Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

litte r. O h, t he shame of it! "Relax," Pitt said . "I've done the same myself, only your extra weight ma de it happe n more easi ly, even if yo u were go ing slower. Y ou have to back right off the thrott le soone r to get th e bike to bra ke and turn - it's just no t very Wieldy. Anyway, main thing is you're okay." Eckl was equally philoso ph ical, an d forgiV - maybe because the ing team had that bran d-ne w, mu ch smaller 2004 proto typ e sitt ing in the back of the pit garage wi th a chassis built in Sw itze rland by Eskil Suter. O n it, Pitt w ould lap no less than two seconds faste r on race tire s in testing th e next day. Afte r qu ite obvio us ly unde res timati ng the amo unt of deve lopment neede d to ge t competitive in MotoGP this is no t o ne st ep up from Supe rbike ra cing w ith tuned -up streetbikes, but several st e ps! - I gue ss th ings look pro m ising for Kawasak i in 2004, with the new bike already in actio n and that pro m ising en gine just nee di ng so me re finem ent witho ut losing its pe rfo rmance . Great e ngine , sha me abo ut the chas sis - the ex act oppo site of my conclusion s about the works ZX-6 RR World Supersport co ntender after riding it back in August. Now, if th ey can o nly find a way of combining the be st of both worlds ... eN Ultra-§uperbike January, 2002 , mark ed Kawasaki's decision to carve its own furro w in MotoGP instead of, as o riginallyen visaged, teaming up with Suzuki, with which it had rece ntly cemented a future joint commercial and technical R&D agreement. Kawasaki took the qu ickest path to developing a GP contender in its own right by producing an B20cc version of its good-performing fourcylinder ZX-7RR Superbike, employing chassis arch itecture that was somewhat on the generous side , wh ich factory rider Akira Yanagawa tested in February at Sepang. Fitted with a tw in-spar race chassis and runn ing on carburetors (as the Superbike was still do ing), the result weighed a porky 160kg (3S2 Ibs.) but was fast enough for Akira Yanagawa to win a rou nd of the All-Japan Superbike series in May, run ning as a prototype - a promis ing start while work continued on the purposebuilt ZX-RR prototype racer. When the ZX-RR debuted in tests in September, 2002 , and was com pleted just two weeks before making its racing debut in the Pacifi GP at c Motegi in October, it proved architecturally to be a variation on the same theme, with an all-new and more powerful fuel-injected 990cc four-cylinder motor and substantial-loo king beam frame wrapped in hard -edged styiing (immed iately dubbed "o rigami" styling by paddock wags). It was supposedly right on the 14Skg (319 Ibs.) class weight limit for four-cylinder bikes, but it still bore dose rese mblance to a more powerful Superbike, this due to massive architecture when compared to others on the grid, earning it the less respectful nickname of the "Incredible Hulk"! Rather curiously, Kawasaki management opted to carry out the new bike's development in public by entering it in MotoGP races while it was barely out of nap pies, apparently in the belief that it was better for the company's image to be on the grid and finish last than to be conspicuous by its absence when its three Japanese rivals were already in action. Sadiy, Yanagawacrashed the Kawasaki out of its debut GP race at Motegi, when the bike slipped on its own oil. Yanagawa broke his pelvis, leaving the company's reigning World Supersport Champion, Andrew Pitt, to take over for the final th ree races , scoring the ZX-RR's first points in the final rou nd at Valencia, with 12th place - unlapped , and not last . But this hopeful sign was n't fulfilled in 2003 , when Pitt was joined by fellow Aussie Garry McCoy, with German test rider Andy Hoffmann occas ionally joining in as a wild card rider, in a season that saw a lot of work but not much in the way of results . McCoy 's ninth place at Le Mans in damp co nditio ns was the bike's best finish, followed by Hoffmann's tenth in the Assen deluge . The Kawasaki has proved pretty reliable, just not very fast. O r manageable , in spite of constant chass is mod ifications and updated frames, culminating in the all-new, much smaller package, built by Eskil Suter in Switzerland, which appeared in the back of the pit garage at the last race of the year in Valencia, ready for Pitt to test the day after my ride . On it, he lapped a startling two seconds faster on race tires than he'd managed two days earlier in the race on the much bigger Japanese-built chassis, but that was while he thought he still had a job with the team for next season before receiving the shocking news he was being replaced for 2004 by Shinya Nakano! The Kawasaki's liquid-cooled, 16-valve, dohc, 990cc , four-cylinder inline engine is taller than the M I Yamaha's comparable motor, mainly because its cylinder block is vertical rather than inclined forward as on the Yamaha, and also unlike the M I the crankshaft rotates forward con ventionally (as on every current four-cylinder Superbike, including Kawasaki's - and Yamaha's!). Plus there's offset gear drive on the right side to the twin overhead camshafts, compared to Yamaha's cornposite chain and gear system. But as on the M I, the ZX-RR's thin-wall crankcases are CNCmachined from solid metal , an extremely time-consuming task occupying upward of 300 hours per set working with an exotic form of aluminum, resulting in a light but extremely strong structure built to very precise tolerances, which is a key element in the ZX-RR motor's excel lent reliability record - as well, presumably, in the fact that what is an undeniably big motorcycle succeeds in meeting the four-cylinder weight limit. The cases feature a bolt -on magnesium sump, V-shaped to reduce oil surge, and incorporate an extractable gearbox and a dry ramp-styie slipper clutch produced by Suter Engineering, which also provided the special clutches used by Team Eckl