ROAD TESTS
40 600 SHOWDOWN Paper covers rock; scissors cut paper; rock crushes scissors. TECHNICAL
46 YAMAHA FZR600R TECH by Steve Anderson Stretching a 400 into a 600 with midrange wallop.
48 HONDA CBR600 TECH by Kevin Cameron The oldest 600 gets a top-end injection.
54 KAWASAKI ZX-6 TECH by Kevin Cameron Building the big dog the others have to run with.
58 SUZUKI 600 KATANA TECH by Steve Anderson Suzuki economizes its way to a most sensible 600. FEATURES
60 NORTON F1 by Mat Oxley Your rotary racer-replica’s road ready, Reginald.
64 SILENT HERO by Kevin Cameron Unfair advantage: Erv Kanemoto tunes the bike and the rider.
70 MYTHS by Kevin Cameron Cleaning the Aegean stables of your mind. DEPARTMENTS
8 IO 16 24 27 1 IO 1 12 EDITORIAL by Steve Anderson TDC by Kevin Cameron LETTERS NEW PRODUCTS by John Burns BITS by Tyrone van Hooydonk HEAD ON by Clement Salvadori PIPELINE by Jim Greening
PEOPLE RESPECT THE DEAD MORE THAN THE LIVING,
brushing aside less savory memories that might fog a
happier whole. Nortons, BSAs, and Triumphs are
—H— remembered lovingly; their oil leaks, vibration, and
unreliability long lost in the mists of time.
But defect-obscuring glasses may no longer be required to
look at British motorcycles, now that the British industry is
undergoing a partial resuscitation. After years of slowly churning
out a few rotary-powered motorcycles for the British police, and
rotary drones for military target practice, Norton finally has a
sport bike that can be judged against contemporary competition.
Norton’s $21,200 rotary-powered Fl will be on the roads in
spring 1990, taking its place alongside two-wheeled exotica such
as Honda’s RC30, Bimota’s YB4, and Yamaha’s OW 01. Based
on the machine Steve Spray used to domi-
nate the 1989 British road race scene,
the Fl is a true racer-replica. The original
mock-up unveiled in autumn 1988 was
nothing more than a layer of designer-
crafted bodywork wrapped around a rac-
ing chassis and engine. Since then, the
concept has retained its purity while Nor-
ton’s tiny development team—usually
four men—has transformed the raw
racer into an elite roadster. This tightknit
band has taken little more than 12
months to replace the old air-cooled rota-
ry with a liquid-cooled unit, install a new
five-speed gearbox, tame the race chassis,
and get the bike roadworthy.
The gearbox has been the most critical
factor in the whole design. Early Norton
rotaries employed units culled from old
Triumph triples—a hopelessly archaic at-
tachment to an engine that should sit at
the forefront of internal-combustion tech-
nology. Even in the early seventies, when
five-speed triples first roamed the streets,
the gearbox was a joke—in the 1990s it
would have been a disgrace.
Unable to justify the cost of designing
its own completely new gearbox, Norton
has bitten back its pride and built a new
unit around a five-speed cluster borrowed
from the early Yamaha FZR1000. Not
only has the transmission change made
the Norton more ridable, it has also im-
proved the engine layout.
To retain chain primary drive while
accommodating the FZR’s transplanted
internals (which only have input and out-
put shafts, unlike the Triumph unit which
changed drive direction twice through
mainshaft, layshaft and sleeve gear), the...