Tank Range
A massive 30 litre tank that (as we spoke about) also shields your lower body from the weather is a very
welcome sight. It is down on the KTM site as having a 500km range, that works out to around 310 miles
between fill ups. This of course depends very much on how you play with the KTM and getting flat out
frisky will reduce that MPG by a large amount. If your cruising across Germany to head for the Balkans and
have the cruise control on then obviously you will enjoy better fuel use. The figures from KTM read as
45mpg – I’d agree with those figures having been up and down motorways and back roads it would
average out at 45. Rocketing down the M6 is another matter but once you get the school kid inside you
under control you can expect very respectable r eturn from your fuel stops.
I went hell for leather up the M6 from Northampton to Lancaster as I had to get back to pick the kids up
from school. That’s 190 miles and when I pulled up at the school I had just two bars of fuel left in the tank.
So a range of around 230 given that I was early for the school run was pleasant surprise.
Up, down and over the Dales was a far more gentle affair, with the odd gust of power (because I could)
gave a much greater return to the fuel use and a lot of that is down to the ride-by-wire throttle on the
1290.