Tiger 1050 : 2000km Review

Right then peeps,
I've got a burden I need to get off, and that is to review my new (to me) bike, after its first 2000km.

To start off with, I've bought the bike in March from a Greek owner, got it over into Romania around the 25th of March and have been riding it ever since.

Here she is:


I haven't taken any good pictures of it lately because its been getting dirtier and dirtier and I've yet to clean it.

1. Engine & Power delivery
The engine is absolutely fabulous! Before this I've had my sv650s and I've ridden a couple of other bikes too. I've not ridden any super sport liters, this is the first liter engine I've ridden. But let me assure you, it's a great engine.
All the positives you've ever heard about it are true. Smooth, good torque down low, decent punch up top and great character.
The power delivery is very linear, if a little flaccid in the 3k-5k area, which is emissions induced and can be solved with a new can & engine tune (you can easily switch engine tunes with the tuneECU software, which is free, god bless'em).

My only minor gripe with the engine is it's a bit jerky when revs are really down (< 2.5k) and you barely open the throttle. The carbed SV was better in this. Nothing a bit of clutch won't fix. I didn't notice any jerkiness anywhere else (like when opening the throttle during turns) when the revs pass 2.5k.
I suspect it also has to do with the stretched chain...

2. Handling
I think it handles great. It's really easy to turn in, the big fat bars give you great leverage. Almost as agile as the SV was, with more stability in the turns.
BUT the suspension lets it down. It's adjusted for eating up potholes and it's got quite a bit more travel (total travel is 15cm, whereas the SV had 12cm). This shows up when you try to do fast S-es, as it gets out of shape.
Also, under heavy braking it will dive a bit more than the SV (nothing unexpected there) and when releasing the brakes, it will wobble a bit front to back. This, I'm told, is easily fixable with high quality suspension bits (but those are expensive) or at the very least, proper rate springs & oil.

I would say though, that for 90% of my riding, the suspension is spot on. I commute to work on it, go on joy trips during the day and take long trips at the end of the week. The ability to swallow potholes is very important to me, as the roads around here are really bad, so it suits me great.

The bike is very well balanced, so doing low speed maneuvers is a joy ride. I can easily do full lock turns on this (not that the SV was lacking in this ability) .

3. Comfort
The bike puts you in a neutral position, almost upright, with a bit of lean and plenty of leg room. I would say it's the perfect position for me, exactly what I was trying to achieve with the SV, but couldn't because of lack of leg room.
The seat is miles better than the SV's was. I had gel pads on the SV and the Tiger's seat is also a gel one. But this one is far more roomy, with more surface contact, so a better distributed load.
I would say the SV's seat was a normal seat, whereas this is a good one. An Airhawk on top of it turns it into a Great saddle.
If the roads are smooth, I could do with 200km jaunts before taking a 10min break.... But the roads here aren't smooth, so it's just 70-100km jaunts before taking a break.

The screen is the chink in the armor here. It's a very buffeting one. I wear ear plugs, so it doesn't bother me that much, but the ever changing flow of air makes my head wobble slightly and wears me out over the long rides.
I partially solved this by using long screws to distance the screen from the fairing a bit (this reduces the pressure difference between air flowing above & bellow the screen and allows the protection bubble to collapse further down the way). But it looks like cr*p and I'll be making some brackets to have it look nice. Maybe I'll buy a Madstad.

4. MPG
The former owner kinda scared me about the fuel consumption. He was getting about 8.5L/100km(35MPG imperial) in town and about 7.0L/100km(40MPH imperial) when riding out of town. I thought that that was excessive, but I bought the bike anyway, reasoning that it must be down to rider and fuel quality.
Turns out I was right. With the fuel in Romania and my style of riding, it drinks about 6.0L/100km(45MPG imperial) in town and about 4.5-5.0L/100km out of town(60MPG imperial) when riding with a pillion and some luggage.
I think this is good for a liter engine, as the SV was getting about the same, a bit better out of town (I was getting around 65MPG imperial out of town).

