Kawasaki Ninja 1000r
KAWASAKI NINJA 1000R
CYCLE WORLD TEST
THE LATEST NINJA, BUT IS IT THE GREATEST NINJA?
WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU were Kawasaki? The company’s catalog still contained the Ninja 900, only the best big sportbike ever to come from Japan but a model that was two years old. And while that hardly makes it a dottering artifact, the 900 was getting a trifle long of tooth, especially in view of the current bike-of-the-month mentality.
If you were Kawasaki you might have lifted the bodywork from the smash-hit Ninja 600, let out a few of the seams and re-fit it to the 900 before patting yourself on the back and issuing a, “There, beat that\” challenge to the other manufacturers.
What Kawasaki did, though, was much more thorough: punch-out the engine, redesign the frame and pull the wraps off the Ninja 1000R, a blacker-than-night motorcycle with fighter-jet styling and a heaven-helpus-all top speed of 15 9 mph.
One hundred fifty-ni ne miles an hour! We’re talking fast, here, as in the fastest production streetbike ever. Tucked-in and wrist locked, a Ninja 1000 rider with little regard for his driver’s license can cover the length of a football field in 1.3 seconds. Get caught, go directly to jail and sell the bike to pay your attorney’s fees.
Kawasaki arrived at this steamrolling speed-king of a motorcycle by concentrating on three areas: the engine, streamlining and gearing.
First the engine. The “old” Ninja engine, a 113-horsepower, liquidcooled descendant of the Kawasaki Z-l inline-Four that fired the opening salvo in the superbike wars, was used as the jumping-off point. Displacement was increased to 997cc with a mild ( 1.5 by 3mm) bore-andstroke job. Next came new flat-top pistons and “non-flutter" upper compression rings, both changes aimed at improving combustion efficiency. and worth, Kawasaki says, an additional 1.3 horsepower.
Other subtle changes add to the horsepower tally, which tops out at a claimed 125 horses, up almost nine percent on the 900 Ninja (which, incidentally, will still be sold in 1986. for $500 less than the 1000). Intake timing, for example, has been retarded slightly, and the valves are lighter and have reshaped tops so that incoming and outgoing gases flow more smoothly. Also helping here are hand-polished intake ports.
Assistance in the search for additional power comes from the air-induction system. Snaking away from the air-box top are two plastic ducts that draw relatively cool, dense air from in front of the engine via scoops in the fairing. The filtered air is then passed on to four semi-flat-slide Keihin CV carburetors that have grown 2mm in throat size to 36mm.
All of this mechanical handiwork is closeted away behind the various spoilers, duets and air-dams of a v ery slick-looking plastic fairing, a windtunnel-dictated air-splitter that lets the pumped-up engine put its energy into forward motion radier than the task of punching a crude hole through the atmosphere. Even the turn signals weren't left out of the aerodynamic program. Instead of being mounted on conventional stalks, the winkers are faired into the bodywork. In fact, the only things on the Ninja that stick obtrusively into the airflow are the mirrors, which aretrue to GPz and Ninja form—better suited for checking the elbow-fit of your leather jacket than for spying any intruders fast-approaching from the rear.
The final element in the 1000’s velocity upgrade is taller gearing. Not Bonneville Salts Flats stuff, you understand, but compared to the 900, there is a 7.5-percent increase in the final gearing (rear sprocket down nine teeth, countershaft sprocket down two) to take advantage of the new engine’s increased top-end surge. And while the six-speed gearbox’s internal ratios remain the same, third through sixth gears are now specially ground to increase durability and reduce noise. In addition, third and fourth gears have undercut dogs for more positive engagement.
Actually, the entire driveline has been beefed up, starting with a No. 632 O-ring chain with larger-diameter rollers than the usual No.630 assembly. Interceding between the countershaft sprocket and the fivebearing crankshaft is a clutch rigged up for the lOOOR’s added urge. A clutch basket borrowed from the now-extinct GPzl 100 gets one more driving and one more driven plate, and the whole affair is cinched down with one additional spring.
With its engine based so strongly on the slightly peaky 900 Ninja unit, it would be easy to predict that the 1000’s power output would be heavily biased toward the upper end of the rpm scale. Not so. To be sure, the 1000 will scamper away from its 89cc-smaller sibling on flat-out straights, but it’s in the lower gears and in slower riding that the new engine proves itself to be the definitively better piece. Where the 900 bogs, the 1000 wheelies; where the 900 has to be revved, the 1000 tractors right up to its 10,500-rpm redline. Because of its long gearing, however. the 1000 does suffer in top-gear roll-on contests, necessitating a downshift or two in order to get things boiling.
And for those top-shelf riders who reveled in the 900 Ninja’s agility, the 1000’s handling will come as a bit of a betrayal. This isn’t to say the R is a faulty handler; it’s just that the new machine wasn't intended to have the same single-purpose approach to backroad scratching as the 900, and it feels it. Part of the blame here can be attributed to mass: The new bike is 31 pounds up on the old Ninja, perhaps a bit toQ much for the suspension-revised and recalibrated though it is—to handle, at least when the bike is ridden hard.
Likewise, at knee-dragging speeds, the 1000’s tires share in the guilt. The 16-inch rear tire, suitably wide but surprisingly high in profile, was especially suspect. Whether because of sidewall squirming or a basic inability to cope with the 1000’s added ponies, the tire allowed the Ninja’s rear end to step out at speeds where a 900 Ninja is barely beginning to feel pressed. And really gonzo riders should be prepared to become adept at changing front tires, for we wore the 1000’s away in just a few hours of racetrack peg-scraping.
All of this is not to indict the big Ninja’s handling; but ride it hard alongside a pure sportbike like the 900 and it simply comes up secondbest. But that's about the only bigbore sportbike so far that will edge ahead of the 1000; because with its air-assisted suspension filled to nearmax levels, the bike is more than a backroad match for Yamaha's FJ1100, which tends to come unglued at race-like speeds, or for the
VF1000R Honda, a bike with even more heft than the Ninja but nowhere near the composure. With a grippier rear tire, the Ninja's advantage would be more dramatic.
That advantage may not be so easy to hold onto when Yamaha’s FJ 1200 hits the streets or Suzuki unleashes its GSX-R 1 100. But for now, the 1000 is as impressive a piece of Open-class sportbike hardware as you’re likely to find: less of a Ninja, sure, but more of an all-around motorcycle. E3
KAWASAKI NINJA 1000R
$5099
