Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Cathcart muscles the slow-steering KRSOO around the Assen Circuit during the track's 75th Anniversary meeting. was completely rebuilt by former works Kawasaki mechanic Nigel Everett's Racing Restorations company to the superb race-ready condition it is in today. In this guise, the avantgarde-looking Kawasaki monocoque GP racer has become a star attraction of the major Historic GP demo events around Europe, such as Goodwood's Festival of Speed or Montlhery's Coupes Moto Legende, where it was ridden by former KR250 works Kawasaki rider Jean-Francois Balde or the sun-drenched 75th-anniversary meeting at Assen last October, at that Chris Wilson kindly asked me to ride the bike that, 20 years earlier, had helped create a small part of the famous Dutch circuit's history by finishing third in the 1981 Dutch TT. Very appropriate. First, though, I needed some practice on it, before going public in front of thousands of race fans. Well - it sounded like a plausible excuse to get two bites at the cherry, so an open practice day at Snetterton provided the chance to make friends with a bike that I'd admired from afar for two decades, ever since I saw it in the metal for the first time on the grid of that very 1981 Dutch TT, on my first visit to Assen as a fledgling fulltime bike journalist. Looking at the Kawasaki close up in the Snetterton paddock while Chris prepped it ready for my ride - this is a collector who knows how to get his hands dirty, working on his bikes! - revealed the basis for its appeal to the GP connoisseur: It's an engineer's bike - but one where function and form go hand in hand, replete with a host of idiosyncratic features which set it apart from all its contemporaries. Indeed, the KR500 could be Italian, it's so beautifully detailed and individually designed: It's a bike you can just gaze at for 10 minutes, and every 10 seconds see something else to admire. Uke the artistic design of the monocoque chassis, so beautifully arc-welded in its construction, yet so obviously crafted by hand. Or the large circlip holding on the rear sprocket, making it quickly detachable for fast gearing changes. Or the screw-off ends to the gold-anodized silencers, for easy repacking at the whim of the noise police. Or the com- plex fabrications that comprise the triple clamps, each welded up by hand from aircraft alloy. Or Kawasaki's own distinctive brakes, with the aluminum calipers handcrafted from solid billets. Or the distinctive mechanical anti-dive linkage, so plausibly effective Honda ended up copying it on their RS 1000 fourstrokes. Or the large-diameter front axle, for greater rigidity. Or - well, examine these photos and see for yourself: This is a masterpiece of Ori- cue' e ental motorcycle art - one that rather surprisingly is as enjoyable to ride as it is to look at, once you've ensconced yourself in the low seat and found yourself sitting in the Kawasaki, rather than on it, helping in turn to make you feel a part of the bike. For the KR500 belongs to the pre-cobas era of GP design, before the Spanish engineer who created the modem GP motorcycle's chassis geometry started lifting the rear ride height, steepening head angles and reducing wheelbases. This means that, in spite of the rocker-arm monoshock rear end, the lengthy KR500 is both rangy and relatively low-slung: It sits low at the rear, perhaps to enhance stability under braking via reduced weight transfer - a reason, too, perhaps, for the stretched-out 1470mm wheelbase. Seat-to-footrest height is also very reduced, making it quite hard to hang off the bike around turns, which you feel needs doing in order to make it turn because of that rangy build that invites you to keep up turn speed around the many third-gear sweepers I encountered when I came to ride the bike at Assen, rather than use the extremely effective Kawasaki front discs, which have a lot of bite and feel by the standards of the era, to brake into the apex and then tum the bike. Kork Ballington's flowing 250/350cc riding style would have been well-suited to the KR500. Perhaps because of the way the package needed to be ridden, Kawasaki obViously placed great store on suspension compliance, which by the yardstick of early- '80s technology is very effective. You can appreciate this at rest just by setting the Kawasaki on its wheels and pressing down on the rear of the fuel tank (which is the center of mass of the bike) and watching the suspension at both ends compress and return so smoothly. The springing is obviously very soft - yet out on the track it feels taut but compliant, thanks presumably to the rocker-arm rear end and the mechanical anti-dive at the front, both of which permit soft springs to be used, which you can feel eating up minor bumps in the road surface, without affecting overall high-speed suspension response. So on the 18-inch treaded Avons that Wilson fits to all his bikes, the Kawasaki rode the bumps around the fast Coram sweeper at Snetterton without any sign of chatter - a sure sign that the KR500 frame's low cg when all fuelled up and with rider in place is doing its stuff. Yet, thanks to the stiffness of the monocoque chassis, you can fire it up out of a slow turn like Sear or the Bombhole at Snetterton, even using quite a lot of angle, without any excessive pumping or weaving - nor, given the long wheelbase, does it understeer very nevvs NOVEMBER 6, 2002 19

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