This is a post from southbayriders forum Gary J.
After finishing up a couple hundred backroad street miles on my '04 Kawasaki ZX-10R, to get past the usual break-in, I had the opportunity to take the two week old bike out on track at Laguna Seca yesterday (Tuesday, April 6th), at the Club Desmo trackday. Between riding for fun (the "A" Group), and lending a hand with riding tips for other riders (in the "B" Group) the bike managed to log close to 300 total miles, and go through over a dozen gallons of gas, by day's end. As that this bike is a new offering for 2004, I thought that some of the local riders here on the forum might have an interest in hearing a first-hand, real world, off-the-showroom-floor machine (not a magazine test-bike) impression of the ZX-10R. If you fit that mold ...... please read on; if not ..... please feel free to skip on to the next thread
My bike is still basically stock, with the exception of dropping one tooth (to a 16T) on the front sprocket, and finally removing the OEM rubber (Dunlop D218's) and fitting some more track-friendly tires (Dunlop D208's).
Needless to say the bike's performance on track was nothing short of incredible! It makes my previous trackday riding bike (a 2000 GSXR-750) seem amazingly docile by comparison. The only weak link I found with the bike, as I began to familiarize myself with its performance traits, was a bit of a nervous ........ "hunting" feeling from the front end. This only showed up when I was on the gas really hard, and encountered pavement surface that had any form of irregularites.
I have to admit to having introduced a variable here, that should be considered in the equation. The replacement tires that I put on the bike were a bit different in diameter than the stock D218 Dunlops. The new rear tire was a 180/55/17 (vs. the stock 190 sized tire), and was definitely taller. Going up the hill through Turn 7, where there's a tiny bit of a rise .... required that I practically let go of all grip of the handlebars to keep the front end from going into a quite noticeable "wiggle", at the triple-digit speeds present at that section of the track.
There's no question (in my opinion, FWIW) that Kawasaki should have fitted this bike with a steering damper as stock equipment ...... or worst case ...... at least provided some form of mounting boss on the frame, triple clamp, etc. ...... to make it easy to add one (like the ZX6RR has).
I experimented with a variety of different suspension/chassis setup changes (on the stock shock/forks), but nothing I did made a serious dent in the quest for delivering the solid stability from the front of the bike, under full-throttle conditions on the track, that I was looking for. I plan on trying a few other chassis changes at my next trackday (in about 2 weeks, at Sears Point), but would very much like to have a steering damper fitted too ..... to see if that is sufficient by itself, before getting too carried away in that area.
Despite the less than optimum stability at full-boogie throttle/speeds, I still found myself able to run lap times that were several seconds faster than I'd ever gone at a trackday at Laguna Seca in the past, on my GSXR. Running laps breaking easily down into the 1:3x's , was like being on auto-pilot!
The last few sessions of the day were a lot of fun too ....... as that Steve Crevier (current AMA Superbike and Canadian Superbike regular) was in attendance for a fun riding day .... also mounted atop a stock, street-going ZX-10R, just like mine .. in the same all-black color scheme. The two bikes looked like twins!
We hooked up to have a little fun circulating the track for some time, swapping spots in traffic, back-n-forth a few times ....... and just generally hooting around. On numerous occasions we traded off doing some horsing-around type of long wheelies, in various parts of the track. Steve's an incredible rider, so it was fun to be able to be out there riding close with him yesterday, on ZX-10R streetbikes, lap after lap, for nearly a full 20 minute session. Of course this close riding was due to him obviously keeping it at a "fun pace" ... and not tapping into his race-face capabiliites (at which point he'd certainly have been long gone!).
Riding with him did make me tap deeper into my own riding skills bank, which was good in allowing me to get a better feel of what the ZX-10R could do ...... and for me to adjust to what it wants from me as a rider .... to go fast. All good stuff ..... for sure, and Steve seemed to have had a lot of fun riding the ZX-10R, based on the huge ear-to-ear grin he had on his face, when we compared notes on the bike in the hot-pits, as we came off track.
The only bad thing about the ZX-10R, for trackday use ..... is that it's a total "Tire-Eat'n-Monster"! Despite having a brand new set of tires to start the day, and the fact that the pavement surface at Laguna Seca is quite well known to be very friendly to tire wear ...... I found the front and rear (especially the rear) tires to be really eaten away by day's end. The bike loves to lay down "*******" off many of the corners on Laguna .......... lap after lap .... without really trying very hard by me as a rider. With 80Lb/Ft. of torque on tap ..... it's not surprising, I guess.
So that was the highlights of my day at Laguna on the new ZX-10R. I'm looking forward to getting this front end "nervousness" problem resolved, so that I can really begin to find the bike's lap time potential (at least with me on it), and do so with a little less apprehension about keeping it going in the desired direction down the track.
I hope that everyone that ends up buying one of these new '04 ZX-10R's, fits the mold as being an "extremely experienced rider", and a rider with a good amount of previous seat time on some form of higher horsepower, lightweight machine. This bike is most definitely an "experts only" mount (in my opinion). For those that do fit that mold, and buy one of these new ZX-10R's, I hope that you get the opportunity to eventually take it out for a trackday/trackschool ....... so that you can really appreciate what an incredible machine it is ....... for experienced pilots ........ in the right environment.
