Ten
Kate's World Superbike Race Winner
2004-2005 Honda CBR600RR and
1000RR
The new generation Honda CBR1000RR Superbike introduced by Honda in
2004 was a race winner the very first season in both SBK World and AMA
National Superbike competition. It was that good. In World Superbike
it was Honda's Dutch importer / dealer for Holland, Ten Kate
Racing who essentially built their bikes from stock and in the handsof
reigning 2003 World Supersport Champion Chris Vermeulen they claimed
4 race wins during the 2004 SBK season. It's a great indication of what
can be done with a stock production sportbike if you have the mechanical
skill to assemble a race bike, and the budget to buy all the best aftermarket
components to complete the project.
American Honda,
on the other hand, took the easier, but more costly approach. They leased
fully race prepared CBR1000RRs from Honda of Japan's HRC Racing Department.
With HRC's inside line to designing and developing the production CBR1000RR,
they were also was designing, producing and testing racing components
like a full race exhaust system, high compression pistons, race camshafts,
remapping of the CPU for ignition and fuel injection, etc., probably
a good 6-9 months before Ten Kate took delivery of their stock production
CBR10000RRs just 3 months before the 2004 SBK season began.
American Honda
doesn't like to talk about what their HRC lease bikes might cost them,
but word was banted around a few years earlier that the V-4 engined
RC51 Superbikes cost close to $1,000,000 each to lease, and then they
had to be returned home to HRC in Japan at the end of the year. HRC
did offer a production racer RC51 for sale for $110,000 on special back
about 2001, but it still retained a lot of stock production parts not
used on the factory race bikes, and not suprisingly, none were sold
in the USA.
During the 2004
AMA Superbike season American Honda's Miguel Duhamel (4), Jake Zemke
(2) and Ben Bostrom (1) claimed a total of (7) race wins against the
steam rolling Mat Mladin with (8) wins on the Yoshimura Suzuki GSXR1000.
For the 2005 AMA
season the American Honda Race team will take the much less costly approach
to their race bikes. They bought "Race Kits" from HRC which
give them the primary parts needed like the cams, pistons, titanium
vales with springs, Titanium race exhaust system, to build a full race
superbike engine.
And starting with stock CBR1000RRs they built their own very competitive
race bikes for the 2005 season using the best available suspension componets,
wheels and such for probably well under $100,000 if the team personels'
building time is not factored in.
Building
a Ten Kate CBR1000RR World Superbike Replica
Ten Kate team owner Gerrit Kate told us, "We got 203bhp
at the rear wheel from our World Superbike in 2004, with more to come
for 2005, yet it's really bulletproof. We are now building for sale
a street replica of our World Superbike which our Dynojet tells us puts
out 179.bhp at the rear wheel and equates to 201bhp at the crank."
For comparison a stock CBR1000 has a claimed 172bhp at 11,250 and dynos
at 155bhp at the rear wheel.
The bottom end of the engine, crank, rods, pistons, transmission, is
all checked over, but left stock. New vales are installed with a flat
face to slightly increase compression and help combustion chamber flow,
along with 1-piece race springs per valve. The only other modification
comes to the head which are ported and flowed for balance. Compression
is raised from stock 11.9:1 to 12.7:1 by milling the head. For comparrision
the World Superbikes run much higher 13.0.1 or more compression which
necessitates a change to higher compression pistons and 115 octane race
fuel. Then Ten Kate fits their own full-race camshafts which you can
now buy, and which were used on Chris Vermeulen's World Superbike machine.
The cam lift is kept the same as stock to retain good fuel mileage,
but the duration and timing has been changed significantly to improve
peak power without loosing low and mid-range tractability.
Ten Kate worked with their exhaust system sponsor Arrow to design a
full race system for the CBR1000RR that employs a steel header pipe,
titanium rear section and silencer.
The Ten Kate Replica Bike handles fuel injection remapping for the
head work, camshaft change and new exhaust system by installing a Dynojet
Power Commander. This is the easiest and most affordable solution for
street use, supersport and privateer Superbike Racing. The trick setup
is the HRC kit ECU which is fitted to Chris Vermeulen's World Superbike
and expensive if you can get it. Ten Kate is working on their own programable
ECU system which they hope to have avaialble soon, so check with them.
Their unit will allow you toalso raise the rev limiter, which you can't
do with the Power Commander. The Replica modifications have the power
still building when the stock CPU cuts out, so a higher rev limit will
make a fast bike even faster.
For suspension, the Ten
Kate Honda team employs full works spec billet machine White Power
from forks and rear shock. The WP shock comes from their italian
licensee Andreani has hyraulic preload adjustment and features
both high and low spped compression and rebound damping adjustment.
The front forks are fully adjustable 50mm upsidedown units fitted
with Ergol aircraft alloy triple clamps machined from billet,
and the steel sliders are specially TIN-coated with a clear finish
to reduce friction.
