Ninja! Kawasaki's brand within a brand and how it came to mean "Sportbike" to the masses.

Cycle World

How "Ninja" came to define Kawasaki and what it means to the company. The bikes that built this brand within the brand started in the early 1970s and Ninja just put a name on it. What's "it"? Listen as Kevin and Mark of Cycle World talk about where the Ninja ethic began and where it's taken Kawasaki, from screaming two-stroke triples to supercharged 1000cc sportbikes.  Looking to buy? Get prequalified https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171  Become a Channel Partner: https://octanemedia.co/home/become-an-advertiser/ Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CLI74xvMBFLDOC1tQaCOQ Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/ Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld

Transcript

00:00:00this is the cycle world podcast i'm mark hoyer editor-in-chief and i'm with kevin

00:00:06cameron our technical editor looking sharper than ever i must say kevin i'm sorry for you

00:00:12spotifiers you can't take advantage of kevin's new camera high resolution

00:00:15this week's topic kawasaki's ninja ninja this is um

00:00:24what an era it started for kawasaki made gpz stuff you know you're still using gpz but it made all

00:00:32that previous stuff with the big big front wheel and the four pipes and really little tiny fairings

00:00:38this was like the new era gpz 900r was really a shocking departure four valve per cylinder and

00:00:46liquid cooled first one first sport bike to do that uh for us out here on the american roads

00:00:52and what an impact it did make uh it was 150 mile an hour motorcycle first one to do that

00:00:58so we're going to talk about ninja but we can't talk about ninja without talking about what came

00:01:03before ninja and where was kawasaki circa 1970 and of course you know we have an entire podcast on the

00:01:09uh h1 h2 and all that stuff so you can go check that out that was a that was a fun one to do we're

00:01:16going to retread some of that ground and i'll kick it over to kevin because i can tell he's got

00:01:21something to say always do um each one of these manufacturers has to choose a strategy

00:01:30what what is their market what is their selling point um you can't just say well we built some bikes

00:01:38and uh do you like them uh there were some motorcycles made with no personality whatever

00:01:45and that's how they sold hardly at all so people want a story with a motorcycle and kawasaki chose

00:01:54high performance as their story after the brief era of the 250 disc valve or 250 and 350 disc valve

00:02:04twins they came out with the wonderfully simplified piston port h1 um which steve whitelock

00:02:15uh for years of on to hamel's mechanic in road racing called a nice little engine a nice little

00:02:24engine he he liked it and he could didn't say the same for the 750 but 750 came next and it was

00:02:33inexpensive to make the transition a lot of the dimensions were the same and

00:02:40it was a it was a terror it was a can't keep the front wheel on the ground sure made an impression

00:02:49people still talk about it but meanwhile um this was the era of industrial spying there were people in

00:03:00all these manufacturers on staff who were receiving two paychecks and i believe this is sort of an

00:03:10industry norm but it's not talked about a lot so kawasaki were planning a 750 four-stroke air-cooled

00:03:19four-cylinder motorcycle and the spies came in and they said honda's doing a 750 and it's coming out

00:03:26in 69 so screech on with the brakes uh they decided to make something bigger and that was

00:03:35ideal for the american market because all those years of british twins they're pumping those things

00:03:42up as fast as they can two carburetors uh 500 becomes 650 650 becomes 750 becomes 835

00:03:50and all the time the vibration is increasing and uh along come these these four-cylinder things and

00:04:01they are a whole new uh game of ball because two pistons up two pistons down it's self-balancing to a

00:04:11certain extent um you weren't you didn't have the impression that things had been taken to a

00:04:18a mad crazy extreme such as seeing double and uh so z1 was made 903 cc's and one liter motorcycles

00:04:34were a brand new thing um leave the vincent out of it we're talking really high performance in stock

00:04:44form here uh and of course years later vincent left the scene in 53 or so well in the the last big

00:04:52british twin the 850 commando yeah uh i wrote a rigid you know a solid mount version of a 750 norton in a

00:05:00feather bed frame and what you said about your vision blurring was actually true so it already had those

00:05:07tennis ball shaped uh grips yes and then the hand the grips would vibrate so much that it felt like

00:05:15they were this big yes and you know and all that and then for real at about um 3000 rpm 2800

00:05:22your vision my vision on that motorcycle whatever the balance factor was would would blur in the 828

00:05:30that they ran in the commando when they did the eight they did the 750 commando and then the 850

00:05:35you know they rubber mounted it and that was that was pretty good but it's still

00:05:39it shook of the past and here's yeah and here's the honda cb750 and then

00:05:47kawasaki 903 yes yes so we had this tremendous era in the united states in which the new leader

00:05:56motorcycles were promoted by ama superbike racing which was started out with the pedestrian name

00:06:04uh 1000 cc production uh 1000 cc production that ought to bring them storming the gates

00:06:12so superbike was the name and uh shortly racing success and sales success were married and lived

00:06:24not necessarily happily ever after but for quite a while that whole era of sport bikes motorcycle design

00:06:32was driven by the desperate need to win daytona which meant uh sending the right message

00:06:40during the buying season and uh so we all remember uh rob muzzy building and tuning these motorcycles

00:06:53we remember eddie lawson um in his own diffident way uh a great champion

00:07:03and then suddenly the ama decided all those things are too fast we've got to go but down to 750 and

00:07:10people were talking about 600 super bikes that didn't happen until 2009

00:07:16but at daytona yeah what did kawasaki build next after the 1000 cc super bikes well they made a gradual

