Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

HAWK... ... '" - O'l g ~ will i, ever breall 'lie LSR it brea' the LSI or will 'lie sal' breall i,? the salt brea' it? z Fla nd ers By Bruce flanders th e F we ll f or well over a month the Honda Hawk has been attempting to become a tt emp ti ng b ecome Z W the quickest motorcycl e in the world. motorcycle th e wo rld. th e ..J ...J American Honda, who is responsible for wh o resp onsibl e fo r U > the engines and drive train only, has all tr ain o n ly, h as th e engi nes U the skill and knowl ed ge at their knowledge th e sk ill fmgertips to put nearly 300 h o rsepower ne ar ly 30 0 horsepower fingertips to to th e the transmissions . transmissions. Reaction R ea cti on Dynamics, builders of the chass is, have Dynam ics, o f th e chassis, fmally sorted th e handling bugs out of finally the what h as been an ill handling beast. wh at has an b east. N ow what remains to be seen is if Now wh at b e se en . mother nat ure will coopera te . , m oth er nature cooperate. The Hawk is an ex erc ise in doing Hawk exercise do ing d o best , win th e big wha t H onda what Honda likes to do best, w in the bi g o ne s. It may a lso be a prime example of ones. may also of overkill. fo ur cyclind er over kill. Two 736cc four cyclinder engines masses o f horsepower th at en gines with mass es of h or sep ow er that when ap p lied all at once create great whe n applied strains on the drivetrain. on t he drivetrain . T he sy stem d esign ed The drive system was designed to handle this power load but only u nd er han dl e th is p ower o n ly under ideal conditions. For example, lon g id eal co nd itio ns . for examp le , long amounts of dynamometer time showed d y nomometer am o u nts that the power train would withstand th at th e p ower wit hstand the extremes of fu ll power runnin g up th e ex tr em es o f full p ower running to a certain RPM limit. A problem lim it. p roblem cropped up when the RPM cutout cu tou t cro pp ed switch failed to function properl y and fail ed fu nc ti o n properly one of the motors did a self destruct th e mo tors sel f de struct o ne number.. numb er a t Ho nda In all fairness to the fellows at Honda the other engine survived a terrib le terrible th e 0 th er engi ne su rvive d beating when the above condition took w hen th e place. The engines took a 14000 RPM Th e 14 000 R n l would show what head temperatures, oil wo uld h ead tem pe ratures, o th er read o u ts p ress ures , RPM, pressures, R PM, and other readouts had been during the past run nin g. This also als o running. provided an exact record of th e data exac t o f the m ost m ech an ics find very necessary most mechanics t he wh ile relievin g the driver of the while relieving th e d riv er check ing ea ch gaug e. requirem ent requirement of checking each gauge. T he driver, J on :\lc Kib ben , has h eld The d river, Jon McKibben, h as held up the b est of any system on the th e best sys te m o n ~ w ....... ~ ~ "" _ "~~, -z--« """ , Bat t le w eary and scar co vered , th e Haw k flies across t he flats. .minimum lo ad and a piston let go in one minim um load p iston o ne engine. engin e. T he mai n p ro b lem b een, The main problem has been, as reported in earlier issues of C.N ., that rep orted ear lie r o f C.N., th e scoote r n ot han dl e properly. the scooter would not handle properly. Drive tr ain Drive train problems have o nly occurred only occurre d after super extensive low speed running ex te ns ive sp eed ru nning after while trying to cure t he ill handling. cu re the handlin g. w hile Chassis problems have been p ro bl ems compounded by the fact that every time co mpo un ded b y the fac t t ha t tim e there th ere is a handling difficulty it results in handlin g d iffi cul ty unload.. o bvious a huge hairy unload. It is obvious that h uge unloads in a motorcycle of this variety m o to rcycl e va riety tend to create body damage and also an d .... ~~. _ ~F~ > "" "'"' , . .. _~~ , ..""; :

• Cover