Report From Japan
REPORT FROM JAPAN
YUKIO KURODA
BIG SUZUKI OFF-ROAD THUMPER?
The temper of the times is toward off-road riding and motocross competition, and Suzuki has taken the lead by swiftly capturing the 250-cc world manufacturer’s title. Their lead was clinched by a 1st place at the British Motocross GP, held in Bristol on June 28. Early in that event it became clear that ace works rider Joel Robert would win the seventh 1st place (out of eight GP events) for Suzuki, and would capture enough championship points to shut out potential rival CZ, which had taken most of the 2nd places behind the light, sweet-handling Suzukis.
Robert and teammate Sylvain Geboers still have to decide between them who’s going to be world champion, and the duel for the rider’s title will be a joy to behold. But one thing is certain: the very first year they fielded a works team, Suzuki snatched up everything in sight, which was something to make the other big Japanese makers think a little, not to mention those European factories that have been making the CiP events year after year.
There are several possible ways that Suzuki will respond to their championship title. One would be to build 50 or a 100 magnesium-and-fiberglass replicas of the winning RH70 and pass them around to top American riders for next year’s season; this would be a great way to further enhance Suzuki’s strong offroad reputation. Another, more businesslike, would be to build a big enduro machine that would be as technically exciting as their racers, and almost as swift in the hills.
One good way to do this is with cubes. The Europeans have demonstrated time and again that there’s nothing magic about the conventional limit of 250cc for a well-designed, two-stroke Single. (Would anyone care to predict a limit? The last 1 heard they were building 501-cc specials to attack the 500 to 7 5 0-cc class.) The other Japanese makers have 350-cc machines to entice off-road riders who like all those lowend guts, so Suzuki might be expected to come across with a 350 to match their very stylish 250-cc Savage. But they could go higher than that: recently they raced a prototype 360 in a Japanese motocross event. The sign ot things to come? I’ll keep you posted on any news leaks in the saga of the thumper from Suzuki, which should thump its way into the hearts of mankind come January or February, judging from past performances.
NO-LEAD GASOLINE BY 1974
Japan is becoming a pollution paradise, with smog that eats the chrome off cars and scars lung tissue, beaches too filthy to swim in, rivers that haven’t seen a fish in 15 years-all sacrificed in the name of pushing Japan’s gross national product up to its almost legendary 15 percent a year increase.
School children playing volleyball collapse and have to be revived with oxygen; everybody walks around with watery eyes stinging from what is now called “optico-chemical smog,” and many cases of lead poisoning, one of the most sinister signs of all (since its effects are cumulative and irreversible), have been appearing in downtown Tokyo.
The government is even tighter with big business here than in the U.S., and still there has been no appreciable effort whatsoever to solve the pollution problem until this year. Now that people are dying off in considerable numbers, the issue has received some attention in the press, and the government is reluctantly moving forward with various proposals to lessen the pollution before we all have to wear gas masks and live in hermetically sealed, pressurized houses to escape the poison.
The first step is to study ways of eliminating the lead content from gasoline, and inasmuch as tetraethyl lead additives are only used to enhance an engine’s antiknock properties, this shouldn't be too difficult a problem to solve. Recently there have been a number of sports-type cars built with high compression ratios needing leaded fuel. Among them is the Daihatsu 360-cc, “secret power, ” two^stroke Twin minicar, putting out 40 hp, but running an 11:1 compression, which won't like to run on regular gas. But no-lead gas
shouldn't prove to be a problem for motorcycle engines: two-strokes run
compression ratios around 7:1 in any case, and Honda is known for not using higher than 9: 1 compression in their road machinery. Also, at high rpms octane requirements drop drastically.
(íet the lead out. That’s the word
right now, and the next target will
probably be hydrocarbons. Two-stroke makers are anticipating the stink which will inevitably arise when the mass media bring their attention to the amount of hydrocarbons which twostroke cars and motorcycles pump into the atmosphere. I mentioned in a previous issue how various solutions such as afterburners were being considered. Now it appears likely that some sort of catalytic action muffler will be employed to weed out a large amount of the dangerous stuff in the exhaust gas which leaves an engine. Makers presently bellyache about the cost of installing such units on every new machine (about $30), but the alternative is more of the same. And there’s no way to breathe stuff like that.