00:07:27transition because the motorcycle on which wayne rainey won uh in 1983 was a two valve air cooled in line

00:07:39four in a steel tube chassis and i'm just going to pause and give wayne rainey a little bit of credit

00:07:48here for being a very yeah but this is what he had to work with fierce rider using the tool that he was

00:07:54given well that's the thing i noticed when i began seeing him in results that here was a man

00:08:01who rode as hard trying to get to fifth from sixth place as most riders uh strive to reach first place

00:08:13from second because there's a lot of people out there they're good riders but they know what will

00:08:19satisfy they get into a decent position they say this is okay i'll finish here but not for wayne

00:08:26wayne was going was going to climb over the backs of those in front of him and succeed and of course

00:08:36the opposition was honda's interceptor which had the big steel square tube frame uh v4 liquid cooled

00:08:44engine and people just said oh that's a walkover that's they're gonna honda's gonna flatten them

00:08:49and they did for six races then uh i think that muzzy's great experience in racecraft plus

00:09:02wayne's do or die um not that he was a great risk taker in riding but that he was a press on

00:09:11a press on guy definitely a striver yep and uh kawasaki came back and took took the championship from

00:09:20from uh well honda was already sort of feeling the base of the trophy with their fingertips

00:09:27it was whisked away so that was a that was a conservative motorcycle it was um

00:09:39the same as the z1 in the sense that it was 1960s technology uh steel tube frame um air cooling

00:09:49which normally limits compression ratio and um exerts some influence on rpm got to remember

00:09:58that muzzy said of the z1 based racer when it gets close to 11 000 things go bad in a hurry

00:10:07and we know that today there are uh thousand cc motorcycles production based ones that are running

00:10:16to 16 routinely so those were problems that could and would be solved in time

00:10:24but when kawasaki made this transition in that 900 to liquid cooling and four valves

00:10:33the numbers suggest that they had a close look at cosworth's dfv formula one engine they chose a 33

00:10:43degree valve included angle um the exhaust the row of exhaust valves the row of intake valves are

00:10:50swung apart from one another to create volume in the chamber 33 degrees for the new kawasaki

00:10:5832 for the dfv and they did were not tempted uh to choose an extreme bore stroke ratio they started out

00:11:12with cause worth like 1.32 to 1 um so the bore was like uh 30 bigger than longer than the stroke

00:11:24and this turned out to be as it did for the dfv a workable combination because

00:11:33success in engine design is not a matter of of just having certain numbers oh this looks yeah this is

00:11:42going to do it it's a matter of making sure that you have quick efficient combustion

00:11:52engine and this path had been taken by causeworth kawasaki took that path uh ducati did

00:12:00um and uh made it work for them so

00:12:06this was this worked well for kawasaki for years they were able to make good strong performing machines

00:12:17now when you go towards an extremely large bore what are you trying to do you're making room for

00:12:25big valves and you're planning to rev the engine up to where it will need larger valves to feed itself

00:12:35what this does is it creates of course it comes with a shorter stroke

00:12:40and that means that the combustion chamber is vertically not very roomy

00:12:48um

00:12:51if you're in there with a flashlight looking for wear you're going to have to lie down you can't stand up

00:12:56there's no standing room and as the piston comes rises on compression there's air moving in the

00:13:06cylinder that's left over from intake motion the intake is a really it's a rush the second half of

00:13:12the intake stroke it's hundreds of feet per second rushing into the cylinder so this is a fortune in

00:13:19kinetic energy that can give you the turbulence to make quick combustion but if if you've got this

00:13:27great big bore and very little headroom as the piston squashes it in there uh the the turbulent motion

00:13:38the vortex motion that is created quickly dies away and yamaha got into a thing with fz 750 where

00:13:49they had a reasonable compromise for street riding because in those days we didn't have detonation

00:13:54detectors and spark retard and all that so engines had to run on pump gas whatever people could get

00:14:03and but when they started there had to be a margin for it that's yes you couldn't put you couldn't push

00:14:10the compression limit you couldn't say like ah we'll go with 13 to one and if not it'll we can dial

00:14:15it back it's like no let's i mean even even today uh ignition curves and stuff on your wr250s or your

00:14:22dual sport you know 300s and stuff uh there's something to be gained there if you want to push

00:14:28the edge a little bit they they put a real good margin in for you so yeah so what you could have

00:14:36what would happen was an either or situation if you wanted to accelerate you absolutely need the torque

00:14:43that compression provides when you raise the compression ratio the headroom in the chamber

00:14:49goes away so that you've destroyed the ability of the engine to burn efficiently and quickly

00:14:55on top end and if you go the other way well we'll lower the compression down to where there's room in

00:15:05the chamber for this air motion to carry on then you've lost this advantage in a higher peak combustion

00:15:13pressure that a high compression ratio brings with it you squeeze it hard it's gonna fight back hard

00:15:19when it lights up so uh people that were building those fc 750s uh were having to choose okay this track

00:15:31favors acceleration so we're going to go with compression oh this track has a tremendous straight

00:15:36away that'll sort sort out who's got peak power we'll have to drop the compression and so kawasaki started out

00:15:47with a proven um sort of moderation with uh moderate valve angle 30 33 degrees uh 1.3

00:15:59border stroke ratio nothing extreme so that they ended up with a good compromise between acceleration and

00:16:07and top speed which makes for a more rideable motorbike

00:16:14i remember being at daytona when the yamaha 600s arrived with over 12 to 1 compression and we're all

