Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

year to the day ,after I'd tested the VR1000 for the first time in Miguel mode on the same track. Back then, I'd been genuinely impressed with the handling of the Mike Eatough-designed VR chassis, but it was apparent that the engine needed more power, better acceleration, and a sharper edge to its topend performance, It felt too streetfriendly - a fact confirmed this year by riding out to Blackhawk Farms on one of the 50 VR1000 roadsters that have now been built, essentially to early-'94 Superbike specifications. Greyhounds are bred for racing, not to keep as pets.... And believe me, the VR Harley in its '95 form is no dog. Scheibe claims the team has extracted another 6-8 bhp over last season, and I believe him - even if the '94 quoted horsepower figure of 142 bhp at the gearbox at 10,250 rpm seemed a little optimistic. Still, no two dynos read the same, and what matters is how the '95 VR1000 compares on the _ track - not only with its rivals, but with itself. Riding the bike, there are two big improvements you immediately notice over last year: The first is the way the engine picks up revs, the second its topend performance. I'd complained that the Harley was too measured in its engine acceleration, that it didn't have the zap of a Ducati or the zing to rival a Japanese four. Well, now it does. There's still the same crisp pickup and meaty midrange punch from the fuel-injected V-twin, delivering tractable torque from low down and making the sweet-handling bike a good friend in a tight corner. But at the co t of raising the threshold at which the VR come on really strong by 500 revs or so to 6,500 rpm, Harley has made the motor notably more eager to head for higll-rev heaven - though not by reducing inertia so much they've sacrificed ridability and torque. From 7000 rpm upward, it picks up engine speed very fast, delivering acceleration that is definitely improved over last season. It also feels more potent at the top end than a year ago, a fact confirmed at Brainerd when Oiandler pulled away from Jamie James' Vance & Hines Yamaha in a straight line, and Jamie. came straight round to the H-D pit afterward to find out why! This is not a slow-coach twin - nor have these improvements been gained at the cost of reliability. Harley had only one avoidable non-finish this season, when Carr suffered an electrical problem, while Chandler did not retire once from a race for mechanical reasons, says Scheibe. With 700 miles between engine rebuilds and a set of crankcases lasting a whole season, the eight-valve motor is now reliable as well as increasingly potent. But it still needs more radical development to get on the same level as the opposition: Scheibe knows this, which is why, as he now admits, he contracted British Formula One race engine constructor Brian Hart last winter to do some development work on the VR cylinder heads. "1 was impressed by what he'd done with limited resources in F-l racing," says Scheibe, "and as cylinder-head design is one of the keys to getting competitive horsepower, I wanted an outside opinion about how good ours were. Hart liked what we'd done, but made some suggestions how to improve them still more. It's all part of striving after increased performance you need to keep an open mind, and don't be afraid to take advice from people outside the company." Quite so - in which case, ahem, stand aside and allow me to collect my own personal Brownie points, for there on the Chandler VR1000 are two of the features I said a year ago I thought the team really needed to incorporate on the bike - and now they have. What's more, they've done them in-house, and done them really well. The electronic speedshifter fi tted to the gearbox is as good as any I've sampled, with a sharp, precise action that isn't overly sensitive and doesn't feel as if its giving the gearbox a hard time. Fitting it became even more crucial with the extra power that Scheibe says the Harley now makes from 7200 to the 1O,400-rpm mark where Chandler used to change gear (Carr shifts at 10,700 rpm: I didn't know dirtheads were such revhounds!), so that it's ever more vital to keep the motor revving and optimize every last nanosecond of upper-rpm engine time. The 5-speed gearbox's ratios are still quite evenly spaced, though Scheibe admits they need to be closer if he's to narrow the powerband in pursuit of Honda-beating horsepower. That's a major project for this winter - but six speeds would be better still. The fivespeed's ratio spacing was one reason I felt the DuHamel VR needed a sprag cI utch to stop the back wheel locking up and chattering on downshifts under heavy braking. Well, now it's got one and it works just fine, allowing