Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

~ Kenny Roberts rode it properly. I had to ride it with my feet didn't core much off the pegs, trying to for his 1982 Yamaha SOO lean off and hold it OW61 , saying it more upright . was the worst of "The four-cylinder the factory Yamahas was so smooth with he ever raced . much less torque. Compared with the three it felt slow more like a 250. But I knew Silverstone was fast, and [Eddie] Lawson would beat me on the three, because the Yamaha had longer legs. "Well, Iwon the race. And to be honest, I don't recall any problems because of the design. I didn't feel any pendulum effect from the underslung fuel tank . I hated giving it back." less got to that time. The point is that basically the whole bike, everything on the bike, needed changing. Then they asked the Japanese rider, and he told them: another 30 horsepower. Then they were happy. "The bike wasn't so revolutionary, but it had so many new things - it started out with 16-inch tires , which were not on stream by then, and the monocoque chas sis, which also wasn't on stream. By the end of the project, we went back to a conventional chassis, which helped . "The first time we tested out of Japan was at Silverstone . I remember Charlie Williams on a Dugdale Yamaha 250, more or less straight out of the box, was faster than me down the back straight. The first year, it would tick over at 7000 rpm and give power from about 12,500 or I 3,000 last and second-to-last, so they told us they only put in enough fuel for a few laps and to put on a bit of a show then stop . Neither of us qualified, but they let us start from the back of the grid. I missed starting it on the first bump. I finally got it going on the third or fourth bump, but by then I was so far back on the seat that it went onto the back wheel. It had never done a wheelie before... it didn't have enough power. I did first, second third to the first comer, but what I couldn't see was that the back wheel was covered in oil. That first year it had such massive blow-by on the flat sides of the piston - they fixed it later - that it needed a huge crankcase breather. Doing a wheelie put the breather tube below the level of the oil and that's why it pumped it onto the back wheel. Afterwards, Mr. MICK GRANT 1979 HONDA NRSOO "It depended on the racetrack. At Donington Park it was evil and Salzburgring horrible, but at Misano it was great. and I was able to win by 20 seconds. At Assen I was leading by 10 or 12 seconds when a plug cap came off - and George [Vukmanovich] just couldn't get to it to replace it. The thing was just a bear to work on - all fuel tank and exhaust. "It was a great experiment, and we learned a lot. Often you get good experience by going the wrong way. It taught us that a bike isn't like a car, and the center of gravity can be too low. It started us out working on rake and trail - the three-eylinder and the first four were always tucking the front, because they had a lot of head angle." RANDY MAMOLA A SECOND OPIN ION "Funnily enough. I was the only guy who liked that bike," Randy Mamola says. Honda's great folly - NR stood for New Racing, but it was soon dubbed Never Ready. Oval pistons, eight valves per cylinder, 17,500 rpm - it was meant to prove four-stroke superiority over two-strokes. It failed. Not until the rules were changed for the MotoGP class could Honda prove the point . Mick Grant, along with Takazumi Katayama, was chosen to ride this beast. '~t the end of 1978, Gerald Davison [of Honda Britain] asked me if Iwould be interested," Grant recalls. "He told me the bike would be completely revolutionary. It wasn't going to have radiators, but liquid oxygen cooling and all sorts of stuff like that . '~t the first tests, the bike was barely making 100 horsepower. The bike was very, very unreliable . It would do three laps before the engine blew up, and the first aluminum chassis would do three laps before cracking. "We used to test it for three days at a Carl Fogarty, shawn here on a 1990model Honda RC30, never liked the 1988 RC30 - even though he had can - ~ s i d e ra ble success on the bike. rpm , and it was finished at 17,500. It was just like a 50cc two-stroke. It had a 36mm stroke, and they were already planning a shorter stroke when we started. "The engine braking was a problem even in the high gears . Into Wood cote changing from sixth to fifth. with no slipper clutch, the back wheel would be chattering. You had to use the throttle to help. Of course, it had no flywheels. I did enjoy it, I Fukui said to me, ' No more wheelies.' "But I enjoyed those two years. even though it was so confused. The bike had some interesting things... the first upsidedown forks, and the monocoque was like the two sides of a fairing, just pressed out then joined together, which would have been interesting for production motorcycles. And the engine carried all the rear suspension and so on ." - KEVIN SCHWANTZ "Freddie got hurt in 1984, and I was called in to help out . For the British GP Honda offered the four-eylinder to me , Raymond Roche and Ron Haslam to try. I tested it at Donington Park and straight away told Honda I wanted to concentrate on the fourcylinder. The others stuck with the three. "The biggest difference with the threecylinder was the very positive tum-in. The three had a lot of understeer, and you had to oversteer it on the torque. To me, Freddie Spencer was the only guy who time at Suzuka. I did a 2: 18.1. with a local rider two seconds slower. The lap record was round about 2:12 at that time . For what it was, I wasn't displeased with that time . "Afterwards we had the debriefing... Mr. Fukui had a big blackboard, and he wrote down the times and asked me what we needed to get there. I said that more horsepower would get us two seconds, better tires another 1.5 seconds... and I went through other things until we were looking at improving by tenths, and we more or have to say. Honda did some fantastic work on it. The first year, anything below 7000 rpm, it would just stop. The second year it would idle smooth as anything at 1000 rpm . Of course they used it for training for junior engineers. But it was never going to work. "The 1979 Silverstone race was at the time it wouldn 't run below 7000 rpm . You needed to be a bit of an athlete to get it started. Mr. Honda was at the race, and they didn't want me and Katayama coming BARRY SHEENE 19BO YAMAHA TZSOOG In 1980, Yamaha built an over-the-counter 500cc GP racer to rival the title-winning RG500 Suzuki customer bike. The in-line four looked like Kenny Roberts' factory bikes, but there the resemblance stopped. It was at least 20 horsepower down. in a flexible tubular steel frame with flimsy forks. Barry Sheene had just split with Suzuki and joined Yamaha. He was one of several high-profile riders who suffered the CYCLE NEWS • JANUARY 21, 2004 35

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