00:16:23looking at this like is this a typo but no it was the future um but then something strange happened in 90 92

00:16:37um kawasaki decided okay everyone's going shorter stroke bigger bore we've got to keep up

00:16:44up never mind that suzuki had tried it in 88 they said oh well we've got to get the big bore thing going so

00:16:54the 88 motor had a low headroom combustion chamber and it was a big mistake they managed to win daytona they

00:17:06found that they had created something that

00:17:09that couldn't grow in any direction so they went back to the previous longer stroke the next year

00:17:17um

00:17:19so

00:17:21in 92 kawasaki went from 51.5 stroke to 47.3 which doesn't sound like much

00:17:31but muzzy said with respect to his work with the basic parts as a racing engine

00:17:39it took us two years he said to get back to the power level we'd had with the longer stroke engine

00:17:46and i believe from the numbers that uh follow through the years 92 is a long time ago now

00:17:55um that this was a lesson that kawasaki took to heart

00:18:00i remember noticing that while in world superbike the other makers were going bigger bore shorter stroke

00:18:10over and over kawasaki stuck with the 55 millimeter stroke

00:18:16instead of dropping into the 40s like the competition and they made that work well for a long time

00:18:23because it was a good all-around compromise

00:18:29there's nothing in engine design that is pure gain oh let's go all the way this way let's go rad

00:18:37you're smashing my dreams man i just want to find that answer bolt it on and then i'll comb some gasoline

00:18:42into my hair and set it on fire then we'll really see who's boss um but uh eventually

00:18:53i think people in japan began to get the idea about oh well the downdraft angle

00:19:02and the intake port size meanwhile on the other side of the world there's ducati

00:19:10massimo gordi went to cosworth and and for a like a seminar there that went on for a long time he

00:19:18he he learned a bunch of stuff he'd written a college um thesis engineering thesis on what if we

00:19:25made it up um cosworth's combustion chamber with ducati's desmo valve train and that right there was

00:19:35the future of ducati so uh seems to be working yes seems to be working and um kawasaki also

00:19:46played with intake downdraft angle because if the intake downdraft angle is high kawasaki got as

00:19:55high as 50 degrees from horizontal it tends to favor cylinder filling but as you lower it and the flow

00:20:03goes more toward the far cylinder wall it favors the generation of of uh tumble motion which can turn

00:20:11into combustion speeding turbulence so ducati was ending up somewhere in the in the low 30s

00:20:19where cosworth was and the japanese were trying these extreme downdraft angles

00:20:26so i think maybe they just either they didn't get it what uh duckworth was up to with that design

00:20:35which by the way was not the result of brilliant insight so much as it was that he was willing to

00:20:42try stuff and kawasaki showed in the development of their ninjas that they were going to spare no

00:20:51expense in trying stuff because they had raised the angle they lowered the angle at one point i think

00:20:58the 92 engine had finger followers they reduced valve train weight by 28 the next year they went back

00:21:05to inverted bucket tappets because something didn't suit them but they tried it

00:21:14and this is what happens you you try stuff and then you are rewarded or punished for your choices

00:21:24and you're supposed to learn from this and i think that uh kawasaki have had a a long period of

00:21:32successful engine design in which they maintained their um madman reputation for producing

00:21:41green meanies the green paint is gone now but it's not gone well it was dominant for a while

00:21:50um

00:21:53what remains is is uh this focus on high performance and i did one day as a salesman um at our little

00:22:03dealership and a fellow came in and he said i'd like to look at a one of your kawasaki's and i said

00:22:12fine we've got um here's this showroom full of bikes do you want me to walk you around or do you

00:22:18want to go yourself and so forth and i said what what do you have in mind for motorcycling well he

00:22:24said i want to ride down to the cape maybe the girlfriend on the back and i can ride it to work

00:22:30sometimes and so oh i said you you need a honda they build for that market no no he said i don't want

00:22:39it i don't want that he said i came in this dealership because i want a kawasaki and that is

00:22:47what kawasaki's marketing had planted in this man's head was an identity a story kawasaki's are hot

00:22:56and they were yep and to be fair you know in the you know in the 80s i mean the gsxr 750 came out

00:23:08from suzuki in 86 here and uh that was a definite fold you in half kind of motorcycle and kawasaki's

00:23:18were high performance we were getting the perimeter frame a steel perimeter at first and then there was a

00:23:24ninja 600 rx which i believe they trotted out their aluminum frame but there was still um some notional

00:23:33acceptance that these were street bikes and a lot of them had pretty rational riding positions so you

00:23:38could get that motor or you could get what was it the um the 88 zx10 went 165 blew everyone's minds

00:23:47and then the 89 no excuse me the 90 zx11 176 miles per hour and i mean you know coming up in that era

00:23:58that was always there like oh no these things got motor and even into you know they were a little behind

00:24:04you know the r1 came out in 98 and it joined the 98 cbr 900 rr 98 i went on the press launch so this is

00:24:16always seared into my brain but that's when they fixed the trail so that the cbr 900 rr had an

00:24:21extremely short trail and a 16 inch front wheel with a taller section front tire so the rolling

00:24:26diameter was essentially like a 17 and they were light and quick and as a street bike even the

00:24:33previous you know 93 94 and all that stuff they were very fun to ride on the street but when you

00:24:39hammered them on a racetrack there was a certain point where you were loading the front and leaning and

