It’s a combination of slick, rocky creek beds, steep rocky descents and loose, off-camber hillclimbs. The extreme loop is perfect for testing the toughness of a bike, because you’re bound to crash at least a few times. Bernie estimates the coating added 2kg to his Kato.Įven though Mitch is the unofficial ADB crash test dummy, I was given the task of testing Bernie’s “indestructible” KTM 360 EXC at ADB’s private enduro test facility. Robbie Maddison even used it to coat the frame and swingarm of an FMX bike. The watermelon survives everything they throw at it. In a promo video, the company coats a watermelon with the stuff and drops it from 50 metres onto concrete then tries to smash it with an axe, all to no avail. It’s super tough, scratch-resistant and even impact resistant. It’s a polyurea protective coating you may have seen used in ute trays. He sprayed the plastics with an industrial-strength protective paint from LINE-X. Bernie DH has taken a unique approach to crash proofing his 1997 KTM 360 EXC. There are the go-to crash-proofing accessories that usually include handguards, radiator guards and braces, pipe guards, bashplates, disc guards front and rear, linkage guards, frame protectors, spring-loaded levers, brake snakes and heavy-duty chainguides, to name a few, but what about those precious plastics? One cartwheel can fold your rear mudguard like soggy cardboard.Įnter ADB reader Bernie den Hertog. So what can be done to toughen up your machine? It’s not a bad business model after all – sell punters $15,000 dirtbikes and then encourage them to crash. This got us thinking, can you make a dirtbike indestructible? Manufacturers haven’t done much in the way of toughening up their bikes despite most of the brands moving into the hard enduro scene. If you cartwheel your dirtbike down cliffs week in, week out it’s going to have some scars. One thing hasn’t changed though, and that’s the laws of physics. It was once frowned upon to crash your pride and joy but now it’s commended, as long as you assert that you are a hard enduro rider. WORDS // OLLY MALONE PHOTOS // MITCH LEES & BERNIE DEN HERTOGĮxtreme enduro’s explosion in popularity has made it completely acceptable to throw your hatchback-priced machine down a rocky cliff without a second thought. We test a unique 1997 KTM 360 EXC to see if its modifications to make it indestructible are up to the challenge.

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