Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Test By Ala n Cathcart Photos by Kel Edge en en m ~ ~ ~ a> .c E a> u a> C 8 hatever your era of choice for a sp in d own motorcycling' s memory lane, Kawasaki su pplies a retro-rid e to go. The smallest of th e four Ja pa nese manu facturer s has cleverly focu sed of late on milking the current wave of niche-market nostalgia for all c.r biking yesterdays - from kicking off the cult for Naked Bikes almost a deca de ago with the Zephyr, to bu ilding the kind of '60s parallel twin today that makes Y9u ask yours elf wh y Triumph didn 't d o the sa me thin gs ye a rs ago . And now, to recall the era w hen their high -barred heavyweight one-liter musclerods rewrote the performance rul ebook and invented the term "Su p erb ik e," Kawasaki will sell y o u the ZRXl100, a close but not exact replica of the green-meanie go-getter that eventual 500cc World Champion Eddie Lawson rode to ba ck-to-bac k AMA Superbike titles in 1981-1982. Close, though - bu t no cigar, because mod e rn te ch n o log y cou pled wi th Kawasaki' s accumu la ted expertise in pa ckaging fou r-stroke pe rfo rma nce to go, h a s blu n ted - so me wou ld say, refined - the hard-edged poten tial of the stock ZRXl100, especia lly compared to its KZlOOOELR ancestor, the limited-edition (750-unit) road replica of the 140 hp-plus AMA Superbike racer that took Fast Eddie to his brace of titles. While appealing to the nosta lgi c tastes of a clientele more concerned with the show than the go, as deli vered from Muzzy Kawasaki ZRX1140 (Above) Want a tuned-Up vers ion of .Kawasaki' s tuned-down ZRX11OO? Rob Muzzy can build you one - th e Muzzy Kawasaki ZRX1140. (Right) Sir Alan puts the Muzzy bike throug h Its paces - so mewhere in Oregon . Japan with 96 rear-wheel horsepower in a smoothed -out engine pac kage, with mo re emphasis o n low and mid ra nge per formance than eithe r its ELR ancesto r or the ZX-11 / ZZ-R1100/ GPZ 1100 family its moto r is d erived fro m , the stock ZRXl100 is argua bly jus t too competent to genuinely thrill . It merely conveys a rose-tinted remind er of the way it might have been, rather than it actua lly was . It's much more pastich e than repli ca. 0 worries , th ou gh , because Rob Mu zzy has ridden to th e rescu e. Wh o better to d o so than th e man w hose y a rd -lo ng lis t of World a n d AMA Superbike titl es won for Kawasaki kic ked o ff with those tw o ea rly-'80s AMA Championsh ip cro w ns won by Eddie Lawso n? Even in the shadow of his impending divo rce from Kawasaki in term s of running their AMA Superbike team after 20 years on the job, Mu zzy' s we ll-establis he d af te rmarke t performance-parts busi ness continues to focus on making the street-product K-bikes better as well as, often , bigger . Increas ingly, this has led to models like th e Mu zzy Raptor, heavily red eveloped performance pa ckages sold as complete bikes throu gh American Kaw asaki de alers or, for foreign bu yers, direct from Muzzy' s Perfor- mance Products, and this range now includes th e Mu zzy 's ZRX1l40, represen ting a showcase for the kind of horsepower that can be purchased right out of the Muzzy's aftermarket catalogue. Year s of experience tuning the ZX11/ ZZ Rll O hypersports models, a nd O before that of racing the one-lite r aircooled Superbikes tha t p reced ed them, have tra nsferre d eas ily to making the ZRXllOO the bike it oug ht to be, but, in stock form, isn' t. The resu lt is a motorcycle with attitu de , that has even more performance tha n Fast Eddie's Superbike title-winner of a decade and a half ago . So, no t a replica either - just bigg er and better. To concoct the bike that rev erses the tun ed-d own approa ch o f th e s toc k ZRX11 00, the men at Muzzy' s overbore th e 76 x 58mm en gin e b y Imm and extra torque, w ith lower compression, milder earns, more flywheel weight and smaller 36mm carbs fitted with the KTRIC system fea tu ring a throttle-position sensor linked to the ignition curve most work is in vested in the cylinder head. This is extensively ported and gas flowed by none other than Rob Muzzy himself, rather than one of his specialist employees. "Got to keep my hand in," jokes the mu sta chi oed maestro of makin g gree n bikes mea ner; Thi s includes th e specia l five -a ng le valve job tha t Mu zzy shares with Coswo rth as one of the tricks of his trad e, creating a revised combustion chamber with greater turbulence, as well as better flow from th e stock val ves. These are, how ever, fitted with Mu zzy's springs, which mu st be used with the X-I cam

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