Bikeintro Motorcycles

For 2002, Kawasaki took a novel approach to the highly competitive 600cc sports class - it simply bored out its ZX-&r engine by 2mm to 68mm, making the capacity 37cc bigger. This was made possible by an earlier change - the 2000 model update had replaced the old engine’s steel liners with a plated aluminium […]

Honda’s claims of 152hp for the previous model had proven wildly optimistic with true rear wheel figures on our dyno normally registering around 123. This was not far behind the figures we achieved with the ZX-9R (127hp), R1 (129hp) and GSX-R 1000 (131hp) but like the ZX-9R the Fireblade suffered from a lack of mid-range […]

Forum post about Honda CBR600FS 2001
Honda faced a tough dilemma with the 2001 update of its CBR600FS all-rounder. The oppositsion had becoume much sportier and track oriented, particulary Yamaha’s R6 and the Suzuki GSX-R600K1. Honda engineers either had to move the CBE away from its parctical everyman appeal, or find a compromise way to inject […]