00:24:44leaning and really loading the front where like a switch turned off and you didn't get information

00:24:49from the front wheel so that was when they put the trail back at 98 suddenly you had this and that 98

00:24:55was a really nice motorcycle meanwhile kawasaki zx9 carbureted and kind of almost sporter

00:25:07rery compared to an r1 because the r1 at that time came out as like a 250 sized or 600 sized leader bike

00:25:16and it was 135 horse roughly at the rear wheel with this really really profound kick in the torque

00:25:22curve like a real zip and then a dip and then another big kick and man that was wheelie city on

00:25:28that bike and so the nine at the time still had a tremendous motor it was making near r1 like power but

00:25:36it was just in a different uh different concept chassis but man motor all along for sure and then

00:25:43you know 10r came out and johnny ray was you know getting with it but uh yeah it's

00:25:53definitely the reputation for uh for power so your guy comes in the dealer and says i want a kawasaki

00:25:58and of course he does and i i believe to this day that that comes from um z1 it comes from that 903

00:26:06that to me that that defined that company in america the engine defined kawasaki in america it burned it

00:26:15in and it was this big beefy thing the tank shapes really nice had a little kick and then they followed

00:26:21up with the turbo right the tc uh tc1 i think it was like you know the seven yeah you know i mean it's

00:26:30crazy the molly paint you know what that those orange colors paint by molly yes paint by molly those

00:26:35gradient beautiful gradient colors it's nuts and there was the blue one too you know the classic blue but

00:26:43yeah what a motorcycle uh kawasaki um emphasized chassis rigidity and when they were making their

00:26:56transition from what had been to what will be uh one step was a steel tubular frame with no bottom loops

00:27:08and i think that they uh put their strain gauge crew on that bike and they came back and reported that

00:27:18there was practically no load being carried by the tubes under the engine they were decorations

00:27:28so what did they do they cast the next cylinder heads with big beefy lugs pointing forward

00:27:35uh right under the uh cam cover gasket level and there were uh hangers that hung down

00:27:45a very short distance so that it was as though the steering head was bolted to the cylinder head

00:27:53and this was at a time when everyone was worshiping stiffer and stiffer chassis

00:28:00and the reason for that was that uh they uh didn't wobble and act weird for as long after an upset as a

00:28:14floppier chassis and the days of uh discovering that some lateral flexibility in the front end

00:28:22could give you more front grip and more rider feel well you're getting close better watch it fella

00:28:30uh those are two valuable things and kawasaki wasn't interested in that they kept right on building these

00:28:40rugged uh constructions and

00:28:43they weren't immune to in racing they weren't immune to instability because what you do

00:28:58if you if you're trying to race a big heavy four stroke is you want to be as close to the

00:29:05stability limit as you can this is how aircraft are made highly responsive um and so uh when eric

00:29:17bostrom came back from his uh post uh rc45 um honda's racing manager called it the terrible 45

00:29:29eric came back and he his first race he rode for kawasaki was daytona

00:29:34and he said i had to stand up on that thing the whole 200 miles because if my butt touched the seat it

00:29:40would start that that pumping and um

00:29:48anthony gobert uh rest in peace a complex figure in racing um i saw him come down the corkscrew lap after

00:30:01lap and as he made the right left transition at the bottom of the corkscrew

00:30:07he hesitated at the top of the roll and then continued so i asked him why i did that and he said

00:30:14he said if i don't bike goes crazy and of course the motorcycle is rotating around its uh contact its

00:30:25footprints and so centrifugal force is tending to lighten the the load on the tires the damping comes

00:30:34from the tires so this is a perfect opportunity for a little wiggle to develop if you've already tuned

00:30:43the chassis to be as responsive as it needs to be in racing i saw it at monza 2000 akira yanagawa on

00:30:51the kawasaki colin edwards on the rc51 and then all those uh that was troy bayless's uh first ride for world

00:31:00superbike uh carl fargety broke his arm and was uh kind of the end of the line for carl

00:31:07that's a damage nerve damage that davide tardazzi in the pits at monza i said davide what do you think

00:31:15of carl he's like we pray to god do ill de bona very good and um i asked colin edwards because it

00:31:24was rc51 so i asked him about the rc45 because monza's got a bunch of chicanes so if you've never

00:31:29seen monza man you get in you break hard you go bang bang and then you fire out and there's other

00:31:35corners but you do a lot of that and it was where bayless passed three four people on the breaks and

00:31:40made the corner like without any apparent drama when i asked him that oh i reckon i just squeezed

00:31:47a bit harder mate that's what he said okay didn't hadn't really raced on michelin's it was an

00:31:53impressive performance there he was in the ducati but through the chicanes ducati's would roll up

00:31:59and pause as you say and that was chassis wind up and that's oh yeah and that's what the ducati guys

00:32:06would say no i gotta let the spring on one unwind and then i can roll it the other way so they would

00:32:13pause uh colin rc51 um what's the difference between rc45 and rc51 the rc51 doesn't try to kill me in

00:32:22every corner i'm like okay um but he was pausing also and when i said yana because what i went to him

00:32:30and said was you know you and the ducati guys all pause and yanagawa just rolls through the chicane

00:32:38he just goes bang full lean to full lean and he says i don't care what anybody says akira yanagawa has

00:32:46the best in handling motorcycle on the paddock and so the rigidity and stability quotient for

00:32:53yanagawa at that time was primo and everybody else was waiting didn't help in the race but yeah i think

