Honda revolutionised motorcycle racing in the mid 60s with the arrival of the truly incredible mechanical masterpiece that was the RC165, and then quickly improved on it with the RC166.
The crankshaft was a 13-piece item and the 41 mm pistons spun through a 31mm stroke to 18,000 rpm. This is some amazing engineering from more than half-a-century ago complete with double-overhead camshafts operting four-valves per-cylinder. A bank of six 22 mm Keihin carburettors fed the engine. It had a seven-speed gearbox and if you held on long enough could reach almost 250 km/h.
After dominating with this design and setting a new standard in motorcycle engineering, Honda then stepped away from Grand Prix motorcycle racing and took what they had learned with this project across into their foray into Formula One.
Check out this incredible exploded diagram below and remember that for scale, the entire engine is only around 350 millimetres wide… Then below the picture, click the video to take a demonstration lap around the Isle of Man TT with Steve Plater, followed by another video that gives your ears a tune-up as to how incredible this thing sounded.
It is quite simply, an incredible masterpiece.
The jewel like internals of the engine. For a scale reference, the whole block is less than 350 millimetres wide…
Honda RC165 lap of the IOM with Steve Plater
Listen to the cluch slip required to keep that thing spinning at low revs. It does not appear to be fuelling all that well and would have been ridden harder during the heated battle of competition by the likes of Mike Hailwood back in the day. But I certainly don’t blame Steve for taking it relatively easy for a demonstration lap on what is an almost priceless machine, and especially when wearing the old school attire to boot!
I imagine even for Steve it felt like quite an honour to ride such a magnificent machine around the Isle of Man.
Check out a good demonstration of the sound in this further video below.
When people think of six-cylinder motorcycles they naturally think Honda. From the six-cylinder 250cc GP racers that enjoyed great success at the Isle of Man TT and in Grand Prix Motorcycle Racing during the 1960s. Then of course there is the famous in-line six of the Honda CBX1000 of 1978, through to the flat-six of the current generation Gold Wing. Honda is somewhat synonymous with six-cylinder motorcycles.
Honda CBX 1000
Of course BMW currently has the very impressive K1600 line-up of touring motorcycles, and the likes of Benelli turned out six-cylinder motorcycles as far back as 1973 with the original Benelli Sei, the first production road going model to utilise six-cylinders.
Check out the Benelli 750 and 900 Sei through the lens of Phil Aynsley
And then of course there was the incredible V6 Laverda endurance racer! Just look at that beautiful bank of six Dell’Orto carbuerettors nestled in that 90-degree vee. Art!
Check out the incredible Laverda V6 through the lens of Phil Aynsley
Many though forget the muscularly handsome Kawasaki KZ1300 that was released in 1979.
It looked tough, with a sculpted modern style to its crankcases and cylinder block which, thanks to water-cooling, was notable at the time for its absence of cooling fins.
The shaft-driven beast tipped the scales on the wrong side of 300 kg but found many followers during its ten-year production run. It also had a spin-off touring variant known as the Voyager.
Power from the original 1286cc engine was a claimed 120 hp at 8000 rpm with 116 Nm of torque peaking at 6000 rpm. The engine was of an undersquare configuration with the 71 mm stroke much longer than the 62 mm wide bore size, to help reduce the width of the engine and boost torque.
The first model years saw the DOHC 12-valve engine fed by three Mikuni 32 mm CV twin-throat carburettors before Kawasaki then switched to fuel-injection in 1983. With EFI came an increase in power to 130 ponies.
UK tuner Allen Millyard also made a V12 version of the Z1300 by mating two of the six-cylinder donks to make a 70-degree V12! Give me some of the drugs that man is on! A bit of his engineering brilliance wouldn’t go astray either…. We have included a video of the Millyard V-12 further below also.
UK tuner Allen Millyard also made a V12 version of the Z1300 by mating two of the six-cylinder donks to make for a 2.3 litre V12! – Image by Phil Aynsley
In an earlier column for MCNews.com.au Phil Hall reflected on the efforts to race the Z1300 in Australia that we also include here. Back in those days if the company made it, then the company ensured someone raced it!
Kawasaki Z1300 Australian Racing History
In 1979 a well funded team entered two Kawasaki Z1300 machines for the Bathurst races at Easter time.
One was to be ridden by the Kiwi ace, Graeme Crosby and the other by one of the Blanco brothers (sorry, I can’t remember which one). However, after the first practice session, Croz returned the bike to the pits, jumped off and threw the bike against the wall of the tent, muttering in terms that were undeniable in their meaning and unrepeatable here that he wasn’t going to ride that *&&^%^%$ thing.
With numerous Honda CBX’s still entered and circulating, it was vital for Kawasaki to find a good rider to replace him, and find one they did. The by-now legendary Kawasaki stalwart, Gary Thomas was drafted in and quite unwittingly helped to tell one of the great Bathurst stories.
