2024 Honda Africa Twin Review – Across Australia odyssey

2024 Honda Africa Twin Review

East to West aboard the 2024 Honda Africa Twin

Like all good adventures, this one started with a restless night’s sleep, a tummy full of butterflies, and my mind buzzing with a little fear and trepidation. An early run to the airport and a quick flight into Coolangatta airport was all that was separating me from a two-week ride tracing a winding route across this huge country, from the Gold Coast in Queensland to Carnarvon on the Western Australia coast, aboard Honda’s freshly-updated-for-2024, Africa Twin.

For this adventure, Honda had generously bestowed us with an Africa Twin and an Africa Twin ES – the Showa EERA electronic suspension model, both with conventional manual transmissions. It’s also worth noting we ran the standard Metzeler Karoo Street rubber on the rear paired with Michelin Anakee Wild fronts for most of the trip.

The full 2024 Africa Twin model range arriving shortly on the shores here in Australia consists of:

• Africa Twin (21” front, 18.8L tank, manual only)
• Africa Twin ES (21” front, electronic suspension, 18.8L tank, heated grips, manual or DCT gearbox)
• Africa Twin Adventure Sports ES (19” front, electronic suspension, 24.8L tank, heated grips, DCT gearbox only)

Let’s kick things off by having a look at what has changed on this latest revision Africa Twin:

• The 2024 1084 liquid-cooled parallel twin is running slightly higher 10.5:1 compression along with updated ECU programming to boost low and mid-range along with an increase in peak torque of 7 per cent, up to 112 Nm at 5,500 rpm.
• The road-focused Africa Twin Adventure Sports model now runs a 19-inch front wheel and shorter suspension travel for improved on-road handling.
• Tubeless rims and tyres on all models, with 21/18-inch on the standard model, and 19/18-inch on the Adventure Sports model.
• New five-way adjustable windshield.
• Revised fairings and subtle graphics updates.
• Updated Dual-Clutch Transmission for smoother changes at low speeds.
• New, more comfortable seat with thicker padding for the Africa Twin Adventure Sports model
• New redesigned rear seat for the Standard Africa Twin models.

So why the pre-adventure jitters? Firstly, I’m no seasoned pro on big litre-plus adventure bikes, especially not off-road. Give me a two-stroke enduro bike, and I’ll happily throw myself at silly obstacles, but the thought of muscling a big adventure bike through sandy, rocky, and potentially flooded tracks in remote outback Australia had me seriously doubting my qualifications.

Upon reflection, I needn’t have worried so much, as my inexperience made this an even bigger and better adventure. Over the 14-day and 7000km trek, I had an epic time, got very comfortable on the big Africa Twin, and learned a whole lot about it, as I pushed my limits and built some new skills.

Still riding a wave of nerves, I quickly stuffed enough gear into the saddle bags Daryl Beattie had kindly provided to survive the first few nights, and tried to familiarise myself with the bike before doing my first awkward leg-swing over the seat, trying not to wipe out the saddle bags or snag a boot in front of racing royalty. Mission successful.

First impressions last, especially if you’re a punter visiting a dealership taking a new bike for a test ride. I like the refreshed graphics and styling tweaks on this latest model. The steep rake of the front fairing and screen, the twin headlights with their halo DRL lights, and the angular flanks, give the bike an imposing and purposeful look.

As we rolled out of Daz’s driveway and wound our way down Mount Tamborine, I felt instantly comfortable. The Africa Twin hides its 231 kilogram wet-weight well, somehow shrinking between your legs. Ergonomics are spot-on, and the upright riding position affords plenty of vision to see through corners. The wide handlebars (wider than the Transalp), make changes of direction effortless. As a whole, on the road, the bike feels planted and balanced, and gave me an instant boost in confidence. Likewise, the twin four-piston stoppers on the front and single on the rear offer plenty of power to slow proceedings in a predictable and controlled fashion.