00:32:59i think that uh kawasaki probably did all those things intentionally that is ran as close to the

00:33:06stability limit as they could with a very stiff chassis because uh the very stiff chassis discourages um

00:33:16rubbery rubber cow behavior uh dale quarterly talked about that too he said you know they they

00:33:24talk about how rigid these bikes are they're not rigid he said if you're if you're yanking it

00:33:29from one side to the other he said you're you're winding it up and if you don't let it unwind

00:33:36it will throw you down well vintage dirt bikes you know you ride your 1975 honda mt 250 you know

00:33:44sort of styled like the elsinore spindly fork conventional fork you know sprinkler pipe spindly

00:33:50frame lots of air yeah and uh man you ride one of those hard and you you feel the wave travel through the

00:33:58motorcycle yeah tremendous bar input and it goes and the fork kind of goes and then the wheel

00:34:05gets the message later and kind of goes bring and then the bike kind of is on that spring wave and

00:34:12the you know you're you're pushing against that boinginess and then the steering head kind of good

00:34:18and then the back end starts to weave around a little bit because the swing arm pivots not necessarily

00:34:24perfectly 90 to the steering head anymore or was it ever i don't know but sure but it just winds up

00:34:31and you feel that wave through the chassis well you race anything vintage even the bmw i raced at

00:34:38barber last year you could feel all the flex through that whole system even with his beefy triple clamps and

00:34:45you know the you know the fork brace and all that you'd still feel all that stuff udo's diagonals

00:34:53he had him he had him that bike i raced had him yeah would have to well uh i think that kawasaki if

00:35:01more proof is needed that kawasaki stuck with highly rigid chassis for reasons of their own uh look at uh

00:35:11uh zx14 with its single beam monocoque now uh the stiffness of tubes these tubes weren't round they're

00:35:25rectangular but the stiffness of tubes increases at a very large power of diameter so going from

00:35:33a couple of uh perimeter chassis beams to this large central box probably very stiff indeed

00:35:44and uh where did they get their information for that maybe from the 500 two-stroke gp bike that they

00:35:55raced uh in europe which had a um rectangular beam monocoque frame and it wasn't ace for getting the

00:36:06cylinder heads off and doing other service work but it was it was hell for stiff and kawasaki had had

00:36:16wanted that so i feel that that their history is always with them i think there's a handbook somewhere

00:36:25that you're required to read when you arrive as a freshly baked junior engineer you might want to know

00:36:35how we do things here read this because we can still see evidence of it today

00:36:42well i i guess i would have to go on record and say then that that is the successful establishment of

00:36:51institutional knowledge yeah and

00:36:57i think that's lost at a lot of companies well for example um i was stunned when ducati after having had

00:37:09the widely appreciated and praised trellis frame um of tambourini which has no lateral bracing in the

00:37:19front of it there's no diagonal there it was intended to allow the steering head to move this way but not to

00:37:26twist not to tuck under um if you've ever seen a bike with brake hop it is most impressive anyway

00:37:36they went from that thing to the highly rigid carbon fiber reinforced pyramid uh which was vincent like

00:37:49beam that went from the cylinder heads to the steering head that was the frame the swing arm attached to

00:37:57the back of the back of the engine and they basically dropped uh tambourini's idea that lateral flexibility could

00:38:06help you they just got rid of that nope we're going to have absolute rigidity now we know where we are

00:38:13and when i had my ultra stiff interview with um jan vitivine who was uh the racing manager at aprilia

00:38:26for a long time he was a 100 percent advocate of infinitely rigid frames and having the only give

00:38:37in the motorcycle being the conventional suspension telly from the front and the swing arm in the back

00:38:45and um he's enjoying retirement now well i could see that kind of religion because you if you're seeking

00:38:52control you want to confine it to an area that's designed to control that you wish that that were

00:39:00true yeah and you might wish so hard that you would not observe reality

00:39:07well that's that's a common failing of us humans is that uh we we see what we yearn to see i was

00:39:17talking to a race tuner uh recently and uh you know i was stating that i'm a you know i'm a mechanic i'm

00:39:25like a i'm not a development engineer everything i would do would be by analogy if i were trying to

00:39:30develop something like if i were trying to develop an exhaust system for a four-cylinder motorcycle

00:39:38i would go back to the kirker i would go back to a basani and then i would go from there and i

00:39:43would wonder well why did we stop four into one what did we gain and then you look at oh there's

00:39:51four two two one so two two into collectors and then finally in the tailpipe why did that happen

00:40:00and then i would keep reading about all this stuff and i would say my exhaust system with this bike

00:40:06knowing what the cam timing is i would research the camera it's like it's all analogy right we all get

00:40:11up there but still your brain is is always looking for what's the problem like why why doesn't my

00:40:18motorcycle do this or why is this running issue like happening and i was talking to this tuner and she

00:40:26said sometimes i invent my own problems and then i solve them it's not really the problem and you have

00:40:35to go but you have to go through that process and then hopefully be open-minded enough to eliminate

00:40:39that and and move on well you see uh post practice conference in the in the box at a race and it's it's

00:40:51like uh christ and the disciples there's the rider with leathers tied around his waist talking and all

00:41:00the specialists are there the data guy the engine guy the tire guy etc um and the rider is holding a

00:41:10circuit map and they're going from one corner to the next and they're basically saying what is stopping

00:41:15you what is your problem in this corner oh well this problem uh let's not talk about that my big problem is

