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/128355
A: It may look packed to the gills with stuff, but the CBR1000RR Superbike only weighs a tick or two above the 370-pound mini mum weight limit. 61 The stout swmgarm keeps things stable at the rear end. C: Duhamel's office IS simp le a nd clutter free - note the front brake lever span ad juster on the left clip-on . 01 998cc of raging fury. E: Check out the size of the HRC radia tor. A Factory Showa fork w ith Brembo radial-mount calipers makes up the fron t end . The fork tubes can be rotated so thot the calipers don 't have to be unbolted during wheel changes. The problem is that HRC wou ldn't let the boys from Torrance, California, fiddle with the bikes much, even tho ugh there were deficiencies that the team felt it could have eas ily cure d. And that could have bee n the difference between winning the title or lett ing Mladin's superorganized Y imura tea m take it again. osh The pro blem was that the team wasn' t allowed to change many of the com ponents on the bike that they were having problems with - th ings like the HRC slipper clutch, the Brembo brakes, the Showa fork and the HRC engine manageme nt syste m. But all of that will change next year when the team will be given a lot more autonomy with its testing program and co mponent choices. The fre edo m comes afte r the team showe d the success that it's capable of with the titleWinning CBR600RR Formu la Xtreme bike, a bike that American Hond a did 100 pe rcent of the R&D on . And that bike won every ro und of the series. So, next season ifthey decide that an Ohtins fork wo rks better, the team will use it; if the Nissin brakes th ey plan to test work bette r, it'll run them. The ot her component the team really wants to test is a Motec engine management system similar to the one on the Formula Xtrem e bike. Ludington and his crew feel they can improve the bike 's th rottle respons e dr amat ically with that system . The team knows damn we ll that it nee ds to do something to stop Mladin, who re ceives an allnew GSX-RI000 for th e 2005 AMASuperbike season. I ar rived at ce ntral Californ ia's Buttonwillo w raceway as one of four lucky guests who would get the oppo rtunity to ride not o nly the Superbike but the title-winning Formula Xtreme bike as we ll , Being the least experienced of the four riders present, including AMA Super bike privateer fast guy Jeremy Toye, it didn't seem right that I was sent out on the bike first for what was my first of two 20-minute sessions. When we got to the track discoverea that we were going to get so much track time, we were ecsta tic. After all, most of the journalist race bike guest rides you read about are for a whopping four laps or so. This was a big deal, and something that American Honda has been begging the suits in Japan to allow for years. But I won dered , why the slow guy first?The Honda guys must have felt tha t if I was the slowest, I must have the most restraint . Not a bad analogy, because there was no way in hell I was going to crash the bike - especially before my peers got the chance ride it. Myworries were quickly defused once I took to the track on my own personal set of Dunlop slicks that were designated for me for the day. The CBRIOOORR, desp ite a little bit of hesitation from the EFI at low revs (where the bike's motor should never be anyway), fe lt like... we ll, it felt like a Honda CBRIOOORR street bike. Strange, but true . During those first couple of laps getting the Dunlop slicks up to temp e ratur e, I couldn't believe how docile the bike could be, I took it really easy for a handful of laps and then started exploring what the bike was all about. What I discovered shocked me in more ways than one. The bike was definitely a lot like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Not only was the acceleration comp let ely insane, but at the same time it was also so linear that even a mortal like me could contro l it up to my limits. The real te st of willpower came when I decided to hold the thrott le wide ope n the first coup le of times entering the back straight. First, I had to negot iate a series of Mickey Mouse corners with bad pavement , blind rises and a huge hump right leading onto the back straight. The hump was actually really fun because I would short-shift to third as I approached it, and then it was like dial-awheelie; the light-action throttle suddenly became a servo to determine the height that the front tire wo uld claw the sky at . The Buttonwillow back stra ight isn't really straight , as it has a fast kink right in the middle of it - kind of like the one at VIR, but going the opposite way. There really are n't too many moto rcycles on the face of this earth where open ing the th rottl e WFO on a straight is unnerving, but th is superbike is one of them. The power deliv- ery of the CBR is, like I said earlier, amazingly linear, but at the same time accele ration happens at a rate that my brain had never expe rienced before. Most bikes eve n Op en-class bikes like the Kawasaki ZX-I OR - sometimes feel slow halfway down a stra ight. I'm not kidding when I say that I was using every Single ounce of concentration, riding skill and strength I could conjure up to keep the CBR Superbike going w here I wanted it to go wh ile approaching the to p of fourth gear. The th ing that amaze d me the most was that the bike accelerated just as hard in fourt h or fifth gear as in first or second. If there was any difference, I couldn't te ll. The other th ingthat made it see m so much more intense was that with the ultra-slick ignition-kill speed shifter, the momentum never stops, because the throttle is never cracked off and the ignition is only killed for a millisecond . Nasty is the fi rst word that comes to mind to describe how hard this bike accelerates. I was happy [0 know that I w asn't alone with t his impression. as eve n Toye, who rode a l BO -horsepower RI all year, was babbling on in amazement as well. The team wasn't specific about the power output of the bike but quot ed it as we ll over 200 horsepo wer at the rear whee l. After talking with some of the oth er guys who had also ridde n a MotoGP bike rece ntly, we guessed that the Honda was probably in the 220-horse power range . The bike weighs just above the 370-po und Superbike minimum weight limit, which means that the bike is only carrying arou nd 1.6B pounds for every horsepo wer, compared to the stock bike 's 3.1 pounds pe r horsepower. (O ur stoc k 2004 CBRIOOORR made 137.09 hp on the dyno and weighed approximately 425 pounds without fuel.) Ludington said that ea rly in the season, they we re adding ballast to the bike, but as the season progresse d, they simply start ing using heavie r parts, re placing some of the magnesium ite ms with aluminum, and so on and so fort h. I'll admit that I took it easy in the turns on the superbike because I refused to do anything stupid, but the bike felt very stable midcorner, yet re quired more effort to get turn ed than I thought it would. O nce I got the bike leaned into Buttonwillow 's fast 100-plus-mph sweeper, the bike was CYCLE N EWS • JANUARY 5,2005 81