The Production Race soon became a brawl between Thomas on the amazing six and Honda’s trump card, Tony Hatton on a more conventional CB900/4 Bol d ‘Or.
Rumours and protestations continue to this day concerning the legality of Hatton’s mount but, that aside, the race was a cracker. Against all the odds, Thommo took it to Hatton and made old 55 pull out every bit of skill and daring that he possessed.
Gary was blindingly fast on the two long Bathurst straights aboard the Kawasaki, leaving Hatton in his wake. But, over the top of the mountain in the twisty bits, Hatton regained the ascendency as the Kawasaki added lightness by grinding large parts of its undercarriage away on the unforgiving track surface.
Hatton, cagey devil that he was (still is), waited till the end and, knowing that the big heavy K was running out of brakes at the end of Conrod Straight, he pulled out and executed the perfect inside pass and won the sprint to the line.
It was an amazing race and prompted the Crawford brothers to use the bikes again in further races, but never with the success that Thomas had achieved that day.
Kawasaki sold over 20,000 of the Z1300 variant over the ten-year production run of the model. Kawasaki Australia living legend Murray Sayle told us that, from memory, the model only had a three-year run in the Australian market.
This video below demonstrates the unique sound of the Z1300, which differs greatly from that emitted from Honda’s air-cooled CBX. Enjoy.
The unique beat of a cross-plane crank four visualised
Introduced in 2009 with the RN22 YZF-R1 and then redesigned in 2015 with the RN32, and also used in the MT-10, we are now all well accustomed to the distinctive, unique and really quite evocative sound of the cross-plane crank Yamaha.
The first video provides a demonstration of the unique firing order of Yamaha’s YZF-R1 cross-plane crank four-cylinder engine. The second video, for comparison, shows the traditional firing order of a four-cylinder in-line motor.
While the engine sounds in both videos’ sound a little like an old school retro 80s arcade game, you can still clearly hear the difference between the two configurations, albeit in low-resolution.
Enjoy.
Feel free to share any of your favourite videos with us here at MCNews.com.au as we start this new Video Of The Week series.
As bizarre and quirky as Buell Motorcycles are, I’ve always warmed to some of their offerings to the extent that I’d even own one as a second motorcycle. Buell have had a turbulent history but persevered through controversy and bankruptcy. It’s a compelling story that would make for a great movie which brings us to this interesting Video Of The Week that presents in several parts the rise and fall of Buell Motorcycles.
Enjoy.
Feel free to share any of your favourite videos with us here at MCNews.com.au as we start this new Video Of The Week series.
Video Of The Week highlights one random man on the Internets’ journey of motorcycle mechanical DIY discovery. From expert confidence to irrational despair!
Enjoy.
Feel free to share any of your favourite videos with us here at MCNews.com.au as we start this new Video Of The Week series.
We’ve all seen some of the great on board footage from the Isle of Man that is out there on the net, from flying laps and races to ‘Average Joe’ having a Sunday blast. Whatever you have seen whilst deep in your YouTube IOM Rabbit Hole, it’s all immensely impressive in its own right and deserving of praise and admiration.
This particular piece of on board footage with Michael Rutter has been doing the rounds for some time but worth another look as it stands out for me for various reasons. One being the conditions, which are not only hugely challenging due to the low lying sun flickering intrusively through the trees, but also the fact that the motorcycle (Panigale V4 Speciale) appears to be a stock motorcycle. I’m not sure what is more impressive, a stock motorcycle fresh from the showroom floor that can be flogged that fast, or the pilot flogging the motorcycle that fast. I guess a bit of both!
Enjoy.
Feel free to share any of your favourite videos with us here at MCNews.com.au as we start this new Video Of The Week series.
We stumbled across Mad Mick a fair while ago on YouTube and are only now getting around to sharing some of his exploits with you. We reckon he is a bit of a legend! I am sure that this is not exactly Honda engineers back in Japan expected people to be getting up to on the Africa Twin…
Mick is a skilled rider with over 40 years of experience and has done a great deal of adventure and enduro riding all over Australia. A few injuries have been sustained along the way like a smashed ankle and a broken collarbone while high-speed sliding around on a KTM 640, and more recently a messed up shoulder from a low-speed tumble on the Africa Twin.
Mick is known as Mad Mick for good reason. He is not scared of tackling anything on the Africa Twin and the bike is suprisingly standard. A cheap $60 eBay slip-on muffler, a bash plate, a Camel rear tank and some gearing tweaks are about the extent of modifications undertaken on this 2016 model.
Mick regularly rides with a group called MVDBR who put together this video of a few of his exploits. Enjoy.
Feel free to share any of your favourite videos with us here at MCNews.com.au as we start this new Video Of The Week series.
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