00:41:24here in turn seven but this is the way it has to be you look at what is obstructing progress

00:41:31and you get to work on that but for engineers it is often what is the ultimate way to do something

00:41:42maybe not because you have to be so practical in this business well a practical story andrea

00:41:51forney at ducati many years ago he was kind of their lead uh development engineer test rider and uh

00:41:58trellis frames yep like when you develop a trellis frame you know this was sort of a this would have

00:42:04been st2 st4 era the sport tour so you know 2000s era 2005 or something and

00:42:12trellis frame put the trust frame together test mule get him out there ride it how was that that

00:42:22was great oh man that was that was great okay squirrel the frame way take out some tubes give

00:42:28it back to him how was that that was great great okay great take the frame away take another tube out

00:42:35put it back put it back get back now that that was that not that good no it was a little you know and

00:42:42put that put that one back yeah and that and that was the job not that they they potentially weren't

00:42:48doing you know finite element analysis and strain gauges but ultimately it was take tubes out till

00:42:54it doesn't feel good and put that last one back in and that's your light frame

00:42:59that has mark martin wimmer uh moderately successful german 250 rider uh and his wife bought mz

00:43:11in germany uh probably on the cheap and he wanted to develop a moto 2 bike and what they did was they

00:43:20got in there with magnetic base dial gauges and a big old piece of pipe and they fastened the swing

00:43:28arm pivot to a uh a foundation of great stiffness and then they put the pipe into the frame and just

00:43:40hauled on it and measured the deflections with the dial gauge and the thing that's nice about this is that

00:43:47it's very much like what i was told about sr-71 that when they first flew it um as a 12

00:43:57and it was this was a test aircraft equipped with strain gauges on everything they found that um

00:44:06delta wing has multiple spars not a main spar that the forward spars were doing were being loaded almost

00:44:15to the yield point so they said let's uh let's just curve the front of the wing down a bit and that is

00:44:24where that hooded cobra look that sr has that that is so attractive to so many people they know that

00:44:33it's just a going in a straight line camera truck crossing your fingers that their missiles aren't that

00:44:39good yet um but it's it's there's a lot of romance camera truck well that's that's what one guy called it

00:44:49oh um people want to imagine a a mach 3.3 fighter let's pull around in the tight circle at mach 3

00:45:01but i always wondered i always wondered this was this was wonderfully uh ad hoc engineering they didn't

00:45:08they didn't run a computer simulation or anything they just said let's let's just uh do another wing

00:45:14but this time with the with the downward inclination at the front to unload those overloaded spars

00:45:21so it's just like what you were talking about you know take out a tube yeah still pretty good

00:45:27um because what we're looking for is the result not a not an optimum or something that will give us

00:45:37an a on the in the engineering house yeah yeah yeah oh the the biggest torque to weight ratio or

00:45:45something like yeah we're looking for we're looking for a result that the rider can use it's 0.03 better

00:45:50than the competition all right yeah right where's the beer yeah i always wondered at mach 3 how

00:46:00carefully you had to be uh the direction you're pointing that thing so you didn't

00:46:03end up in outer space just due to momentum well yeah there's that and also when you get up

00:46:10really high your aerodynamic surfaces lose their steering ability so x-15 had to have

00:46:17attitude control jets just kind of kick it around wherever the pilot wanted it um

00:46:26there's a lot of weird stuff that goes on up high but that's not our subject today yeah life on earth

00:46:32here ninjas yep but i think it's it's fascinating to to see how the company's history is present in the

00:46:43product to this day that uh they're trying to do things their way they had so many um

00:46:52world superbike championships with that 55 millimeter stroke why would you change it

00:46:58well theoretically right yeah so check out my trophy yeah get out of my office yeah

00:47:06yeah so i like that i like that adherence to that uh philosophy and and that institutional knowledge

00:47:14that built well pragmatism um the other in the other pan of that scale is robin to louis

00:47:24who who hates uh pragmatism because it represents a lack of understanding to explain robin to louis oh robin to louis

00:47:34um was chief scientist at mercedes um formula one until he lost interest before that he was at renault formula one

00:47:45for years and he is distinguished by having had his uh concepts banned by the fia which means they work

00:47:55and uh he was um he worked as a vehicle dynamics guy on the polaris victory motorcycle and then

00:48:10yeah foundational to their shaker table operation and all the things that they were doing for you know

00:48:15testing components and and all that yeah he went to um minneapolis testing service mts which makes the

00:48:22the the shaking hydraulic shaking machines they can shake a powerful heavy diesel tractor um highway

00:48:34tractor the equivalent of of two million miles in in just a few hours on these machines that just

00:48:41they have one that's also like a giant base driver so it's a big magnet and they can just you know dial

00:48:46it in play whatever song they want to uh get the cracks forming get the cracks oh they're forming nicely

00:48:53yes that's what you want right well there was a time when they were filling helicopter rotor blades with helium

00:49:01and checking the pressure the pressure's falling there's a crack that way you don't have to take the

00:49:08blade off and subject it to all kinds of time wasting tests you've got helicopters still flying

00:49:16how long can you fly with a crack oh usually three four hours so uh pragmatism uh in motorcycles is a great

00:49:25thing because the rider of the motorcycle is the ultimate judge not instruments not engineers

00:49:36if the rider isn't satisfied the job isn't done

00:49:40so uh when you visit ducati you may see their their suspension destroyer which is like a 15 gallon oil

