Featured Tyger, Tyger...

After finally getting my new Tiger 900 back from the dealership, and having put 1500 or so blacktop miles on it, decided to take it out to the nearby off-road park to put a few proper "I don't just drive to Starbucks" scars on it. After having a blast on it for hours (and putting on a few of those cosmetic scars that I wanted, I got knocked off line at the very top of a steep hill climb on a very rocky trail, and came down fairly hard on the right side of the bike. Upon initial inspection, it looked like the skid plate and the engine guards had done their job; they were both dented but not broken. It looked like I'd bent one of the mounting bolts for the engine guard, so I took a mental note to pull that bolt and replace it when I was home again.



In my garage the next day, I started to pull the bolt, and began to get an inkling that all was not well when I realized that the bolt was loose enough that I could hand-turn it. Once I'd carefully pulled it all the way out, something fell off of the bike, and got caught in between the skid plate and the engine. Once I fished it out, I found this:



That's seriously no bueno, I thought. That's aluminum, and it has threads, which means it came off of the engine case. I dismounted the entire set of crash guards, and discovered that what had actually happened was that I'd shattered the lower engine guard mount point on the engine case.



When I took the bike back to the Triumph dealership, the consensus was that I was looking at an engine case replacement, and a several month wait, and a *lot* of money (insurance would cover it, but still...). Or, the sales director at the dealership said that he knew a really good welder that could probably fix the mount point, but that would probably void a large portion of my warranty. Personally, I consider that mount point breaking to be a design flaw in the bike on Triumph's part. The walls of that mount point are too thin and there is insufficient reinforcement around and behind it to absorb the force of anything beyond a very minor impact. The whole concept of sacrificial parts, and the design around them says that it's the less expensive part that should break before the more expensive part that it protects. Having said that, I am *not* a mechanical engineer, so I might be talking out of my ass here. The engine guard was dented but still usable. If I was going to replace anything it should have been the guard, not the entire engine case.

I lost confidence in the bike's design at that point, and took the third doorway. I gave the bike back to Triumph (with only 1799 miles on the poor thing), and did a straight-up trade to a new 2023 Tiger 1200 Rally Pro that was sitting on the showroom floor. Same loan term, same interest rate, just a moderate per month increase in payment. I'll take those terms, and call it a win. Now the shattered engine mount point is Triumph's problem, and I can get back out to doing what I love: riding the hell out of motorcycles.



Thus, I proceeded to take the new Tiger out and put 500 miles on it with over the labor day weekend with some of my favorite riding buddies, and am now ready for my break-in service when I ride back up to the dealership to drop off a bunch of the stock parts that I took off of my 900 while customizing the bike to fit me, and how I ride.



Time to start accessorizing the new bike...

 

I actually think cost/wise it’s probably close to a wash. I, however get a brand new, more powerful toy to go play with, and don’t have to wait months for triumph and my insurance carrier to try and screw each other over while I twiddle my thumbs waiting for my bike to be fixed.

It’s a win in my book, all day long

 

Yeah, I'd definitely much rather be out there riding than fighting with insurance, and manufacturers and parts availability to get a bike fixed. Especially in this particular situation where if it happened once, I can pretty easily see it happening again, given how (and where) I tend to ride my adv bikes. I just don't have any confidence about the viability of that particular mount point on the 900. All of the other ones seem fine. That one, however... not so much.

After ~750 miles, I have to say that the new Tiger 1200 Rally Pro is as close to perfect (for me) of any motorcycle that I've ever ridden. It's an utter joy.

Oh, and the corresponding mount point is *much* better implemented on the 1200

 

So it would seem (serendipitous, indeed ).

And, yes, I thought that very same thing that it was very ironic that Triumph's peak off-road-focused midsize adv bike succumbed so quickly, and seemingly easily.

My Tiger 1200 Alpine (which was the *road*-focused Tiger model, mind you) seemed to be much tougher, and got dropped *many* more times, and *much* harder on multiple trips that were far more extensive and challenging than what I thought was a break-in trip to the local off-road pleasure park. And it shrugged off all of those drops with aplomb, and picked right back up and soldiered on down the trail.

Meh. Now I have a 1200 again, and I doubt I'll look back. I switched to the 900 because I thought it'd be lighter to pick up when I dropped it. That turned out to not be the case anyway (it was just as heavy when I put it down, and just as much of a PITA to lever back up again).

 

I'm not going to try to convince anyone which bike to buy, one way or the other.