The initial 320km run out to Dalby allowed plenty of opportunities to familiarise myself with the controls. Auto-cancelling indicators work well. Cruise control works flawlessly, and is a breeze to operate from the controls on the right handlebar. Rolling the throttle in the reverse direction disengages the cruise, so there is no need to touch the brakes. Just be careful as you go from sitting to standing up on the pegs not to roll your right wrist forward and disengage cruise, because you’ll lurch forward toward the ‘bars with the sudden lack of drive. Cruising along at 110 km/h, we were averaging just under five-litres per 100 kilometres. Which, in theory, should mean if you ride conservatively, you could see up to 400 km from a tank. We noticed the fuel gauge seemed to drop off a cliff rapidly when the fuel light came on, prompting us to stick to 320 – 340km max between refueling.

The combination of starting the first leg late in the day and our choice to take the scenic route, left us in the dark about 80 km out of Dalby on Day One. Not ideal, and to add to our anguish, Google Maps ensured we took every back road possible, down single-lane bitumen tracks between farms with zero street lighting. It felt as though we’d ridden into some light-sucking vortex as the Africa’s headlight, even with high beam on, just couldn’t cut through the thick darkness.

After much cursing and a couple of close calls, we eventually made it into Dalby safely and vowed never to put ourselves in the same situation for the remainder of the journey. Safe to say, supplementing the standard lighting with a pair of small spotlights would be high on my list of modifications for the Africa. The other bugbear, which applies to many modern motorbikes across the board, is the lack of back-lit switch-blocks. Trying to navigate through menus on the dash when you can’t see which buttons to press on the switch-blocks gets frustrating fast, especially when you’re new to the controls.

Over the next couple of days of riding, which consisted of lots of highway running, I started experimenting with the electronics. The Africa has six riding modes: tour, urban, gravel, and off-road, along with two more user-customisable modes. Rider modes are easy to cycle through on the fly using the left and right arrow buttons on the left switch-block and each mode uses a slightly different layout to display the info.

I liked the big LCD dash, and overall visibility was good. It also runs a smaller digital display showing the essentials (speedo, gear selected, odometer, and warning lights) all of the time, and could potentially get you by if the big LCD were to fail or freeze for any reason. All the information on the LCD is clear and readable in all kinds of light. Riding mode graphics and layouts are also clear and well laid-out.

Changing the settings within the rider modes, however, proved more tricky (read frustrating). Initially, I struggled to access any of the settings without first plugging my phone in to trigger the settings menu to open. After a full inspection of the switch-gear I found the ‘pages’ button at the top of the left switch-block which, when held towards you, opens the menu where you can access Bluetooth settings, rider mode settings, etc. At this point in the journey, I was most keen to experiment with the electronic suspension settings. I could feel a noticeable difference in the dampening and stiffness when cycling through the single rider, single rider with luggage, two-up and two-up with luggage settings. I eventually settled on the softer single-rider setting for the smooth, straight blacktop, which made mowing through the miles very comfortable.

Pairing your phone and headset is a process, with the headset needing to paired first, before then adding your phone to the system. Fortunately, the initial pairing worked a charm, but as the Africa doesn’t have a phone storage pocket, and I wasn’t running a phone mount or tank bag, I couldn’t leave my mobile plugged into the USB port, and thus couldn’t use CarPlay.

I also had difficulties with getting audio from the phone to play through the headset when both were connected to the bike by Bluetooth. In the end, I gave up, disconnected both the phone and headset from the bike and concentrated on enjoying the journey, so I can’t comment on how well CarPlay functions on the Africa.

The new five-way adjustable screen works as advertised, and although adjusting it is a two-handed operation, it can be done relatively easily on the move. I was able to set and forget the screen pretty early on in the piece at a height which prevented buffeting on my peaked adventure helmet, yet was low enough not to hinder my vision.

