Power continues to come from that rather sweet 800-cc liquid-cooled 12-valve DOHC in-line triple. At 9,250 RPM the unit puts out a maximum of 95 PS with a peak torque of 79 Nm kicking in at 7,850 turns. Transmitting all this to the rear wheel is a slick-shifting six-speed gearbox. Acceleration is a brisk affair but not a scary one. There’s enough linearity in the delivery of the 95 Pferds (horses in German) for the rider to be able to gauge what throttle input will result into what output in forward motion. Top speed again is irrelevant on a motorcycle of this nature. It was neither built for nor is it ever used for the sole purpose of outright velocity. Nevertheless, the bike is capable of doing pretty high speeds. On one empty straight stretch in Spain I recall seeing over 160 km/h on the digital speedometer and I was not the fastest in the group! So for the two-wheeled-adventure junkie who also craves speed, there’s enough of it coming from the Tiger 800 XRx.
Like its older avatar, the new Tiger XRx continues to handle very well. Its road-going manners, be it on straights or round bends, are polished and sophisticated. At no point in time do you feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up as you think you’re going to be thrown off. Instead, the trellis chassis works in collaboration with the suspension to make you feel comfortable and confident. Ride quality, however, could be better. On the couple of times that we went over some patchy surface, the bike’s 43-mm Showa USD forks with 180 mm of travel and hydraulic preload adjustable Showa mono-shock with 170 mm of travel felt firm and one could feel the road shocks being transmitted through the backbone. Not jarring, but they were there. In fact, I personally found the more off-road biased XCx to be the better riding bike of the two.
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