Gary J
After finishing up a couple hundred backroad street miles on my '04 Kawasaki ZX-10R, to get past the usual break-in, I had the opportunity to take the two week old bike out on track at Laguna Seca yesterday (Tuesday, April 6th), at the Club Desmo trackday. Between riding for fun (the "A" Group), and lending a hand with riding tips for other riders (in the "B" Group) the bike managed to log close to 300 total miles, and go through over a dozen gallons of gas, by day's end. As that this bike is a new offering for 2004, I thought that some of the local riders here on the forum might have an interest in hearing a first-hand, real world, off-the-showroom-floor machine (not a magazine test-bike) impression of the ZX-10R. If you fit that mold ...... please read on; if not ..... please feel free to skip on to the next thread
My bike is still basically stock, with the exception of dropping one tooth (to a 16T) on the front sprocket, and finally removing the OEM rubber (Dunlop D218's) and fitting some more track-friendly tires (Dunlop D208's).
Needless to say the bike's performance on track was nothing short of incredible! It makes my previous trackday riding bike (a 2000 GSXR-750) seem amazingly docile by comparison. The only weak link I found with the bike, as I began to familiarize myself with its performance traits, was a bit of a nervous ........ "hunting" feeling from the front end. This only showed up when I was on the gas really hard, and encountered pavement surface that had any form of irregularites.
I have to admit to having introduced a variable here, that should be considered in the equation. The replacement tires that I put on the bike were a bit different in diameter than the stock D218 Dunlops. The new rear tire was a 180/55/17 (vs. the stock 190 sized tire), and was definitely taller. Going up the hill through Turn 7, where there's a tiny bit of a rise .... required that I practically let go of all grip of the handlebars to keep the front end from going into a quite noticeable "wiggle", at the triple-digit speeds present at that section of the track.
There's no question (in my opinion, FWIW) that Kawasaki should have fitted this bike with a steering damper as stock equipment ...... or worst case ...... at least provided some form of mounting boss on the frame, triple clamp, etc. ...... to make it easy to add one (like the ZX6RR has).
I experimented with a variety of different suspension/chassis setup changes (on the stock shock/forks), but nothing I did made a serious dent in the quest for delivering the solid stability from the front of the bike, under full-throttle conditions on the track, that I was looking for. I plan on trying a few other chassis changes at my next trackday (in about 2 weeks, at Sears Point), but would very much like to have a steering damper fitted too ..... to see if that is sufficient by itself, before getting too carried away in that area.
Despite the less than optimum stability at full-boogie throttle/speeds, I still found myself able to run lap times that were several seconds faster than I'd ever gone at a trackday at Laguna Seca in the past, on my GSXR. Running laps breaking easily down into the 1:3x's , was like being on auto-pilot!
The last few sessions of the day were a lot of fun too ....... as that Steve Crevier (current AMA Superbike and Canadian Superbike regular) was in attendance for a fun riding day .... also mounted atop a stock, street-going ZX-10R, just like mine .. in the same all-black color scheme. The two bikes looked like twins!
We hooked up to have a little fun circulating the track for some time, swapping spots in traffic, back-n-forth a few times ....... and just generally hooting around. On numerous occasions we traded off doing some horsing-around type of long wheelies, in various parts of the track. Steve's an incredible rider, so it was fun to be able to be out there riding close with him yesterday, on ZX-10R streetbikes, lap after lap, for nearly a full 20 minute session. Of course this close riding was due to him obviously keeping it at a "fun pace" ... and not tapping into his race-face capabiliites (at which point he'd certainly have been long gone!).
Riding with him did make me tap deeper into my own riding skills bank, which was good in allowing me to get a better feel of what the ZX-10R could do ...... and for me to adjust to what it wants from me as a rider .... to go fast. All good stuff ..... for sure, and Steve seemed to have had a lot of fun riding the ZX-10R, based on the huge ear-to-ear grin he had on his face, when we compared notes on the bike in the hot-pits, as we came off track.
The only bad thing about the ZX-10R, for trackday use ..... is that it's a total "Tire-Eat'n-Monster"! Despite having a brand new set of tires to start the day, and the fact that the pavement surface at Laguna Seca is quite well known to be very friendly to tire wear ...... I found the front and rear (especially the rear) tires to be really eaten away by day's end. The bike loves to lay down "*******" off many of the corners on Laguna .......... lap after lap .... without really trying very hard by me as a rider. With 80Lb/Ft. of torque on tap ..... it's not surprising, I guess.
So that was the highlights of my day at Laguna on the new ZX-10R. I'm looking forward to getting this front end "nervousness" problem resolved, so that I can really begin to find the bike's lap time potential (at least with me on it), and do so with a little less apprehension about keeping it going in the desired direction down the track.
I hope that everyone that ends up buying one of these new '04 ZX-10R's, fits the mold as being an "extremely experienced rider", and a rider with a good amount of previous seat time on some form of higher horsepower, lightweight machine. This bike is most definitely an "experts only" mount (in my opinion). For those that do fit that mold, and buy one of these new ZX-10R's, I hope that you get the opportunity to eventually take it out for a trackday/trackschool ....... so that you can really appreciate what an incredible machine it is ....... for experienced pilots ........ in the right environment.
Gary J