00:49:54drum uh that is on an eccentric and it goes round and round and it just pounds the bejesus out of

00:50:03suspensions until something ruptures oh yeah they had a rolling road at aprilia i visited quite a long time

00:50:10ago in nilale and did all the dyno banks and all that stuff and they had a rolling road and they had a

00:50:16motorcycle on their um pagaso or something really a pagaso the 650 single

00:50:22vehicle and the road it was long and then it had you know a four by four here and then a big lump of

00:50:30this over here and it just like clam clam that thing just yep they just ran it just turned it on

00:50:35away went home came back the next day yep so robin tulli was a passionate motorcyclist and uh uh the

00:50:45tularis is what he built uh the snowmobile snowmobile engine uh ducati transmission an original chassis

00:50:54and there wasn't any class for it but there it was 800 two-stroke parallel to me as we have beautiful

00:51:01photographs of it if you go to magazine.cycleworld.com and search for the tularis uh you will find it

00:51:07and it is a it is a work of art it doesn't have a class but that's where you know robin's not trying

00:51:12to like i'm gonna kick the compression up on my ninja 750 nope we're gonna scratch a build using a

00:51:20parallel twin 800 cc uh two-stroke you know sled motor and we're gonna put the pipes out the back and

00:51:29put the carbs in front and get crazy with it yep it's gorgeous so this is a ninja podcast yes

00:51:41are we notorious or famous for uh getting off the subject i think it's i well i hope i hope other

00:51:49people enjoy it because i don't want to stop doing it because to me this is what this is what joins

00:51:54everything together it is it you're getting all this we're talking about pragmatism we're talking

00:51:59about organizational structure and leadership that informs kawasaki's progression of product

00:52:11yeah to the millimeter and i think that that's significant versus scatterbrained stuff or like

00:52:19now we're gonna try this whoops you know not that we don't make mistakes and and all that but it is

00:52:24important and having people like robin to louie versus having people who are like yeah you know what

00:52:31um let's use that 55 because it works great you know this cosworth thing they won a lot of races with

00:52:37that how do we apply that to motorcycling you know i always wish someone had taken

00:52:42motorcycle combustion chambers and intakes and exhausts and put them on american v8s when they needed it most

00:52:56yep imagine that

00:52:59instead of like well we're making 600 million of these this year we don't really want to change the

00:53:04production line it's working fine yes what are those stamped little little uh bird

00:53:12baths all those are rocker arms oh yeah we have a machine that makes 40 a minute

00:53:18yeah um and it it's brilliant uh design for production that was correct it was designed for

00:53:26production yes because uh the stronger your cost control the wider the uh population of potential buyers

00:53:37and this is why it's so unfortunate when the pcd men actually hurt the product pcd is product cheapening department

00:53:48um at uh indian right after the war world war ii they were going to bring out a parallel twin

00:53:58and singles that were modular to it and the pcd guys made a last run through and they took a bunch

00:54:05of metal out of the cylinder head well when the push rod the exhaust push rod began to push

00:54:15on the rocker arm and the leftover combustion pressure was holding the valve shut

00:54:22and the push rod is pushing pushing more instead of the valve opening it formed cracks in the cylinder

00:54:29head that were attaching the pivot of the rocker arm so the whole thing fell off

00:54:35um and people didn't want a replacement head because it would just break like the original so that was the

00:54:41end and uh so you can you can overdo the the thing of trying to cut costs but i think it's a people are much

00:54:54more subtle at this and your your visit to uh uh re in in india uh shows that they have made wise choices

00:55:06in how they control price for example by not shipping their die castings in from the specialist

00:55:16but saying to the specialist build us a mini plant we'll make them right here and we'll pay you a license

00:55:23fee if you say no we'll go to somebody else well when you when you spool up two million bucks a year

00:55:32you got some uh you got some weight with your suppliers yes you do and uh harley's exercised

00:55:38that quite a bit they would get great supply chain paints finishes colors coatings ignition systems

00:55:46suspension you name it yeah still flex and get some things done

00:55:52um kawasaki i one time i was uh writing occasionally for a personal watercraft book uh paul carruthers was

00:56:04the editor and his uh brand of humor suffused that magazine um but kawasaki built a

00:56:15a tremendous engine that was basically zx 14 or 12 but supercharged to make 300 horsepower

00:56:28so it was like a miniature ocean racer

00:56:34and i just kept thinking to myself when are they going to do something with that concept

00:56:40on two wheels and it did happen and then it's called h2 yeah h2 and h2r and i ran some numbers on the

00:56:50difference between h2 and sx h2sx and i think that they've got some kind of a clever controller on what

00:57:00the airbox pressure is and i think honda with their electric supercharger is going to be able to raise that to

00:57:07a higher level but they went from an 8.5 to one compression ratio on the first h2

00:57:15well mind you this is a zx 10 like engine with a mechanically driven supercharger on the back of

00:57:22it it is not the old triple yeah 10x i think like roughly 10x gearing so that the supercharger is doing

00:57:29about 100 000 rpm at 10 000 engine rpm pumping it in well there's an air you know there's a

00:57:38there's an intake air temperature gauge on the dashboard of the uh h2 and uh when i wrote the

00:57:46test of one of the initial bikes around 2015 the intake air temperature was 235 degrees i want to say

00:57:54it's a nice yeah you can smoke a chicken with that buddy can you can you say charge air cooler

00:58:04um but the thing is that uh the first the first job the first supercharged uh h2 was done as though

