Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/103458
............·Of • but'fieW it' came to be. Who deslaned It, who ~ It, where It was tested and why did It roll off the assembly line like It is. To facilitate this, journalists were not only invIted to Kawasaki's Akashi Works factory just outside of Kobe, japan, but we were also invited to interrogate the responsible engineers with a barrage of questions to help us better understand what went into the creation of the ZX-I OR. All of this was after spending two days riding the bike at Kawasaki's newly acqUired Autopolis circuit in the mountains above Kumamoto, on the south- ern island of Kyushu. Almost a year ago in our 2005 Cycle News Open Class 5hootout, the ZX-IOR was bested by the then-new for 2005 Suzuki GSX-R I000. The problem for the lOR was that it wasn't able to beat the Suzuki in a single performance category, not at the Buttonwillow racetrack, not at the LACR thlililiCri trii6. bllt more nIIIllI&'llIbIe and usable power. Fast forward to the ~ and the new ZX-IOR is ready to take another crack at Open-Class supremacy. Kawasaki, unlike some of the other japanese companies, has a much smaller staff of engineer.; working on new sportbikes, but they take great pride in creating excellent motorcycles. On the flip side is the fact that many of the head engineers work on multiple models, such as ZXlOR project manager Yasuhisa Okabe, who also designed the new ZX-6R (new for 2005). So new ideas are constantly being bounced around. There were several areas that Okabe and his team felt that they needed to address for the new bike, including maintaining the high level of power output (while also meeting the new, more stringent Euro-III emissions standards), make the power delivery more linear, improve iiilll power cleIivery wasn't the linear. Despite the fact that It's hard to see on the II10Ilt dyno graph, the 'OS lOR felt like it had a spike in the power delivery as it approached 9000 rpm. Simply put, the power delivery seemed abrupt at certain points in the powerband. Other complaints that we had with the last-generation bike was that it wasn't the smoothest shifter, it had an impossible to read tach, and didn't have a steering damper (despite needing one). In short, Kawasaki listened. The new ZXIOR has addressed all of these issues and more. We started our whirlwind tour of japan, and all things Kawasaki, on the southern island of Kyushu with two days on the awesome Autopolis circuit. The reason that the IncredIbIL 8dlt In 1990 to Formula One specIllcatioIlS, the track was largely abandoned when the Japanese economy collapsed shortly thereafter. The 20-tum track has over I71 feet of elevation change from the highest to lowest points with a huge variety of comers from first-gear hairpins to flat-out fourth-gear sweepers, and a front straight over a half·mile long. It is, without a doubt, one of the coolest tracks I've ridden on. When the engineers sat down to work on the lOR, the first order of business was to address the engine. This was a doubly difficult task as the design team not only wanted to increase power, but at the same time meet the new Euro-1I1 emissions