With the suspension and screen dialed in, the cockpit of the Africa Twin is a comfortable place to spend time. The seat has two height settings, 85 cm and 87 cm. I tried both, and at my average 180cm height, I preferred the higher 87 cm setting. Over the first few days, I found myself adjusting my position around on the seat as the day wore on to try and get some relief from my bronte-sore-ass, but as the journey rolled on, the seat foam seemed to soften up, or perhaps I just hardened up, and found the saddle a very comfortable place to be.

Our first full day off-road was the stretch from Birdsville to Marree. This also marked the point where we joined in on a Daryl Beattie Adventure Tour, with the customers flying in to Birdsville to ride to the WA coast on Daryl’s fleet of Transalp models.

A long 520 km day with a mix of fine gravel, sand, mud, and large sharper rock roads. The Africa Twin and Africa Twin ES models come standard with a basic aluminium bash-plate offering mild off-road protection. Somehow, through one of the rockier washouts, the knobbly Anakee Wild hoop on the front had managed to pick up a sharp stone and send it straight back into the left-side engine cover, denting and putting a tiny pinhole puncture in it.

Fortunately, one of the boys had taken a low-speed topple in the sand just down the road, and I’d stopped to help, when Aaron Slight, one of the legends on the DBA tour, spotted my Africa leaking lifeblood. Thanks to a bit of quick MacGyvering from Daryl with Selley’s Knead-It, I was back up and running in no time. The takeaway is to fit a larger bash plate if you are heading seriously off-road and always carry a tube of Knead-It. Remarkable stuff!

At roughly the halfway point of our trip, and after 900 off-road kilometres over sand and gravel roads, with some muddy water crossings thrown in for good measure, I had the opportunity to sit, reflect, and take some notes in Coober Pedy.

I’d been keen since I first threw a leg over the Africa Twin to see if it could carry its friendly on-road handling traits through to the dirt, and it certainly does. The smooth, predictable power the big twin makes down low, combined with the surefooted nature the 21-inch front provides, gave me confidence and made navigating the tricky bits of dirt and sand surprisingly easy. Even going against the rules in the sand and riding slow, you can get your weight back and tractor the front end through the deeper sand sections with relative ease. Fitting more aggressive rubber on the rear than the Karoo Streets we were running would make the sand easier to navigate.

As previously mentioned, the Africa Twin has six rider modes, Tour, Urban, Gravel, Off-Road, and two customisable modes, User 1 and User 2. Each mode has pre-programmed settings for traction, wheelie control, engine power, engine braking and ABS. It also has a super clever IMU (Inertia Management Unit), which pulls data from various sensors on the bike 100 times a second, to manage the rider aids mentioned above, including cornering ABS, which prevents a front wheel lock-up when the bike is tipped into a corner. It’s a mega-clever system and works great in practice, but It did leave me wondering if it’s too clever, as after three days of trying, Guy (my wingman piloting the other Africa Twin), and I still couldn’t work out how to fully disable traction control. Finally, after struggling our way up Big Red, the biggest sand dune in the Simpson Desert, we requested a lesson in ECU-fu from Daryl in Birdsville, and learnt that you can only disable rider aids from Tour mode. With Traction Control turned off in Tour mode, the traction and wheelie control will then remain disabled through the other five rider modes, until you switch off the ignition.

My last gripe with the electronics is that the LCD display is they can be laggy when switching between rider modes, especially after first switching on the ignition. I often found myself cycling past the ride mode I wanted as the LCD played catch-up. Eventually, I got into the routine of switching the Africa’s ignition on before putting on my helmet, gloves, etc, to allow the system time to boot-up, as well as memorising the number of presses it took to go from ‘Off Road’ or ‘User One’ mode, to Tour mode, so I could disable traction and wheelie control, then flick back to the desired rider mode. I understand the safety reasons behind having traction enabled every time the ignition is switched on, but please, Honda, give us an easier and more intuitive one-button method for disabling it!

