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Grunt Vicar?
It's Kawasaki's fault. There I was minding my own business, perfectly happy
with a garage with enough collective horsepower to put the Sydney opera house
on the moon, when yours etc got a fling or three on the ZZ-R1200 during the
recent Clare Caper (see elsewhere this ish for the tragic details).
The Zed ain't the most powerful crayon in the motorcycling box, but the fact
it could happily run from 60 to over 260 in top and make lots of interesting
angry noises along the way, and most of them happened on the high side of 200
- look, you just have to try it for yourself. Anything that can be so utterly
irresponsible, comfortably, with a nice long reach to the handlebars, and look
very black and sexy, well, it deserves some sort of Gonzo seal of approval.
And don't bother with that namby social responsibility tripe. If responsibility
was the issue, we'd all go out and buy a nice little Hyundai Getz for $14,000
with aircon.
Okay, I've got that off the chest. This week the sorcerer's apprentices at Redwing
(my local purveyor of things Honda) installed the new timing wheel in Mac the
Valk. This is a gadget I found on the net that came with some good reviews and
third-party dyno charts showing it added two or three horses (which is probably
undetectable in the saddle when the base line is 100 or so) and claimed to fatten
up the torque curve considerably. The gist is it runs six degrees more advance,
which means the Valk has to be run on premium, and the results are pretty good.
The aforementioned dyno charts reckon a 10 per centish gain in the torque curve
is experienced across the low-to-mid range, while a dip in the stock chart is
removed. Maybe there's a placebo effect happening, but I swear Mac has significantly
more jump out of a turn. Which is bad news for Spannerman, as this begs a rerun
of the little contest described in last November's Travels.
That's all fine and dandy, but one shouldn't get too worked up about the performance
of a touring bike, which on any other planet would require a heavy vehicle operator's
licence.
Call it coincidence, but my recently-acquired Triumph Daytona 1200 has a similar
ride position to the ZZ-R12 and has the great advantage over the Kwak of already
being legally parked at Chateau Guido. Which means I don't have to explain yet
another motorcycle swap to assorted wives and daughters.
Though having a history of treating such traumas as a challenge, I've yet to
receive the richly-deserved gold medal if it were an Olympic event and am inclined
to retire from competitive buying for a while to concentrate on the resources
at hand. As it stands, Rocinante the Dayt is a fairly well-sorted thing but
I reckon it's down around 10 horses on my previous version (130-plus at the
rear tyre according to Dynojet), and a little more urge on this one would not
go astray.
This could mean a little more zorst note in the form of free-flowing mufflers,
a rework of the air filter, rejetting - for a start. I did meet a bloke years
ago who was seriously talking of a long-stroke kit, but suspect the aliens who
made him decided to rescind his visit to our planet.
It's easily achieved, but the annoying part is it will challenge the already
marginal front brakes and I'm regretting not keeping the factory six-spotters
from the last bike. Which means finding another set. Then the tyres have to
go - they have plenty of tread but have gone hard and weird after sitting in
a shed and doing sod-all for years under the previous owner's stewardship.
This is quite ridiculous. But I took Rocinante for a fang today and shouted
him a new tank of fuel. Among the bass rumbles, typical of his breed when on
the throttle for the rent, I could hear only one thing going straight through
the nerve endings to the noggin - which was an all too British voice asking,
"More grunt, Vicar?" The answer's yes. I still blame Kawasaki.
Guy "Guido" Allen
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