Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Harley-Davidson VR1000 • Ing ar e By Alan Cathcart Photos by Kyoichi Nakamura 16 a rle y-Davidson 's re tu rn to the road race arena thi s past season in AMA Su p erbike racing has su rely been more su ccessfu l th an a ny of th e Milwaukee com p an y' s bosses co u ld h a ve d ared h ope. With an all-n ew design, the VR1000 (wh ich ran on a ra ce track for the first time in its p resent guise only in December of 1993 ) an d rid er Migu el : DuHamel ran at the fron t of the su perbike pack in a handful of races, qu alifying on th e front row of tw o rou nds at Mid-Ohio an d Brain erd, an d leadin g both before scoring a best -ever fou rth place in the second of those eve nts, on a fast track whe re ' p ow er rules. Th ou gh th ere ha ve been the di sappointments inevitable with any new mod el, including a string of minor glitches like br oken w ir es and fue l su p ply p roblems, th e VRI000 has pro ven to be mech anically reliable in its de vel oped form, a testament to the fundament al sou ndness of th e d esign. And w it h Doug Ch andler taking over for DuHamel, who bolted to Honda in a surprise that caught Harley o ff gu ard, and joine d by H arley's d irt track ace Chris Carr as secon d rider, Ame rica's Fines t will be look ing to pick u p from where they left off for 1995, with Ducati and the Japanese Big Four now firmly in their superb ike sights. The chance to gau ge fir sthand just , how far Ha rley-Davidson's small b u t close-knit race team - headed by developme nt eng inee r Steve Scheib e - h ave progressed in their first seas on, came when I was invited to join them for the first of their post-season winter test sessio ns, h eld a t th ei r loca l Blackhawk Farms track in rural Wisconsi n. Th e cha nce to ride DuHamel's 1994 race bike confirmed impressions of it I'd 'acqu ired fro m close u p, as long ago as the VRI000's race d eb u t at D a y t on a in March. Ridin g the "other" kind of tw incylinder su pe rbi ke, a Fast by Fer racci , Ducati 888/955 hybrid, I' d been .astonished at how well th e new Harley evidently handled straigh t ou t of the box whe n exposed to Dul-larnel's, er, committed ri di ng style . And if m y Ducati was fast eno ug h, especia lly in midran ge, to sweep past him again on the ba nkin gs after he'd outbraked me in to the tu rns, the ora nge and black V-twin had a d efin ite ini tial ju m p on me ou t of bends - in sp ite of bein g ine vitably on the porky side, given its semi-prototype sta tus at that stage . Still, this was surely the fastest Hog yet to put trotters to tar- mac: pork on the hoof - Superbiki ng The American Way, Tha t Daytona debut for the VR1000 had represent ed Harley's retu rn to tarmac competition for th e first time on a factory basis since 1973, when the XR750 road racer fina lly gave best to the Jap an- , ese ho rdes in the F-750 category, Apa rt from a brief effo rt w ith ano th er dirt ' track superstar, Jay Sp rings teen, rid ing th e original fact ory -built versio n of Lucifer's Ha mme r with tuned Sportster en gin e in BoTT r a ce s b a ck in 1983, Harley stayed away fro m ro ad racin g for exactly tw o decades. But plans to return were ,laid as lon g ago as ,1987, w hen e ngi ne d e s ign er Ma rk Mill ar began work on the VRI000 mot or, th e cy li n der- hea d d esi gn fo r wh ich wa s con tracted ou t to automotive specialists Jack Rou sh Engin eering in Detroit. The d eci s ion to u s e Rou sh, a comp an y e mp loy ing upw ard s of 1000 p eopl e engaged m ainl y in prototype engi nee ring and com po ne nt fabrica tion for th e Big Three U.S. au to makers, especially Ford, was an early indication of a smart decision by Harley man agem ent to tap into the unparalleled wealth of experti se in the American auto industry, to ge t a cru cial edge in developing an all-Amenca n Superbike - just as Triu m p h is linked with Cosworth in Britain, or the Cagiva G rou p with Fe r rari in Ita ly. Ma kes sens e. Roush's hea vy in volvemen t with NASCAR ra ci n g was a n ad ded bonus, and set the seal on a po licy which in d ue course wo uld involve recruiting many Ll.S. au to racing sup pliers to the VR1000 p roject, most no tably Wilwood (who buil d brake sys tems for most of the top NASCAR an d drag racing teams ) and Penske, w ho need no in t rod u ct ion , and we re th e n getting sta rted on developing a ra nge of motor cycle forks an d rear shocks. To coord ina te the whole operatio n, Harley recruited the now th irtys omething am ateur bike racer who had bee n wo rking for Rou sh, and had been put in charge of their work on th e VRI000 engine - Steve Scheibe. With Scheibe aboard, th e pa ce of development w as raised a litt le, though still constrained by the slim resources in ter ms of manpower ass igned to the project: considerin g that what has been creat ed h ere is a 100%-n e w motorcycle e n tire ly co m p r ised of p u r pose-b u ilt p arts uniqu e to it, wh ich in turn mu st have been spe cially design ed, approved and so u rced from a variety of suppliers, it co mes as a sh ock to lea rn th at the VRI 000 project's developm ent, team is now and has always been as small as it is - like, jus t FIVE peop le: Schei be the project lead er, Millar th e engi ne man, mechanics Craig Fillme r an d Al Stengler - and chassis man Mik e Eatoug h. Yes, the n am e Ea to ugh may indeed ri ng a be ll a s h e is ' th e Eng lish m an w ho design ed the Armstrong 250 / 350cc GP racers in the earlv 1980s (as well as su ccessful tri als and MX mod els, and the British Army's basic two-wheeler ), and was the first p erson to co n struct and race a carbo n-fiber composite motorcycle chassis, the Arms tro ng CF250 which took Nia ll Ma cken zie among others to internationa l su ccessin the mid-80s. But Arm s trong folded, leav ing Hond a to jump in and enlist Eatough's serv ices to apply h is carb on-tib er-chassi s tech niques to a work s NSR250-engined special project , th e Sekitoba-Honda raced by Stephane Martens in the 1987 GP season, Soon after, Eatough crossed th e Atlantic to start w orking for Harley with the VR1000 on e of his first projects.While Scheibe and Millar worked on redesigning the engi ne to make it more com pact, Eatou gh and Scheibe drew up a basic d esi gn layou t for the ch assis, which was always int en ded to be a GPsty le tw in-spar alloy fabrication. Buell in A merica and H arr is in Br itai n we re de puted to each bui ld a prot otype, the n th e En glish company asked to build a seco nd vers ion wit h so me required correction s: that was the basis for the first VRI 000 prototyp e to be track-tested, at Gra tta n in November of 1993. Wishing to m inimize problems of di stance an d comm unica tion (plus, it mu st be admitted , use a n American su p p lier w here possible), Schei be ap proached Ano dizing Inc. in Oregon, the makers of Trek an d Specia lized bicycle fram es as well as a lloy ex tr usions fo r Freigh tli ner tru cks an d millions of homes: the president of the company h appens to be a motorcycle fan - so they agreed to construct the VRI0 00's fra mes. Th e fi rs t 10 0%'-U .S.-bu ilt VR I000 Su perb ike w as te sted at Da ytona in December '93. From then on, it's bee n a steep learning cu rve, slicing through the hotbed of u.s. Superbike competition. Why explain the extende d gen esis of H arley-David son' s fir st s u pe rbike in su ch detail? Becaus e it' s the only way to convey the scal e of the Scheibe team's a ch ievem ent. H ond a em p loys thousands of skilled development engineers, hundreds of them assigned to their HRC

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