When you’re standing up on the pegs, the Africa Twin proves a nice place to be. The wide ‘bars make the front easy to point and changes of direction are fairly effortless. The narrow-cut seat front and the shape of the tank make gripping with the knees comfortable, although I reckon I’d add some grippy pads to the tank for a little extra knee hold.

When you sit down and cruise on the blacktop, you certainly notice some heat funneling back to the inside of your knees from the big 1100 cc lump. It was no bother on our trip, but it may get a little warm commuting around town in summer. The SC-Project exhaust fitted to the Africa Twin ES we had on test was also a highlight, with a really nice low-down growl without being abrasive or droning at highway speeds.

I’m a big fan of the sex cannon. The only other accessory I thought might have come standard from the factory, is a quick-shifter, but the gearbox shifts nicely enough through traditional means.

Along the stretch between Alice Springs and the Western Australian border, we encountered extended stretches of corrugations combined with long rolling whoops. I’d swapped bikes and jumped on the non-electronic suspension model the morning before to get a feel for the difference between the two offerings. My first impressions were that while the non-ES model was set up super-soft, somehow, the sharp corrugations still seemed to hit quite hard on the front-end, as though the suspension couldn’t bleed off the sharp hits fast enough. The rear also seemed to lack control over the long undulations and whoops. To be fair, these were pretty demanding tracks on suspension, especially for the prolonged periods we were traveling. Fortunately, preload and damping are adjustable relatively quickly on both the front and rear Showa suspension. I then experimented with multiple adjustments to both bikes over the following days and found a happy medium on both of them, making them much more amenable on the demanding off-road tracks.

My takeaway from this is that manufacturers can’t offer a bike off the showroom floor which handles every riding condition perfectly. The best they can do is provide a bike in a configuration that will handle and perform comfortably across the broadest set of riding conditions. If you are planning on tackling a journey like the one we’ve just completed and traveling thousands of km off-road, you’d be mad not to get the suspension set up with the help of a professional, if you are not across the dark art of suspension tuning yourself. Tuned to your riding weight, plus luggage, and tailored to the riding conditions you expect on the trip.

Both the Africa Twins were running standard Metzeler Karoo Street 150/70R18 rubber on the rear and 90/90-21 Michelin Anakee Wild hoops on the front, and they held up surprisingly well. The more aggressive rubber on the front made steering through the sand and gravel much more predictable, and if it hadn’t been for a couple of punctures late in the trip, the rears would have lasted the whole 7000 km journey.

Our penultimate day aboard the bikes was the stretch between Mt Augustus and Carnarvon. This saw a return to the bitumen and time to reflect on the trip and the bike overall.

Over the preceding 14 days the Africa Twins had been through it all. We had blown through washouts at silly speeds and ridden thousands of km of heavily corrugated roads, and the only small dramas we saw were a couple of punctures and the little hole in the left engine cover, which, to be fair, was pretty unlucky. The niggles I have with the electronics are only minor, and are all things you’d easily live with day-to-day to have the pleasure of riding this remarkably capable machine.

For such a large-capacity adventure bike to give a relatively big-bike rookie the confidence to tackle some of Australia’s more demanding outback roads and even have a crack at riding sand dunes, is no mean feat.

As the pricing of most adventure bikes in the litre-plus category has gone further north through and since the pandemic, the Africa Twin genuinely represents great value as it one of the few offerings available for under 25 K ride-away.  And as far as adventure bikes go, it is also arguably the most handsome of the lot.

Throw on the optional hard plastic adventure panniers that slot straight into the mounts in the tail section and you are set.

When it came time to step off the bike and hand over the keys in Carnarvon, I honestly wanted to keep the adventure going and continue heading north up to Coral Bay. The venerable Africa Twin has given me a taste for adventure, and I’m frothing at the thought of getting off the beaten track once more.

2024 Honda Africa Twin Specifications

2024 Honda Africa Twin Images