2018 Triumph Tiger 800 XCx long term review, fourth report

It’s been 10,000km down the road from the last report and there’s much to err… report. But first,  a quick flashback.

The last time I wrote about my bike, I’d just had a major crash involving a dog; and though I got away rather lightly, the bike needed quite a bit of work. From horror stories I’d heard from other superbike owners about long waiting periods for parts, I expected a long interlude ahead of me as well, but Triumph confirmed I would get the bike back in 40 days. This suited me fine because the doc told me it would take a month for my shoulder to heal anyway.

I’ve almost shifted house using just those three panniers.

Triumph India and Triumph Kochi stood good on their promise and exactly 40 days after my hard landing, I was happily howling down the road on my bike again.

Somewhere during the last 10,000km, my two old buddies and I decided to start an off-road riding school near Munnar, Kerala. We call it ‘The School Of Dirt’. Why I mention this is because we needed recce bikes to see what could and couldn’t be done with the obstacles our collective imaginations came up with. My bike, another Tiger and a Street Scrambler that my buddies own, were the ones chosen. We run a class every month, and because my partners at the school insist that I be guinea pig number one to test out new obstacles, my bike has had it rough. I’ve dropped it many times, it’s sat caked with many layers of dirt for days and it’s been wrung to within an inch of its life. All that went wrong with it through this abuse was a busted fork seal. And oh, there was a horrible misfire at one point. When we hooked up the diagnostic system, it gave us an ‘All OK’ but the problem persisted. The guys at Triumph Kochi burnt the midnight oil, manually checking each sensor, and found dirt built-up on a sensor, which in turn sent wrong signals to the ECU, resulting in the misfire. This is why I’m not a fan of lots of electronics. I would have never been able to fix it if I was out by myself in Mongolia.

Standard bash plate is very good. Saved the sump many times.

A word of advice to Tiger owners. If you ride in dirt or dust frequently, it’s wise to not wait for the 10,000km service interval to replace your air filters. Mine got completely choked 7,000km after the 30,000km service. I’d say play it safe in dusty conditions and change it every 5,000km.

Speaking of which, maintenance costs haven’t been too bad. The 30,000km service came to around Rs 7,000, which, considering the mayhem this bike goes through, is pretty reasonable. My biggest expense is the tyres – I average around 3,500km on the rear tyre, and at around Rs 20,000 a tyre, that’s a big hole in the wallet every couple of months. I’m lucky though – thanks to my ‘fame’ on Instagram, a company called Transformerz in New Delhi has stepped up and sends me tyres to test.

More on Heidenaus, Mitases and Metzelers in the next report. For now, I’m happy that my bike has proved to be tough and reliable, and that for me, is priceless.