In many ways, a TTR looks like the perfect bike for me, light & powerful enough for my needs, however the oil change frequency will be a bit of an issue.
My intention, is to use the bike for:
Short trips on the road
Greenlaning/TET
Longer, overlanding type trips for weeks/months on mixed road types.
Wondering if fitting an oil cooler, will allow me to get to 3000 mile (or more) intervals without compromising reliability too much? Or am I looking at the wrong bike? Also, are the white bikes the same service intervals as the blue ones?
If you are doing a week of green laning then you will be making heavy use of the clutch which will contaminate the oil. I can usually tell when I need to change the oil as the gear change gets a bit harder - less smooth. This could be at 200 miles or less. Could probably safely do a lot more mileage but oil is relatively cheap
My b-i-l only uses his TTR on the road now and the oil stays clean for a lot longer.
Not sure an oil cooler will make much difference to keeping the oil clean I think 3.000 miles is optimistic but happy to be corrected
I am sure the more experienced overlanders like Dan and Simon will give a more considered (and useful!) responses
I think that the ttr250 is a perfect bike for your needs apart from the oil changes.
I have done alot of miles on my ttr and used it for multiple styles of riding. Currently I'm 34,000km into a South America trip and have spent the last 7 of 11 months at 30-42°c.
Dependent on facilities available and style of riding we have extended the oil to 1800 miles on a few occasions and couldn't really notice much difference to when we change every 1000miles. It should be noted that we don't abuse the clutch all those miles as we are overlanding, sit at 80-90kph to be nice to the bikes and riding trails infrequently, more like dirt roads.
In all reality oil changes on these bikes take 15 minutes max, we always tie them in with eating and having a drink so it's usually a welcome stop.
Overall I'd say that regular changes are not a problem and these bikes are flexible with when you need to change the oil when using them like I do.
If you are going to use it more for start stop trail riding when home then I'd try to stick to the manual in an effort to prolong the sprag clutch but if you are away I would extend it further.