Takin' It To the 9s
TAKIN' IT TO THE 9s
Fifteen years ago, Yamaha had the ultimate power-cruiser. Maybe it still does.
STEVE ANDERSON
WITH THE TACH HOVERING AT 6000, YOU stretch your legs out behind, grip the seat with your thighs, and wait for the green light, then...full throttle and dump the clutch. Oomph! The hand of God shoves the bike forward, violently, and you chin yourself on the handlebar, itself suddenly light, free of control. You strain to pull your legs, weighted with acceleration, forward, up to the pegs, just in time to hit the clutch lever and the shifter, the throttle still full-on. The bike rocks back, there’s a twitch of wheelspin, and the furious bellow of the exhaust deepens in a new rush. The tach needle races back to the red, and you stab at the shifter for third. Another change of pitch, and, just marginally, as the scenery blurs past, your mental load slows. When you notch into fourth, the bike is still pulling hard, but the tapering off of acceleration makes things feel relaxed compared with the first few seconds. As the timing lights fly toward you at 135 mph. you notice for the first time just how fast you're traveling. You pass the finish line, having covered 1320 feet, farther than four football fields, in less than 10 seconds. Finally, for the first time since the launch, you breathe.
Drag racing is like a drug they don't sell. The brutal acceleration of a really fast motorcycle is as addictive as opium, and, as with a drug, you can develop a tolerance. Once you have adapted to a certain performance level, you have to go looking for the next.
At least, that’s our excuse. The quickest of current superbikes will all run quarter-miles in just under 11 seconds, on the right track with the right rider. If that rider is Jay Gleason, 130 pounds of pure talent, those times are quicker yet. Gleason has set all the low-10-second quarter-miles that you see quoted in motorcycle ads. But this level of stock streetbike performance, once unthinkable, only led us to speculate: What would it take to get to the next level? What would it take to build a semi-streetable motorcycle that would run the quarter-mile in the 9-second bracket?
CYCLE WORLD 1962-2002 retrospective
re Ls ditor’s Note: Project bikes come and go, most just a blur as the years roll by. Not this machine. Fifteen years later, we still remember its ballsy swagger, its animal bellow. Its fearsome acceleration. Sure, today a well-ridden Hayabusa or GSX-R1 OOO will just nip into the 9s at the dragstrip. This story, excerpted from the March, 1987, issue, tells the tale of a lightly modded Yamaha V-Max that kicked down the 9-second door without breaking a sweat.
To answer those questions, we obtain a 1986 Yamaha VMax. Company engineers have told us that the V-Max responds readily to exhaustand intake-system changes, so we turn the bike over to Steve Johnson, head of R&D for Kerker, and tell him to find more power without touching the inside of the engine.
Johnson and his staff remove the Max’s airbox and Vboost intake plumbing, rejet the carbs with a Dynojet kit and make a very special 4-into-2-into-l pipe, perhaps the most complicated exhaust system Kerker has ever built. The result is a substantial power increase (from 115 bhp stock to 124) and exhaust music unlike that of any other motorcycle. At idle, the Max has the same lumpy, nasty sound of trapped power as a full-race American V-Eight car engine. Accelerating, sometimes it sounds like a Chevy Pro Stocker, sometimes like something else, but never like a motorcycle. Johnson is so enraptured with the V-Max’s song that, during the week that the completed V-Max is awaiting its return to Cycle World, he often wanders out of his office to the Kerker shop, starts the V-Max and plays the throttle. He always returns to his office smiling.
As important to making the V-Max quick is a new rear wheel and tire combination. Despite the bike having been on the market for two years, no truly sticky tires are available for its 15-inch rear wheel. So we turn to those master fabricators of the drag-racing world, Kosman Specialties, for a fat, 18-inch spoked-wheel, struts and a wheelie bar. In his enthusiasm for our 9-second project, Sandy Kosman exceeds what is absolutely necessary and installs a spoked front wheel, too, along with his lightweight brake discs and calipers. The end result, wearing Pro Stock slicks at both ends, is perhaps the ultimate fantasy stoplight-racer, the machine on which you could best imagine pulling alongside the nastiest, snarliest car on the streets, blipping the throttle once and asking, “Wanna race?”-knowing full well, of course, that there’s no way you're going to lose.
Our choices of rider and track are easy. Jay Gleason, motorcycling’s fastest and most consistent quarter-mile ace, will attempt to crack the 9-second barrier at Baylands Raceway in Fremont, California, near San Francisco. Because of its dense, near-sea-level air and outstanding traction, Baylands is a fast track that has been the site of most production-bike record attempts.
Gleason runs the V-Max down the track twice to familiarize himself with the bike and to warm it up, and then backs it up to the shallow water trough at the beginning of the strip. A quick second-gear burnout, with surprisingly little smoke or tire noise, brings the big Goodyear slick up to operating temperature. Then Gleason rolls the Max forward and stages for his First run.
He launches at only 5000 rpm, causing the bike to bog slightly off the line, but the time is still excellent: 10.03 seconds at 133.92 mph. For the first time, we’re sure that Mr. Max will make it into the 9s. For the next run, Jay holds the engine speed at 5800 rpm before dropping the clutch, and the bike fairly leaps away, back hard on
the wheelie bar all the way through first gear. When the time pops up on the display board down the strip, everyone at the track is stunned: 9.74 seconds at 135.13 mph. Don’t forget, this is a heavy motorcycle that’s never had its valve covers off, and that has its tank half-full of pump gas!
On hand is Mark Dobeck of Dynojet Research, and he thinks the V-Max might run faster yet, so he and Kcrker’s Mike Wymer yank its carbs and drop the main jets two sizes.
Dobeck feels this will help change the blackish buildup on the silencer’s exit to a more pleasing gray, and boost top-end power. Gleason tries again, and on his second run with the new jetting turns 9.69 seconds at 135.74 mph. The V-Max is retired, having thoroughly and easily proven its point: Of the five runs it has made today, all except the first were well into the 9s.
Gleason, still grinning in his helmet after the 9.69-second pass, pats the departing V-Max and says, “Thanks for the memories.”
