Chris’s KTM 620 Street Tracker

This was once a late 1990s 620 Duke, which at some point in the early 2000s got press-ganged into the dirt track scene and was raced (with plenty of success) by a guy whose name I forgot to write down.

Fast forward to now, and Chris has acquired it to turn into a road bike. And he is definitely up for retaining the dirt track spirit. The black tank and tail are a single piece, and the side panels are aluminium.

He brought the bike along as a non-runner, with aftermarket switchgear, a bargain basement dash and a couple of funky LED headlamps, which sit on the old number board between two indicators. The tail light was LED too.

This meant I could build nearly all the loom using thin cable – actually 11 amp, which is still masses for the kind of loads LEDs generate, but you can’t get lighter cable in a good range of colours. Thin cable means the overall loom bulk is less, so it gets easier to route around the bike.

Because there is no room above the engine, I decided to put all the connections for the front immediately behind the number board, and all the back ones in front of the battery. Very simple. Although there is no room behind the number board either. I used adhesive cable tie mounts to control the cables, and concentrated so hard I forgot to take a pic.

The bike fired up very happily. Considering the absolute ragging it’s had for year after year, it sounded good. Chris has a couple of details to sort out, and then he’ll have himself a quick, agile bike for short runs.