Rob from Ottawa

You're hilarious: Labrador City last September. 52.9390° N, 66.9142° W The wet dirt road was pretty spooky and there was snow on the tent that night. Then I broke a pannier off on the way back; that's the *lowest* I've ever felt on my Niken ha ha. (PS: Would anyone sell me a right hand pannier rack?) -- Rob

The TKC80 seems to fit just fine, though it's crazy wide. I did not attempt to mount them myself. There's no rubbing, even though it bottoms-out regularly on potholes (another reminder that this isn't really an ADV bike.) I had planned to ride the Niken to Tuktoyaktuk in a few weeks but it's too large for my friend to trailer to Whitehorse so I'll do the trip on my WR250R. Thr Givi Canyons are just what I want for capacity; only roll-top baggage carries awkward objects like tents. I'm definitely overloading the stock pannier racks, though. Who thought it was a good idea to make them plastic?! And my brilliant mounting solution consists of pipe straps. Well at least they're stronger than the racks. I would buy the Givi racks (especially now that one of my stock racks is broken) but they don't offer a vertical mounting surface for my ADV bags.

Hi, A thank you to Maxim for their enthusiastic postings everywhere about Nikens. I admire your research almost as much as your foglight setup. On the topic of tires, I haven't heard of anyone using this bike the way I do, as an all-road ADV. After riding the stock tires to Labrador and finding mud flat-out dangerous, I fitted the world's fattest Continental TKC80 to the rear and two Heidenau K66 winter tires to the front. The bike still fishtails on deceleration on gravel and the Conti greatly slows down the lovely steering the bike originally had, but I'm now able to follow my GS-Adventure-riding friends again, I'm getting better at sliding the rear on farm roads, and I still have had no trouble cornering hard on asphalt. It is also perfectly rideable in snow, if you're careful. No, the Niken is not actually a very good adventure bike. With 3 tracks, something is always hitting something and salty slush is hard on the chain. But it has added two months of riding to the season here in Canada. Safe riding. If you want to use the bike as I do, I recommend a rotopax jerrycan on a Givi tail rack, SW Motec handguards, engine guards and bash plate, and R&G sliders. The stock pannier mounts and panniers are of course terrible so I'm using Givi Canyons jerryrigged on the stock mounts. One of the latter snapped when the bike sank through its gravel parking spot and pitched over one night and I can't find the stock replacement in Canada. But that has been the only serious downside to using this as a gravel bike so far. Unlike the completely normal behaviour of the bike on the street, light dirt riding is weird but it works. Thanks for the posts.