Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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RIDING IMPRESSION 1996 Honda CBR900RR ace (Left) Honda totally reworked the CBR900RR, making it even lighter and more powerful than before. ยท Honda went to great lengths to improve rider comfort. The riding positioning has been changed by raising the aluminum handlebars lOmrn and pivoting them back five degrees. The seat height is also 10mm higher, and the footpegs have been raised a few millimeters. To improve rider mobility on the bike, the fuel tank has been completely reshaped - it now features a larger-radlus' hump at the back with a 5mm-lower top surface, and the.knee dents are Significantly more narrow than before. Plus, because of the tank's new shape, Honda was able to eliminate the need for a fuel pump, which has been replaced in favor of a lighter and simpler gravity-feed fuel supply system. Suspension-wise, the CBR900RR's got a major overhaul. Honda basically redesigned the 45mm cartridge-type front Showa fork, which features a newly developed, Honda-original internal piston construction. It uses a new dampingforce control system for an improvement in damping characteristics and tracking response. This new damping system, Honda claims, was designed with nothing but the street in mind. "Most suspension technology comes from motocross or off-road bikes, but street bikes have shorter travel and stroke," said a Honda spokesman. "So we rethought the CBR900RR's forks because street bike needs are different." Also, many of the internal fork parts are lighter to reduce By Kit Palmer Photos by Kevin Wing ust when the competition takes a step closer, Honda responds by matching their advances with, yes, an even lighter, better-handling and faster CBR900RR for 1996. Impossible, you say? Evidently not. With machines like the Ducati 916 and some of the rejuvenated 750s now nipping at theCBR's heals, Honda chose not to wait any longer to thoroughly redesign the CBR900RR to maintain its distance from the competition and,. in Honda's words, "to meet the rapidly growing demands of riders everywhere." The CBR900RR was already a remarkable achievement when it made its 1993 debut boasting weight figures nearly identical to that of many of the then-midsized 600cc sportbikes while offering open-class horsepower. But Honda wasn't completely satisfied. Honda openly admits that the 900RR never really equaled that nearly perfectly balanced and confidence-inspiring feel like that of the highly successful Honda CBR600F3. As a result, the 900's frame has been entirely redesigned from the ground up in hopes of achieving that balance of rigidity of the F3 while maintaining the 900' s feather weight. For starters, the cross-sectional thickness of the frame's extruded main spars receive consequential.changes to lower the torsional centerpoint, while maintaining the same amount of rigidlty as the previous model. An all-new triple-box cross-section replaces the previous model's four-box configuration for lighter weight and optimized austerity. The composition of the frame's smaller, gravity die-cast swingarm pivot plates were changed from a hollow-type construction to a semi-open-type with inner-surface reinforcement ribs providing lighter weight and added strength. The all-new aluminum swingarm also features modified extrusion thicknesses in its main spars and a modified crossbrace shape constructed of larger-diameter, thicker-walled box-section tubing. .J Lr) 0\ 0\ ,.....; 0\ C'l l-o Q) S Q) > o z 20 (Right) The new CBR900RR works like magic on the track, much thanks to a better-balanced package. (Below) Three color schemes wlli be available for the CBR900RR, Including this Erion Racing-type design. unsprung weight and inertia. The fork still offers full preload and compression and rebound-damping adjustability. The single rear Showa shock, with remote reservoir, is also new. It features a smaller piston dlameter (down from 46 to 40mm) and a new damper assembly. This, combined with new linkage ratios, has increased wheel travel from 4.4 to 4.9 inches. One of Honda's biggest priorities with the in-line, four-cylinder, liquid-cooled, DOHC motor was to increase cylinder capacity without increasing weight or decreasing durability. Not an easy task, but Honda figured out a way. Although the new engine gained a three percent increase in dlsplacement from 893cc to 919cc - it dld so with no change in bore pitch (the distance between cylinder bores), thanks to a new technique for casting the sleeves into the cylinders. As a result, the bore centers remain the same without a reduction in liner thickness or cylinder-block rigidlty.