Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

~ ., The Fastest Motorcycle We've Ever Ridden r , .. \ rJ :I: _ "J (, ;. r, 175 E T 2- Accelerat ion! Off the start ing line of the heavyw eight GP event, the H2-R got a considerable hole shot. At thi s point the rider has driven the machi ne for onl y one lap. N ote that he isn't even tucked in. Eleven second Quarters would be easy. . by Ar t Fri edman Photos by Dave Sch oonmaker and Fri edman It had all th e mak ings of on e of t hose da ys . Pra ctice wasn 't even o ver and I had managed to break both of my bikes. My Kawasaki H I-R had broken an expansion chamber and was out for th e duration, and my production bike was scattered allover the pits because of a fetched-up left cylinder courtesy of a leaking base gasket. I was grumbling around when I ran into Mike Van Bibber from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I met Mike last year through friends from New Mexico and we have exchanged racing stories at several of the West Coast Nationals. I was surprised to find him straddling a Kawasaki H2 -R road racer. Not too surprised, though. Mike had been campaigning an H l oR in National road races with limited succ ess . Mike , you see, is a dirt tracker and clip-ons and rear-set footpegs just don't fit him as well as a steel shoe . The bike, like most of the H2 ·R's (750 road racer) floating around is an HI -R modified by the addition of the basic 750 Kawasaki engine. The Hl ·R is Kawasaki 's 500 road racer, forty of which were built and dispersed during the win ter and spring of 1970. They were laid au t along th e lines o f the street triple but almost none of the parts were in te rc hangeable. In fact, th ere were ce rtain th ings ab o ut the H loR that mad e them illeg al fo r AMA co mp eti tio n. S om e go t so rted out and so me got overl oo ked, an d th e H I-R's in the hands o f Mik e Lan e, Jerry Greene, and th e late Rusty Bradle y h ad the Junior circuits pretty well tied up until this vear, Yvon DuHamel also to ok the 500 . into th e winner's circle during 1971. Last year, however, the factory built the incredibly fast 750cc H2 -R racer, and this time they didn't make any available to privateers. T h ey didn't even make a kit o r give an y real information on h ow-to, But where th ere's a win there's a way and some private ers. notable among whom are th e highly publicized Kevin Cameron and Cliff Carr, built their own out o f st ock p arts. The fac tory, of course, ha d trick barrels (allowe d by a rule th at Bob Hansen, head of Kawasaki's ro ad racin g effo rt and a vice president o f the AMA, pushed thro ugh ), and q uit e a few o ther t rick bits th at came and went throu gh the ye ar. Still, the bike was b asical ly a H l oR with a bi gger engine. A lot o f th e parts were co mm o n and the privateer co uld get them. High on the list are the external dry clutch and the magneto CD ignition that were developed for the HI-R. To fit the clutch you have to use the close ratio H I -R transmission with some modifications and the special right side case that allows the clutch to get outside of the case s and be co oled by air. The H I-R clu tch is a very good uni t that seems to b e capable of accepting endless slip ping without co mp lain t. You do have to be carefu l of keeping oil off of it, however. But even in fitting the exis t ing and supposedly co mmo n HI -R parts to his 750 Van Bibber ran into extensive difficulties. To fit the clutch and tranny, he had to use the special H I·R righ t sid e case, and the case was too narrow to ac cept the stock primary drive. The primary drive gear needs to be made narrower, but it is made out of hard metal, very hard metal. So Mik e called Kawasaki. What did they do? They had special ones that were made in Japan. Were they availab le to the privat eer ? No. Well , wh at co uld yo u use ? Well , the r, was anothe r gear th at co uld b e m achined to fit , only it fi t a diff erently sp line d shaft an d was made out of the same hard steel. Any ot he r ide as? You co uld narrow th e st oc k one. That was what Mik e did in the end. He found a machin ist who mad e bits for cutting to ol s. It wa sn 't to o hard fo r him. Th at afternoon at Ontario several people came up and ask ed Mike how he had solv ed that problem. The "b ol t-o n " ignition, too, took some modification before it would fit. But th e big gest problem w as th e cy linde rs. This year th e AMA ru leb ook has b een ch an ged so th at yo u have to use sto ck cy lind ers. You can modify them but th e cas tings have to be stock. Kaw asa ki was in a bind, an d Kevin Camero n su ddenly got factory backing. Mike couldn 't get anyth ing out of the fac tory except that there were sp ace rs .080 of an inc h thick th at you had to pu t under th e cyli nders. Cam eron had to use th ree cen ter cylin de rs to "ll o w the pipes to go so me w here workable. The AMA said this was OK thi s year, but it seeme d to Mik e that if you swapped the righ t and left cy linders that you co uld make it work . The AMA said you couldn 't do th is when he asked. Nope , gotta use thre e ce n ter barrels. Eventually, Mike co n vinc ed them that the right-left swap actually made more sense and was closer to the intent of the rule. I Getting down to work - on th e cy linders, Mike and friend Kent Bowen had to modify th em by making them clear each other. Some fin s go t shaved off. The porting w as more co mp lic ated and they are somewh at secre tive ab ou t it, but aga in th e H I-R was referred to . The machine was bolted together and a glan ce showed that the onl y thing that th ey had gotten from the factory, the plates that went under the cylin ders, didn't work. When the piston was at bottom dead center, the intake port was exposed to the co mb ustion chamber. The plates were modified. The next problem was carburetion and exhaust attachment. 