you to max out the braking potential of those fantastic Wilwood brakes that I was so impressed with last time around. Scheibe's foresight in not going the carbon route has been rewarded with a bike that at 360 pounds has to weigh the same as its four-cylinder rivals under AMA rules, yet stops as well as a World Superbike Ducati, in spite of not having the extra engine braking that the Italian bike's desmo-valve gear allows. As to the chassis, Oiandler favors a more neutral setup - with quite soft OhIins fork and suspension settings and a more balanced stance - than DuHamel's old bike (or Carr's, which has steeper-dropped handlebars and a more forward riding position, in keeping with his smaller stature). This still doesn't make it too hard to get the back . wheel waving in the air if you panicbrake at the end of the main straight at Blackhawk Farms" And traction is excellent, the rear Dunlop digging in hard out of slow turns to give a really satisfying punch down the next straight, en route to your appointment with the soft rev limiter at 10,800 rpm, or if you really insist, with the engine cutout'at 11,200 (Above left) Wilwood metal discs and calipers are excellent. The 46mm fork Is by Ohlins. (Above) In the search for more power the two-into-one exhaust of the debut season was ditched In favor of this two-Into-two system used during 1995. (Left) The man In charge of the VR1000 proJect, Steve Scheibe. difficult and will be more costly. The revs. Even if there still isn't quite the explosive acceleration you need at the front of the Superbike class these days, Harley is getting close. The improvements in the VR1000's power delivery came about with revised inlet porting in the cylinder head, says Scheibe, as well as a bigger airbox with altered diffuser to increase air pressure from the ducting under the steering head, a quite different exhaust system (now with two separate pipes rather than the two-into-one from last year), and revised mapping of the Weber / Marelli EPI. This still has only a single injector, though, something the team might like to consider doubling up on like Ducati has always done on its race bikes. . There has also been a lot of detail alteration and minor tidying up, like a proper, integrated wiring harness to replace the many separate wires that ran this way and that in the bike's prototype stage, while the most obvious external difference apart from the !!xhaust is the new nose cone to the fairing, which not only looks a whole lot better than before, it's qlso more aerodynamic. But did they register it in Poland, homologation homeland of the street-legal VRlooo from which the Harley racer 'derives its Superbike approval? The results may not have been there this past season, perhaps mainly for rider-related reasons, but Harley's second run with the Superbike smart set produced an enhanced level of performance that my year-on-year test sessions confirm really does exist. But going from here to the next level is more I team needs a top Superbike rider with proven ability and the commitment to make the bike a front-runner - a Miguel Mark Two, in fact, and they aren't plentiful, nor cheap. I think the team also needs to revise the engine more radically than the already-promising changes they wrought last season, narrowin"g the powerband still further to get more power up high, with a six-speed gearbox to make it ridable. If they can't use desmo val ve gear for obvious reasons, then they have to find a way of achieving the positive valve control that enables Ducati to use a camshaft design that no springer motor could support, and that means F-1-type pneumatic valves. As Aprilia is just finding out, making a twin deliver four-cylinderbeating performance is very difficult without this, especially if the bikes have to weigh the same. But though the technology undoubtedly exists in the U.S. to do all this, and do it right, it costs money. HarleyDavidson management is going to have to decide whether they want to be winners in road racing, or just continue to wave the flag and make up the numbers, or else walk away from it altogether. I do think that fundamentally the VR1000 has what it takes to make America a winning nation in Superbike racing, but only if Harley follows Ducati's lead and step up investment in terms of development resources and team personnel, with the aim of making the bike a regular visitor to Victory Lane, and reaping the commercial benefits this will bring in terms of spinoff sales of street versions. First of all, though, Harley needs to convince itself that the 8-valve Superbike has a commercial future on the street. If they do, it'll surely have one on the track. f"N

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