Honda CRF1100L Africa Twin

The Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin, with its tall and slim stance for an adventure motorcycle, possesses a tremendous road presence, which can tower many of the litre-class bikes as well. The imposing stance of the Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin is well complemented with the integration of many modern features which were introduced in its latest update.

At the front, the high placed front fascia of the Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin gets a pair of headlamps, both of which are placed inside aggressively designed trapezoidal housings. These all-LED headlamps do get rounded daytime running LEDs around them. Just above the headlamps, there sits a vertically placed windscreen, which is fully adjustable as per the preference of the rider, and a black cowl below them, which extends all the way to the bottom of the side fairing extensions.

The Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin has a slightly sharp approach in its design when you see it from the sides. The sleek and angular looking fuel tank has got sharp and vertically laid extensions ahead of them, which beautifully merge with the front fascia of the motorcycle. The engine, finished in a golden theme, sits there in all of its glory, with it getting an aluminium sump guard below it. The 2-into-1 exhaust flows minimally towards the end can, which is quite beefy for the slim appeal of the motorcycle.

Like most of the adventure motorcycles, the Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin gets minimalist side body panels, which partially expose its red coloured trellis frame. The rear side body panels of the motorcycle are placed quite in an angular manner, with them ending up in a large LED tail lamp at the back. The Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin gets a split seat finished in contrast dual-tone red and black theme, as well as spoke wheels on both the ends finished in an all-black paint.

The Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin, in this latest iteration, gets a full TFT rectangular instrument console, with a sleek octagonal panel below it. The large rectangular display shows a huge host of controllable data, which includes speedometer, odometer, trip meters, tachometer, fuel gauge, temperature gauge, gear indicator, clock and a long list of data for the MID on the sides, such as distance to empty, off-road data, average speeds and fuel consumption figures etc. The panel below this main instrument console shows digital speedometer and gear indicator, in case you engage the navigation in the former screen. 

Despite its massive stance, the Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin is quite an easy bike to read for a litre-class adventure tourer. The comparatively slimmer profile from the rest of the adventure tourers in its category is well assisted by 45mm dual functioning inverted hydraulic telescopic forks from Showa at the front and pro-link monoshock with Showa gas-charged damper at the rear. The motorcycle is fitted with a 21-inch wheel at the front and 18-inch wheel at the rear, with disc brake setup all around.

Powering the Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin is a very capable and refined four-stroke, parallel-twin, 8-valve, liquid-cooled, fuel-injected 1084cc engine. Coupled to a very smooth 6-speed manual gearbox, this engine churns out maximum power and torque outputs of 102 PS and 105 Nm respectively.

For a modern litre-class adventure tourer, the Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin is equipped with a sufficient amount of electronic riding aids as standard, such as dual-channel cornering ABS, seven-level torque control, throttle by wire, three-level wheelie control, six-axis Inertia Measurement Unit (IMU), riding modes (Tour, Urban, Gravel, Off-road and two other customizable modes) and rear lift control.

With such a technological finesse in terms of electronic riding aids and the way its mechanicals have been tuned, the Honda CRF 1100L Africa Twin proves itself as a very usable and rider-friendly adventure tourer, backed by Honda’s legendary reliability factor.