on the works Kawasaki Superbikes a couple of years ago . Uke the irs, the ZX-RR's has a solid outer drum that is externally grooved to aid cooling. The only electronic element controll ing engine braking is an idle speed control, says team manager Har ald Eckl, without going into detail about how this works. The ZX-RR 's two-ring pistons sit on titanium conrodsrunningon a plain-bearing crank with a relatively short life - just ISookm (931 miles). www.cyclenews.com The titanium valves - each with two springs - are set at a very nat included angle to each other, and they breathe from a large, pressurized carbon airbox set right back into the fuel tank, which is ram -air fed from a promi nent single central duct in the nose of the fairing, just as on the ZX-6R and now ZX-I ORroad bikes, for whose styiingand overall architecture the ZXRRset the scene. There are twin injectors per cylinder, one above and one below the unusual guillotine flatslides in each Keihin throttle body, which contrast with the butterfly throtdes of the Kawasaki's rivals in leaving no obstruction to the flow of mixture at fullthrottle - a benefit whose payoff may however be the fierce power delivery under acceleration, which is the Kawasaki's biggest handicap at present, just like the difference between flatslide and CV carbs . Expect a direct comparison with twinbutterfly throtties over the winter in an effort to resolve this. Under the management of the Mitsubishi ECU, the ZX-RR engine now produces "ove r 230 bhp" at the crank at 14,Soo rpm , running Without a sile ncer on the fruity-sounding Iour-lnto -one titanium exhaust, with a IS,OOO rpm top limit. "I th ink top power is enough," says EckJ, "but the difference between all the bikes is torque and how the power is delivered. This is the key, and we have something in the pipeline for improv ing the engine in various areas - drivability as well as top end . The chassis problems we 've had are mainly engine-related - the engine element has a big impact on the complete bike, and the way of making a good total package comes mainly from getting this right, so that we no longer have a collection of parts, but a good-handling, complete whole." The Kawasaki's sturdy-looking frame consists of aluminum headstock and swingarm pivot castings joined together by welded-on pressed-alloy spars, and there have been at least five different ve rsions along the way in 2003 , with the engine location moved up and down as well as forward and back in an effort to find a better balance, as well as different versions of the same frame but with altered stiffness for that elusive extra feel. There's a similar ccmposlte fabrication for the substantial swingam, with a cast main section to which stampings are welded to hold the axle, and its frame pivot is adjustable, as is, of course, the head angle at wh ich the 46mm Ohlins forks with their tall gas cylinders located beh ind the sliders are carried. Naturally the rear shock is Swedish, too. , The forged magnesium BBS-lookalike ten-spoke wheels are made in Japan by JB Power Magtan and , being fitted with Dunlops. are both always 16.S inches in diameter, with a 6.2S-inch rear and either a 3.50-, 3.62S- or 3.7S-inch front. Kawasakiriders invariably opt for Brembo's smaller, carbon front-brake discs, either 30Smm diameter (as on the test bike) or an even smaller 290mm pair, which paddoc k cynics insist is because Dunlop's front tire doesn 't grip as well as the Michelins most other teams use, so it's poindess havingthe extra stopping power of the 320mm brakes employed by everyone else ifthe tires won 't grip. Plausible, but...? Because its riders use the rear brake a lot, Kawasaki fit a 220mm steel disc at the rear, and it' s worth not ing that its triple clamps for the Ohlins forks comprise a cast magnesium upper yoke w ith a single pair of pinch bolts and a lower clamp machined from alloy billet with tr iple pinch bolts on either side . However, McCoy's team of mechan ics cop ied what the Castrol Honda team did on Colin Edwards ' 2002 World Superbike title -winning SP-2 V-twin and removed the lower pair of these bolts in an effort to deliver more response. Didn't resolve his compla ints about lack of feel from the front end , though... "Making the wild card races at the end of 2002 was just too much rush," says Harald Eckl. "It diverted attention from the process of development and took a lot of energy and time away from getting the basis right ready for a proper full first season of racing. As a result , we've spent much of the year trying to catch up, finding a base setting and evaluating the problems with the engine, with packaging and with the handling. For a small engineering group like the Kawasaki racing division, where there's only 2S or 30 engineers, it's hard to make enough parts to keep up with the normal demands of racing while still developing new prototype components. One of the things we 've had to fIX this year is to establish some systems for doing all this, because it's not like Superbike racing, which is what Kawasaki has been used to doing for the past 20 years . "After so long an absence from Grand Prix, I think it was a brave decision to come back to prototype racing, but in doing so , they underestimated what's required - and we 've paid for it this year. Experience is everything in th is kind of sport, and the structure for upgrading a Supersport 600 bike into a World Supersport Champion is not at all the same as you need for buildinga complete prototype MotoGP bike and a full-race engine all from scratch. But we 've a1lleamed from this, so the factory has got the message and now understands better what's involved and the fast pace of development they must keep up to . Our lap times at PhillipIsland this year were good enough for a front-row grid position one year ago but everyone else has moved on so quickly, and now we must , too." CYCLE NEWS • FEBRUARY 4,2004 31

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