With the bike being a relative unknown to us it was basically built with the "B" kit and Sugaya pipes. The "B" kit included the fully pressurised airbox, pictured right and all the parts needed to turn a road going RGV into a race bike apart from the bodywork.
With regard tuning work all that was done was to true all the ports and set up the squishes to 0.8mm. The heads were checked and the smallest volume was made equal to the largest so that they were both the same, but pretty much as Suzuki made them.
The Sugaya pipes pictured right came with Tin silencers so these were cut up and made into decent Carbon fibre rebuildable ones.
Along with the Rear Ohlins Shock that was fitted the forks went away for a full rebuild at Maxton Engineering, who I consider to be the best in the business. They fitted new springs and reworked the damping so that it would work a lot better. Also the modifications they make mean the damping adjustments actually work now. Standard forks do not change much with adjustments on the damping.
We also fitted some special HT leads from American firm Nology. These are called Hotwires, pictured right and this is a very apt name as they give a very good spark which is also very accurate in the timing. This not only gives more accurate ignition timing but a much better, more powerful spark.
Once testing started we found problems with detonation and as the piston crowns are coated or plated in some way the detonation was occuring on the heads themselves so we fitted bronze anti-detonation rings pictured right.
This detonation was basically the only problem encountered with the bike. See below for more info on the testing and first couple of races.
Now that the first two seasons are over and we are preparing for a third season we can make valid comments on how good the bike has turned out.
Basically it was slowed slightly during the first season because of whinging people who could not realise that the whole idea of racing is to have a fast well set up bike and ride it fast. Now it has been brought back up to full speed it is very fast and competitive.
The bike is very fast in the wet because of the very good chassis and the way it makes its power. In the dry against some of the faster 400s it loses out a bit if they get in the way in the corners, but on a clear track is very fast. There are very few 400s that seem faster accelerating. It is awesome on the brakes being able to brake deep into the corners. It can hold much faster corner speeds than most bikes, only the latest Aprilia RS250 if set up properly would come anywhere near it as it has better sized wheels. This has now been sorted with wheels from Dymag, so 2002 should see us with a decent advantage over anything out there in terms of cornering.
I have now had the first races on the bike and the results are good. The amount of grip mid corner has been improved by a substantial amount. Anyone who beats me this year will do so by riding better than me, the bike is awesome both in handling and power.
The end product - The proverbial Dogs B*ll*cks
Once testing started it became obvious the engine was basically set up for high octane fuel. It was making massive amounts of horsepower but unless you could run Avgas or similar would not be reliable. We then went about the hard task of tuning it to run unleaded pump fuel which is the fuel we have to use. This has to be done by changing compression and ignition timing, but if you go about it wrong could lose a lot of horsepower.
After a lot of dyno and track testing we ended up with a bike that was making around 79hp at the crank about 72 at the back wheel and was reliable on unleaded fuel. There was a horsepower or two available if you wanted to sacrifice pistons on a regular basis, but I did not think it was needed. We had already done the first race on the bike when it was making about 77hp at the crank and it was very competitive. The bike seized on a test day at Oulton park and when it was rebuilt we decided to go a bit further with the detuning as the handling of the bike more than makes up for power loss . Also there have been complaints about the bike as people think I have an unfair advantage so to ease this we have settled for a good 75hp at the crank, about 69 at the back wheel. If it was needed I am sure I could get around 80hp at the crank and still be totally reliable or use a mix of Avgas similar to the fuel other people are using and get at least 82hp at the crank.
All horsepower figures will probably be up around 2 hp at 100mph because of the pressurised airbox.
As for the handling no work was needed. This thing is AWESOME, it gives more feedback than I have ever found on any bike including full GP250 bikes. The road bike is brilliant so I was not expecting so much of an improvement. On cold slippery tracks you know exactly what is happening, this bike should be out of this world in the wet.
