have the info and name of the grease somewhere on my backup drive from back in my Street Triple days when fly-by-wire first came in. If I have a bit of spare time I'll try to dig it out.