2021 Ktm 790 Adventure R

Motorcycle hard/impossible to start. Excessive valve wear. Currently unrideable due to mechanical problems. Motorcycle stalled at intersection of busy highway, would not start creating hazard of being hit in the intersection and while pushing it to side of road. Mechanic inspected vehicle, found excessive wear to valvetrain causing engine power loss and stalls. States that it appears to be a manufacturing defect in the intake system allowing dirt ingestion leading to excessive irreparable valve wear.

When engin is cold for more then 8 hours. Engin will start only on 1 cylinder (right), for +/- 1 minute (1000 +/- rpm), after, you will heard internal explosion, and left cylinder will start (1600 +/- rpm) . and dropping at 1400 for normal idle. With an strong gazoline smells after start-up, after 2 3 minutes smeel is gone Please note that I live in Canada Quebec

If the bike has been sitting overnight, then the first start of the day is difficult. It does not want to start and takes a few tries. When it does start it is on only 1 cylinder...this goes back to normal once it warms up after a minute or so. This began @700 miles. This problem goes away immediately if you use 89 octane fuel. I have just stayed with 89 but other owners have reported after going back to the fuel KTM recommends 91 octane or higher, the problem comes back.

When I start the bike, it sounds like the engine is only running on one cylinder and misfiring. It runs 'rough' like this for about 30 -60 seconds and the revs are sitting between 1000-1300 instead of the normal 1300-1500rpm range. You can smell fuel while this is happening. It then 'pops' and the engine runs fine after that. I live in the Netherlands, but wanted to register the issue here as well for investigation.

When running the motorcycle on the manufacturer-recommended 91+ (premium) octane fuel, the engine can take up to 5 or 6 tries (over the course of a few minutes) to start when it's sat overnight. When the engine eventually does start it runs very rough on only one (of two) cylinder. During this rough starting there is an overpowering smell of raw/un-ignighted fuel coming from the exhaust pipe. There seems to be some kind of issue with the fueling or ignition timing that prevents the engine from running properly on 91+ octane fuel. Switching to a slightly lower 89 (mid-grade) octane fuel mostly, but not completely, seems to fix the issue. However this fuel is not rocommended by the manufacturer due to the high compression ratio and I'm worried that it might cause damage in the long term. The bike was taken to the KTM dealer who performed a reset of the factory ECU; however, this did not help the issue at all. Reading online, I've found dozens of people with other 2021 KTM 890 Adventure motorcycles experiencing the same issues e.g. no start, hard starting, running on one cylinder, etc. Running on only one cylinder and sometimes dying is a major safety issue.

Starting immediately after the mandatory 600 mile service check by an authorized KTM dealer, this vehicle started experiencing prolonged cold start failures. It went from starting 100% of the time after three or less start attempts to requiring approximately ten failed start attempts before starting and running. Until 10/20/21, this motorcycle has always been fueled with either 93 octane gasoline with 10% alcohol or 90 octane fuel with no alcohol (only 2-3 times) as recommended by the manufacturer. On 10/20/21, I filled the nearly empty fuel tank with 87 octane, 10% alcohol. On the next overnight cold-soak starting attempt, and every cold start following, the vehicle started immediately on the first start attempt and settled immediately into a normal fast idle until warmed-up. This vehicle was purchased new with 0 miles on June 11, 2021. It received it's 600 mile manufacturer-required service at approximately 680 miles in September, 2021. It currently has, as of 10/24/2021, approximately 1300 miles on the odometer.