00:58:15it were going to operate steadily at high throttle so they gave it an 8.5 to 1 compression ratio and

00:58:23the rest of the compression was in the supercharger that makes good sense if you're you know cruising at

00:58:3050 percent power at 30 000 feet and uh i think that people complained that the initial engine response was

00:58:41a little weak uh right off the bottom and they've gone to 11.2 compression uh and then they've had to

00:58:51to weaken the supercharge uh so that it doesn't build up too far and lead the engine not into temptation

00:59:00but into detonation it was um a russian researcher named simonov who wrote the first paper about gaseous

00:59:11uh detonative uh detonative combustion and i lived with it at trackside all those years and now it is

00:59:23managed by the ecu it listens for the little tapping it's not so much a microphone as it is an accelerometer

00:59:31on the cylinder head and when it detects the frequencies that are characteristic of

00:59:37this abnormal and destructive form of combustion it pulls the timing back until it stops

00:59:45and supercharging is a wonderful way to make power but it's also it brings you closer to the detonation

00:59:53threshold so i think that there's probably a whole story in how they how they manage that

01:00:00um in the subsequent model because when i looked at the numbers it's um

01:00:09they've changed a bunch of things from the one one to the other more than just the compression ratio

01:00:18but certainly it's when it comes to ultimates um this is this is a good one yeah it's uh the writing

01:00:27experience was different you know i've i have many many many miles on hayabusa's and we've top speed

01:00:33tested them i've written them at racetracks and i read or row does rad greaves uh formula extreme

01:00:38hayabusa where he sectioned the chassis and shortened the wheelbase because it's like a 58.8 inch

01:00:45wheelbase on the original uh hayabusa and he wanted to road race in formula extreme so i rode

01:00:51rode one of those and it's an impressive engine zx14 impressive engine massive amounts of buttery

01:00:59big bottom end and then just a spectacular performance but the the pressure cooker motors

01:01:07are those h2s there's a ferocity to how they hit it's different and in some ways well the output from

01:01:17a centrifugal blower is v squared so you know it's like uh like with the shock absorber the faster you

01:01:24go the faster you go so um yeah i'd like i what why didn't they put a uh lease home screw blower on

01:01:35that because uh that's the thing that works so well in drag racing that they had to ban it from certain

01:01:41classes um it has internal compression whereas a a roots blower the classic um hot rod drag race

01:01:53supercharger is like a revolving door made to move air it moves air at atmospheric pressure

01:02:00and tries to push it into a region where the pressure is higher so how is the air in the blower compressed

01:02:07by air rushing back from the pressure chamber into the cavity in the blower rotor and compressing

01:02:14what's in there so there is an efficiency loss in all this back and forth flow whereas a lease home

01:02:22screw blower has internal compression and uh it's much more efficient so we've got this great wide belt

01:02:31driving our roots floor if we put a lease home that used that all that torque we'd have some tremendous

01:02:38boost back most entertaining most entertaining well kawasaki's got all that background in other

01:02:45industries as well so you know bogeys for high-speed trains and high-speed trains and ships and aircraft

01:02:51and but they built the ki-61 uh the fighter in uh in world war ii had a liquid cooled engine rather than

01:02:59the radial on the on most of the uh fighters both japanese and allied and uh it was used to uh defend

01:03:10against b-29 raids and mr mizumachi who was my guide in japan in 1972 said i think maybe

01:03:21difficulties with fighter engines not so much engine problem maybe fuel problem because it was really hard

01:03:32to scratch up um airplane gasoline in the final days and uh some of it was like i as i like to say

01:03:43you can hear it knocking in the can so uh but they yes they had a lot of aircraft experience

01:03:58it's um where do we go from here well i think we've we've made our journey to supercharged h2 ninjas i

01:04:06was i will finish with saying i've always been fascinated by the use of the ninja name

01:04:12in kawasaki uh you know ninja was defining performance and then we had ninja 250s and

01:04:19i guess you you could argue it's we're defining the performance of a 250 that's fine yes but we

01:04:25put we got ninja little ninja yeah we got ninja 650s and and all that i was always interested in the

01:04:32expression of ninja across um so many different models and not necessarily you know oh it's h2 and

01:04:39you know these crushing uh performance products um but it's also philosophy i think you know ninja

01:04:48has become a philosophy for the company yeah i think i think that's reasonable to say i'd have to agree

01:04:54with that just the way that you know if ktm says oh ready to race you know it's a it's a street going

01:05:00naked bike you know well yeah actually but the philosophy remains it has a very light crankshaft and

01:05:07it's highly dynamic right and that's i think the philosophy of ninja is one of performance and

01:05:14and they use that as i think a guiding light for their work and i think that's important you know

01:05:21if you don't have the guiding light what are you doing yeah because it's perfectly possible to have

01:05:28engineers take a look around you buy the products that are on the market you tear them down and measure

01:05:32stuff uh you send parts to metallurgy to find out how they're saving money on uh cylinder head material

01:05:40or whatever the question is and then you you draw up some middle of the road average of all of these

01:05:48which is like the average truth of ai it feeds on itself to produce mediocrity because there's no

01:06:01testing or research or driving force behind this it's just here's an average product for your

01:06:08average buyer also zero ethics so it's essentially i've come to talk about ai first as a sociopath because

01:06:16it ain't care yes well i guess that's another podcast but this was ninja we thank you for riding along

01:06:25with us psycho world podcast see in the comments thank you for listening

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