Should You Downsize to a Small ADV Bike?
Adventure Rider Radio
Canoe West Media
4.9 • 915 Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Thinking about downsizing your adventure bike? In this episode we test the waters with a Suzuki DR350—what it really takes to turn a lightweight, simple machine into a workable mini-adventure bike, the choices (and costs) that actually matter, and a few surprises that show up on both pavement and dirt. We start with durability—mirrors and signals, featuring the Doubletake Mirror origin story with Ned Suesse—and wrap with a technique reality check on small-vs-big from Chris Birch.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Back in 1980, BMW launched the R80s. It was groundbreaking at the time. This was a full-sized |
| 0:14.4 | street motorcycle that was designed to be ridden both on the street and off road, right from the factory. |
| 0:20.7 | And it's the point many people |
| 0:22.3 | credit as the birthplace of modern adventure motorcycles. Since then, we've watched the whole |
| 0:27.9 | market explode. The CCs increase, the power increase, electronics come on in a huge way, |
| 0:34.7 | and a whole industry built around the gear that goes with it and the gear that we |
| 0:38.4 | wear, as well as a skills scene that grew around wrestling these great big bikes into some |
| 0:43.6 | seriously rough terrain and then cruising home in comfort. But for some years now, there's been |
| 0:49.9 | sort of a steady countercurrent, the idea of smaller adventure bikes. You see them in showrooms now, |
| 0:56.7 | of course. You hear riders talk about them. It was 2016, 2017 when manufacturers started putting |
| 1:02.3 | them into their lineups. It wasn't just converting dual sports to adventure bikes. It was small |
| 1:07.9 | adventure bikes made for you. Let's face it, they're easier to pick up, |
| 1:11.8 | they're easier to push off road, or at least that's the idea anyway. So the question is, |
| 1:16.4 | with all these benefits of being lighter, cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain, perhaps better on |
| 1:21.4 | fuel, and certainly easier to ride in the rough stuff, should you be switching to a small |
| 1:27.1 | adventure motorcycle? Well, today, |
| 1:30.1 | my experience switching to a small adventure motorcycle, what I learned, what I expected, and what |
| 1:37.1 | completely blindsided me. I'm Jim Martin. This is Adventure Rider Radio. |
| 1:46.0 | Stay with us. We got a good one for you. |
| 2:00.4 | I'm Sam Manico Simon Pavey |
| 2:02.1 | Alge Phapperdos |
| 2:02.7 | Garson Snell |
... |
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