The engine is
powerful providing
excellent traction
while not feeling
too tiring to ride
pipe has been increased 187mm and the right
muffler tube is 98mm longer.
There’s no big change to the engine but
it has been tweaked. The squish has been
revised, as has the piston skirt, piston ring
and conrod. The engine cases have been
strengthened too.
Giving the tweaked motor its air, the filter
now has twice the surface area and the fuel
injection has been adjusted to suit, with the
system now injecting fuel twice per cycle.
The result of all this is peak power at
9500rpm is up by 2.4hp (1.8kW) and peak
torque at 7500rpm is up by 2Nm. Honda
says this isn’t at the expense of low down
grunt with the new bike making more torque
everywhere above 3000rpm than last year’s
bike.
New for 2019 is a three position launch
control activated by holding down the start
button, thrown in to the 450’s arsenal to help
nail those holeshots – more on that below.
The three power modes (Honda’s Engine
Mode Select Button) remain with Map 1
being the broadest, Map 2 is softer power
for traction, while Map 3 is for higher rpm/
more aggressive power. Lastly and perhaps
the most obvious change visually, gone is
my beloved Renthal old-school skinny bar...
Honda has finally adopted a fat bar. Along
with the new bar, there’s a two-position top
clamp that allows for four bar positions when
the bar post clamps are rotated 180 degrees.
It’s fair to say that Honda has not sat still
in the last 12 months, but has kept pushing
forward with its 450... they know that the
competition is hot. The big news last year for
the 2018 model was the electric start, which
carries over to this year as you’d expect.
KIWI RIDER 53