Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128166
Patrick Racing Yamaha Road Star Warrior STORY BY SCOTT ROUSSEAU PHOTOS BY KEVIN WING D espite the ungodly heat, the track surface at Pomona Raceway is offering about as much grip as a frozen Wisconsin lake in January. Watching as rider after rider balks while attempting to escort Patrick Racing's Yamaha Road Star Warrior down the historic Los Angeles-area quarter-mile strip, I start to wonder what kind of "fun" I'm in for today. I'm here because Yamaha has invited a slew of the motorcycling press out for a ride on Nigel Patrick's class-killing drag-strip terror, but so far it looks like the bike is calling all the shots. See, this particular machine ain't yer basic stone stocker. No siree. It's hell and gone from a showroom-floor model, to the tune of 150 rear-wheel horsepower - that's 50 more ponies than even a Speed Star-kitted street Warrior can chum out. So, why so much? Because horsepower is what wins races, and because the 49-year-old Patrick has made a habit out of building horsepower and winning races. That's somettting that this Warrior does well - race and win in AMA Prostar's Hot Rod Cruiser class. With Coschocton, Ottio, rider Mark Underwood aboard, it has already accomplished more than that, not only winning but also nailing down the class e.t. record at 9.86 seconds. When you consider that the quickest of the machines in our recent Open Sportbike Shootout stopped the clocks at an altitude-corrected 9.81 seconds, and that the Patrick Racing Warrior has to weigh in at a combined bike/rider weight of 800 pounds to be legal for the Hot Rod Cruiser class, that number becomes all the more impressive. According to Patrick, however, getting the necessary power out of the Warrior isn't as arduous a task as you might think. "The Warrior is actually very easy to modify." Patrick said. "I was amazed at how easily we were able to get it up to speed even while retaining a lot of the stock components. The transmission is stock, and the clutch plates are stock. We even use the stock crankshaft. It is inherently a very strong engine, and we have been able to get it to over 150 horsepower without any mechanical problems." That's not to suggest that Patrick didn't take full advantage of the rulebook when building the Warrior into a drag-strip terror. Class rules allow for a maximum wheelbase of 68 inches, but Patrick lengthened the 65.7 -inch wheelbase by grafting an additional 2.5 inches onto the stock swingarm for better weight transfer. The 0.2 of an inch that put the Warrior over the limit was more than taken up via lowering the front fork, which effectively shortens the wheelbase. Stock wheels and brakes are retained. This Warrior does go into battle with one handicap, however. Thanks to its aluminum chassis, some 80 pounds of ballast must be added to make it comply with the class' minimum weight rule. The bulk of Patrick's trickery lies in the engine, which again retains some stock parts, although they're massaged. For example, the clutch is stock, but it uses an MTC locker pad to ensure that the team can dial in the amount of slippage that it wants in order to meet various track condi- tions. The crankshaft is stock, though it has been relieved of some six pounds of excess suet. Patrick says this is done to increase the Warrior's ability to rev, although he does admit that there's a fine line between too much and not enough. "If you get it too light, then you bog off the line: Patrick said. "We're really sneaking up on that. We're not sure what the optimum weight should be yet." Patrick said that the team cannot increase the crank's stroke, but that the stocker's 4.4 inches of swing is plenty. It is mated to Carrillo rods that throw 100mm forged pistons up and down in the Warrior's barrels. Total displacement is a whopping 1775cc. Much of the power increase here is gained through compression, and the Patrick Racing Warrior has loads of it. The bike's compression ratio is a whopping 15: 1, forcing the use of high-octane racing gasoline to keep it from detonating itself into oblivion. "Here again, the Warrior uses an automatic decompression system with For a bike as fast as the Patrick Racing Warrior, you would think that It would look far more radical. A slightly longer, lower stance Is the only visual clue that It is capable of nine· second elapsed Umes. 48 AUGUST 7, 2002' II: U II: I • n __ 55 the stock starter," Patrick said. "It does a slick job on this bike, too. We also use the stock ignition system." Other mods are done mostly in the area of the heads and valvetrain. They include Patrick-modified cylinder heads with oversized stainlesssteel valves, custom-ground Patrickspec camshafts, Patrick Racing adjustable lifters and tapered-aluminum pushrods, and Patrick Racing valve springs with titanium retainers. Ask about the intake and exhaust systems, though, and Patrick politely skirts any questions. All he is willing to say is that the bike uses one carburetor per cylinder and that the custom-made exhaust system is a result of an "ongoing R&D process." "There are some proprietary things that were are working on in those areas, so I don't want to get too far into that right now: Patrick added. The effect of all these changes is a machine that is transformed from a street cruiser to quarter-mile cruise missile. Patrick claims that the bike is capable of over 150 rear-wheel horse-