35m m Mikuni ro ad racing c arb s were th e obvious answer since the H I ·R en gine used th em . But th ey are co nsi de rably taller than th e stock H2 ca rbs , and the y didn't clear th e case s. Spacers were mad e of ph en olic blo ck to cure th e problem, Special ada p to rs we re mad e to attach the ex pansio n cha mbers, and - th e factory finally came th rou gh with specs fo r H 2-R ch am be rs. Now that the ma chine wa s beginning to p romise to go like a greased banshee, attention was turn ed to making it stop and tum . The chassis wa s going to hav e to be the old H l -R th at Mike had sta rte d with. His was one of the early t ype and everyone else had long since lowered theirs an d moved the en gine aroun d. In st ead of following the accep te d practice an d cutting it a t th e top, Van Bibber lopped a hun k out of th e bottom of th e fra me wh ich lo wers The controls. seat. and tank favor a slightly tucked in pos ition during cornering whiCh keeps weight low and reduces the chance of oscillation. all sorts of o ther th ings, like the eng ine and the swing arm pi vot. The swing arm is more leve l this way. To frost the cake Mike had th e wh ole thing nickel plated. The H I ·R front end was chuc ked in th e waste b aske t, and a stock Kaw asa ki 750 fr on t en d with du al di scs was attached to th e bike. The problems with thi s is th at th e front end weighs in at over 50 pounds. A mag wheel would lighten things up , but as Mike says, "It doesn't do wheelies this way." An HI-R drum brake stops the rear wheel. Springing rates and damping were played with and the b ike was taken out and driven around some of the ba ck ro ad s of New Mexico before it was packed up and taken to Ontario. At Ontario, Mik e and I ran into each other; Me w ith nothing to ride and him having trouble swallowing his heart after just a few laps on the bike on the unfamiliar co urse. RIDING IT Sin ce h e felt that I knew the 19 tum course better than he did, and sinc e I have had experience on a wider variety of road racing ma chinery , Mike asked me to ride the bike and tell him what I thought of it. I didn't hesitate. (I have a dangerous habit of always saying "yes" to o ffers like this.) I snapped my jaw ba ck "p and grabbed my helmet. Since the last practice was co mmencing I said th ai I would take j us t one lap and hand it b ack. Seat h eigh t is very low , lower th an the 25 0 Yamaha production b ike that I had just been tooling aroun d on . It was under 3 0 inch es. I fit imme diately. T he clip-ens we re wh er e I wanted them, and I li ked th e old style H I ·R ta n k wh ich w as thin at th e rear where the on e on my H l oR was wid er . Th at allo wed me to mo ve around more and get my wei ght closer to the in side. The fairing that h e is using is also the old style H I ·R; na rrow and without all the spoilers and cooling ducting found on the latest H2·R's. T here are ex perienc es in the world of mo torcycling th at qualify as ultimat es. Riding a Kawasaki H2·R is one of them. Even with th e co ld NGK B·IOH-N spark p lugs th e ma ch in e fired righ t off after bein g push ed a fe w feet . You jus t cracked th e thro ttle until it began to p op and the n climbe d o n and drove aw ay. The bi ke pulls from ab o u t 3 ,5 00 RPM, ma ybe low er. In fac t, it had mo re lo w en d th an mo st s tr ee t b ikes o r rna to crossers I've ridden. There is con side rable vibration until about 5,000 RPM which makes warming it up some thing of a ch ore. The machine isn't too loud from within a Bell Star. First gea r is down from neutral and very tall . But th e torque of Mike 's engi ne pull ed m e awa y easily with minimal clu tc h feathering. Pulling out O Il th e tr ack I go t a taste of it. In th a t one lap I discov ered seve ral things. The suspe nsio n didn 't quit e suit me (Mike weigh s a good deal m ore than I do) but eve n so , it didn 't see m to wan t .to wobble on the banks like my H l -R . . Braking was ex cellent to th e point that I nearl y passed through the wind screen when I got on th e binders hard. But the thing that still sticks in my mind was the power. Now I understood 'why a big grin split Mike's face every time he talked about riding it. As I exited tum eigh t I wicked it up. T he only way that I can explain it is this. It was like thinking that your old Honda 160 was fast and then climbing on a

• Cover