So here I am with a bike that just rolled over 1,000 miles in less than three weeks and I am wondering, I need to lay it on side and test pick it up and I need to find a big parking lot made of sand or dirt.... and flat track drift the boss. Who has done both? I did have my machine on about a mile of deep gravel road at just under 50 MPH standing up on pegs and staying loose... But, share stories... Or who in Northern Front Range Colorado wants to join me finding a big dirt parking lot...
Im less concerned about picking it up than I am with it falling on me when it does on a dirt trail or fire road...There was an article in one of the bike mags about a Baja adventure ride where a Stelvio was used.. During a photo shoot through a mud puddle the rider fell and had the left cylinder crush his leg breaking it in multiple places requiring a helicopter ride back to the states. Deep gravel, 50mph and a 600lb+ pig of a dirtbike don't sound like fun..I love my Stelvio but a dirtbike it aint.
I don't find picking it up all that big a deal unless it's heavily laden with camping gear etc. I don't have the 8 1/2 gallon tank though, so that could make it a bit more difficult. Haven't flat track drifted it, but have had it sideways plenty of times on dirt. It's fun.
That whole 600lbs when things go wrong is why I limit my Stelvio to basically graded dirt roads. All is fine when the bike is upright, but like any 600 lb beast, it can get ugly real fast when things go wrong. Last summer we did a BDR ride with a guy on a KTM 1290 and it went wrong for him and he got pinned under the bike with the bike leaning downhill. It took 3 of us to get that bike off him in the position it was in. He was very lucky there were enough of us. We tried it with 2 guys and no go, it really did take 3 and even then it wasn't "just pick it up", more like drag it to a position it could be picked upright. If I'm doing anything more than decent dirt roads I'm on a much lighter bike. I took mine up over a Santiago peak once and up to Frazier Peak, just to see how it went and decided where the bike's limits would be set by me. The problem with the Stelvio is that it gives you too much confidence in the dirt and you start to feel like "ya I can do that"..... when in reality you probably shouldn't.
here is mine in it's natural habitat I could not lift it by myself, above picture doesn't quite show the slope in the road and incline. Lucky someone drove down that road and helped. If I was alone, I'd probably had to start unloading stuff and get creative dragging it.. I was on other occasion able to lift it alone, from a spill over antifreeze on wet pavement parking lot. But I had allot less luggage in the cases and the ground was perfectly flat. So if it's just the bike and ground is flat I can still lift it. Yet that's a kind of ideal scenario not quite often to occur.
https://www.advmotorrad.com/dustriders-motorcycle-hoist https://www.eastbound.shop/product-categorie/motowinch-motorbike-hoist/ Would be pretty easy to rig up your own for a fraction of the price too.