KAWASAKI FOR 1971
Japan’s fastest-rising motorcycle maker is pushing hard in 1970, and shows every sign of keeping up the thrust in 1971. With the big trend to off-road machines, Kawasaki, too, has some surprises in store for us, and it wouldn’t be too surprising to hear about new street models, too, later on in the year.
A 125-ccanda 1 75-cc single-cylinder enduro fill in the mid-range gap between the 90-cc and 250-cc off-road Singles. The machines are styled to ride as easily in the eye as on the dirt, with upswept, tucked-in mufflers, exposed fork legs, swift paint job on tank and fenders, nice functional-looking engines.
Various bugs have been ironed out of the top-of-the-line Big Horn 350, which should prove to be a great play bike; just dial “on” and it moves, no matter what gear you’re in. But neither hide nor hair is seen of that mighty 45-hp “PowerPak” advertised last year for riders who want to blast mountains into smithereens with their Big Hornsthough the standard, 36-hp variety goes well enough for most riders.
The 90 has been redesigned somewhat to keep up with the sleek new entries from Honda and Suzuki, but best of all is the series of minor changes carried out on the Mach III 500. Not that it’s any faster; with a power/weight ratio of 6.7 lb./hp it still has enough acceleration to drain all the blood into the rear of your brain on hard takeoffs. But this year it has become as sweetriding as it is quick.
I mentioned to you a few months ago that the Mach III was, in one man’s opinion, something of a peril at high speeds, especially on rough pavement or in turns. Well, I’ve ridden the new ones, and while they still take sharp road racing talent to get the most out of them without flinging them into the woods, they are now stable, steady and as safe as a projectile that fast can possibly be.
The tires were changed. The new Dunlop K77/K87 nylon tires have a much sharper feel, with none of the sleazy crawl that the previous tires exhibited. They seem to be made of a more goopy compound that glues to the finger when touched. Just like good road racing tires. After a couple of hundred miles, though, the edges of the blocks become noticeably worn. You can expect that if you ride Pasolini-style you’ll need a new rear tire in a couple of thousand miles.
And the Mach Ill’s forks were also stiffened up. Thus wind buffeting and lift problems at high speed are not nearly as severe as before, though I still think the factory should equip all the machines with flat bars or thruxtons, as you just can’t control the machine the way you should when the wind fills you out like a mainsail.
Anyway the H-l handles. The question now is: can riders handle all its 60 hp? It sure is fun to try. Especially if you can lure a following Sportster into some high-speed collapsing radius downhill turns.
Other things are being thought about at Kawasaki. There’s the mythical 900-cc Four, although a Kawasaki engineer says flatly, “There is no fourcylinder.” And if Honda presses ahead with their scaled-down CB750 and brings out a four-cylinder 350 or 250 machine it may escalate the sales race and force Kawasaki into building a small-bore, three-cylinder version of the Mach III, in a 250or 350-cc size. While that would result in the kind of engine smoothness and increased horsepower shown by the 500, the current generation of rotary-valve Twins has its own type of beauty, as I recently discovered during some high-speed road race riding. Low-end torque is pretty important for a road machine, too, and the rotaryvalve Twins have lots. The center of gravity is low and the machines feel very “floppy” in turns, enabling them to be laid over at wild angles for fun cornering, whereas the Mach III soon drags its stand, mufflers, etc.
SUZUKI 500 “SHIROBAI”
While the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Dept, made the news recently for buying a huge flock of CB750s, another popular machine they are riding is the Suzuki T500III, in its “Shirobai" (meaning “white bike,” as that is the color of all police machines) patrol version. As I mentioned in an article called “Shirobai!” in the October, 1969 issue of CYCLE WORLD, most of the machines ridden until now have been Kawasaki 650 Twins or, more recently, Honda Fours. However, police here are reportedly very pleased with the smoothness and good torque response of the Suzuki 500, and some 80 machines are now in use in the Tokyo area.
The machines are catching on in the export market, too: 160 have been
exported to Malasia, and others have found their way to South America, Thailand. Australia, and other countries. (Ö)
