Honda had been teasing us with a six episode series of videos about the new 2016 Honda CRF1000L Africa Twin in the past few months. Finally, Honda have made it official and shared the technical details in their recent press release. The 2016 model year Honda CRF1000L Africa Twin has been developed taking the iconic adventure bike from its past, the XRV750L Africa Twin, as a reference. Honda also say that the new adventure tourer has been designed with technical inputs taken from its Dakar rally bike, the CRF450R Rally.
The Honda CRF1000L Africa Twin has been developed from scratch with the idea of making this new tourer equally enjoyable and capable of crossing vast continents as well as on the highway and everyday use. Series large project leader, Mr. Y. Hasegawa says that the new Honda CRF1000L is a model worthy of inheriting the Africa Twin name.
The bike will be available in three variants. One is a standard model, the second with switchable ABS and Honda Selectable Torque Control (HSTC) and the third with a Dual Clutch Transmission (DCT), which is a first for a touring bike with ABS and HSTC.
Honda have developed an all new parallel twin engine and transmission for the new Africa Twin. The engine is a 998cc twin that draws heavily on Honda’s CRF250R/CRF450R competition machines. The engine adopts the four-valve Unicam (per head) head design which keeps the overall dimension of the engine small. It produces a peak power of 93.8 hp at 7,500 rpm and 98 Nm torque at 6,000 rpm. The performance of the engine is optimized to keep the bike tractable and usable all day long for touring.
The transmission is a brand new low-friction six-speed gearbox with a partially-dry sump designed to be highly compact and light. Apart from the standard model, the other two models have HSTC with four levels to choose from. The DCT variant offers an added sports mode that enable the user to select from three levels of sport performance and also has an automatic transmission mode.
The Honda CRF1000L features a tough double cradle frame which allows a cargo weight of 30kg. The weight distribution is almost 50-50 and the wet-weight of the bike is 228kg. The front sports a 45 mm Showa inverted fork which is fully adjustable with 230 mm travel. The rear is equipped with a fully adjustable low-set Showa monoshock with a travel of 220 mm. The wheel size are standard 21-inch with 90/90 section tyre at front and 18-inch with 150/70 Dunlop tyres at the back. The brakes are dual 310 mm ‘wave’ discs with four-piston calipers at the front and a 256 mm ‘wave’ disc with single piston calipers at the rear. The Africa Twin also features a parking brake.
The new Africa Twin has a 18.8l fuel tank which will give a claimed 400km range. The negative LCD console provides rally-style stacked information for fast reading. The styling of the Honda CRF1000L Africa Twin is called ‘unlimited adventure’ by Honda and features a front fairing with dual LED headlights. The body work is kept minimal to make the bike feel very slim and manoeuvrable to ride for a 1000cc adventure bike.
The Honda CRF1000L Africa twin will be available in four colour options but the pricing of the bike has not yet been announced. The new Africa Twin will be a game changer for adventure riders and is a great package to take on its competition such as the KTM 1190 Adventure R and BMW R1200GS Adventure.