However, I believe these numbers to be easily improvable upon by Triumph with the next generation engine. The reason I say this is that when the throttle is closed, the engine still takes some fuel in(to the order of about 2L/hour) which is then burned via SAI (this gives the engine its characteristic pop on deceleration). This fuel is scavenged on most car engines and it could easily lead to better fuel consumption on future engine iterations.


5. Other stuff I can think of

The bike is a bit top heavy, and this makes it difficult to move around in parking lots, especially in the gravel pit that is my office's parking lot.
The engine temp shoots up in city slow traffic (this is normal, of course, but it seems a bit too fast).

The lights were bad at night, so I put in a HID kit for the low beam. This kinda solved the problem, but I would say that more is needed, as it cuts too sharply and doesn't allow lean angles over 20degrees at night.

The rear wheel hugger is completely useless as is the front wheel guard. When it rains, all the water and dirt is shot into the radiator, where it stinks up when I'm at a standstill and it starts to fumigate. This makes it look like my bike has caught fire and other motorists look at me funny... Also, all the dirt from the rear wheel is thrown into my top box and the back of my legs. This ruins the locking mechanism of the top box, but doesn't affect my riding mood, as I don't care about looking like a piglet.
Also, the chain guard is too short and this causes chain grit to be thrown at the passenger.
All these are solvable, but take money & time and they shouldn't, as the Triumph development team should have caught them during the development stage.
Of course, the SV suffers from these things as well, but you'd expect them from a 14 year old design, but not from an "upscale" 5 year old design.

6. Conclusion
I think it's a very good bike with the potential to be a GREAT bike. It's an improvement over the SV in nearly every aspect. The only regard in which the SV is better is weight when stationary and that the SV is slimmer, so it's easier to get into spots in traffic.
I would say that it's going to be a cracking bike for me if it turns out to be decently reliable and if I can afford to fix all the small details.

Right then. Hope you all enjoyed the review, even if a bit long winded and maybe a bit over-detailed. I leave you to some recent pictures of the bike (please excuse the dirt...).

Sweet review of a lovely bike, I just wish i could afford one

Originally Posted by Vergey

Sweet review of a lovely bike, I just wish i could afford one

And had longer legs, me that is

I can't reach well either. When both feet are on the ground, I'm on my tippy toes. I usually just pick which leg to get down firmly and shift to that side. If you're on the bike and have to back up on an incline, just give up, get off the bike and push it back with both feet firmly on the ground.

Other than that, I'd say that for those that don't like the tall stance, there are lowering plates available which go for about 50Euros and can bring the bike down precisely to what a normal bike would be.

Btw bluefish, have you ridden one ? I was really in two boats with the Tiger and the Sprint. I finally went for the Tiger but reckon the Sprint is not far behind at all (the only thing that swung it for me was the half fairing - in summer time a fully fairing bike would have killed me...)

is that an ohlins sticker on your stock fork? tststs...

yeah, it's only a sticker unfortunately...
It came like that from its first owner (I'm the 3rd)... In the cheesy department, there's also the blue rim tape

It will be removed & dealt with in due time..

Dont worry it took me 6 months to replace the ridiculus blue grips the previous owner had bestowed my sv with....

Originally Posted by chester_dio

Dont worry it took me 6 months to replace the ridiculus blue grips the previous owner had bestowed my sv with....

Some people have really doubtful tastes in things...
The sad thing is when you get the bike and it takes you really long to change those things because they're not "musts", so you don't allocate funds to them before paying for important stuff like changing tires.

Of course, the same people with doubtful tastes also have those two priorities mixed up

that was exactly my case... tyres were 5 years old and down to wear marks, the chain was knackered but the grips were brand new and bright blue!

Tyres are 4 years old and the chain is unequally stretched - so yes, knackered as well - on mine...
But in the defense of the former owner, he did keep on top of the service part. He just didn't replace these things as it was time to sell it and he would have replaced them only for me to enjoy them...