Stopping at both ends is handled by Brembo calipers clamping
on Braking's 310mm front / 220mm rear Maragherita floating petal
style discs. |
 |
The
CBR600RR AMA Formula Xtreame
Even if there were HRC factory kit race kit parts for the CBR600RR
that carried Miguel Duhamel to the 2004 AMA 600cc Formula Xtreame Championship
Title, you still couldn't get them. Youl'd have to do very much like
Al Ludington did origionally by outsourcing all the necessary performance
parts like cams, pistons, head to the top suppliers in the industry
and paying the high cost of prototyping each and every part.
Suspension, brakes and ignition CPU components were also bought from
top suppliers as described for the CBR1000RR AMA Superbike. Unfortuantely
when it comes to race building a Honda, nothing is easy or affordable.
 Miguel
Duhamel's AMA CBR600RR Formula Xtreame 2004 Championship winner .
One of the most exotic
parts is the hand built, dyno tuned exhaust system. It probably came
from HRC of Japan and ended up with a Jardine decal to support the team
sponsor.
|
|
The
Elusive HRC Factory Engine Race Kit
This is the official HRC factory race parts kit of goodies, based
on the components used in the factory leased CBR1000RR race bikes
during the 2004 season, to turn a stock CBR1000RR into a factory
caliber World Superbike. If you are the Honda distributor for
your country fielding or assisting a race team you can purchase
these HRC Race Kit and give them to your sponsored team or resell
them as you please. And if you are a privateer without connections,
well AMA and SBK homologation rules mean nothing.....
This is because
Race Kits are very expensive, very few are sold, and the Honda
distributor does not want to be stuck with unsold inventory. Nor
do they want to have to deal with a privateer club racer or street
rider who has tuning problems or warranty compaints, or needs
to replace just a couple of broken valves. Kits and parts may
take a number of months to order from HRC in Japan, and they don't
want to break apart the one kit they might have in stock for replacement
parts.
We called
our main man at Team American Honda Roadracing, Miguel DuHamel's
tuner Al Ludington, to find out if you could get our hands on
one, what was in it, and what it cost.
Al told us
the "Engine Kit" included "AMA legal" (different
duration, no change in lift) camshafts, 13.0:1 pistons, a full
HRC titanium exhaust system, a Heavy Duty transmission, and the
famed HRC CPU management module for the engine.
If you can
get it from somewhere, the HRC CPU is the best choise for remapping
the CBR's ignition and fuel injection for a race pipe with added
engine modifications. The next and more affordable choice is the
DynoJet Power Commander which allows easy fuel injection tuneability
with fewer SuperStock modifications like just an exhaust system
change.
Wilder cams
and pistons and head work will require the added tuneability of
the ignition system to change the spark curve and taise the ignition
RPM cutoff above 11,000 to take advange of the added power higher
up in the RPM range.
Al Ludington
told us the American Honda team for the 2005 race season was running
the the much more expensive MotoTek CPU system at $15,000 per
bike because it also provided on bike data tracking and diagnostics,
and could be hooked up to a lap top computer in the pits or on
a dyno for ignition and fuel injection recalibration, diagnostics
and tracking.
American Honda
sends its CBR600 and CBR 1000 engine heads out to famed engine
tuner Byron Hines (formerly of Vance & Hines) for porting
and valve installation. Head porting and finishing work costs
between $1,500 and $2,500 from Buron and is one of the big differences
between privateer and factory horsepower numbers.
Al told us
the most important item in the Engine Kit which can not be outsourced
or duplicated from elsewhere elsewhere is the stronger transmison
gear set which costs about $1,800 by itself. The ratios are not
much different than the stock CBR1000RR, but the heavier duty
improved gears are needed for reliability. Without it, even a
lightly modified Supersport bike needs to replace damaged transmission
gears after every race weekend.
Another important
component in the HRC Engine Kit is the Factory Titanium Racing
Exhaust System. Al told us the team had given one of the factory
systems to the team's exhaust system sponsor Jardine to copy andbuild
extras for the team, and to sell. So we gave Jardine a phone call
a few weeks later on February 1st, 2005 just a month before the
Daytona AMA Nationals to see if the HRC replica pipewas available
from them. They told us the pipe was 'in developemnt' and if it
was put into production it probably would not be avaiilable and
priced until perhaps May 2005 - in another 4 months.
Not only did
Jardine not have a complete racing exhaust system for the CBR1000RR
a full year after the bike was released in America, neither did
Erion Racing, American Honda's official support team and their
endorsed aftermarket exhaust system manufacturer. So in fact,
Team Honda and Erion Racing were using HRC Racing Exhaust Systems
on their HRC leased team bikes throughout the 2004 season and
now into 2005, bikes which were effectively badged with Jardine
and Erion racing name plates. All either company had available
to the public were less expensive slip-on race silencer kits.
|
|
