Team work
By TMX Archives on 15th Sep 03
EVERY NOW and again, something comes along that gets even us hard-bitten cynics at dbr drooling with anticipation. EVERY NOW and again, something comes along that gets even us hard-bitten cynics at dbr drooling with anticipation. So when news first broke of the Kawasaki/Suzuki collaboration the saliva starting flowing - let's face it, with their race pedigree the end product(s) was/were always going to be good.It's not for us to say who wears the trousers in this relationship but the KX250F launch was at St Jean d'Angely in France while the Suzuki RM-Z250 was unveiled, a few weeks later, at Trax on the outskirts of Preston in the north west of England. Read into that what you will...When Tony Marshall and Jeff Perrett came back from France, both were looking forward to riding the Suzuki to see how it differed. But it didn't! At the very least we expected Showas on the RM-Z in place of the KXF's Kayabas but the only real difference we could find is that one's green and the other's yellow. So instead of running two different tests we're lumping both bikes together.Ultimately, of course, none of this matters - the big question is 'are they any good?' And the answer? You're about to find out...Tony's bit"This was one bike I'd really been looking forward to riding over the last six months. There's been a lot of teasing press releases leading up to the launches plus it's the first joint venture between Kawasaki and Suzuki so I was keen to see what they'd been able to produce between the two of them."First up, despite loads of technological advances, lots of people still see starting problems as one of the biggest drawbacks of four-bangers. Well, the automatic decompressor does the business and as long as you go through the whole stroke the bike fires up first kick from cold."After a slow sighting lap around the awesome St Jean track I couldn't wait to start picking the pace up and see how the bike performed. Within a lap or two I was clearing most of the uphill doubles and tabletops and really building up speed. The motor feels stronger than the 250cc four-strokes I've ridden before - there's more torque and the four-stroke engine has quite an aggressive throttle response but still retains the smoothness you expect with a four-banger. But as the track was pretty hard and there had been some rain in the morning it was a little bit greasy in places so I treated the bike with respect."This bike really revs - the Japanese technicians told me it goes all the way up to 13,100 which, as far as I know, is higher than its current competition. It has strong power right the way through the range from the bottom to the top and you can over-rev it without losing too much performance."St Jean d'Angely is a great track for testing because of the uphill drags - it forces the engine to perform and, if it's not up to the job, there's nowhere to hide. This bike doesn't need a hiding place. Coming out of some of the turns at the bottom of the uphill step-ups the ground was a bit stony so it was easy to make small mistakes. But even if I did it was a case of pointing the bike in a straight line and gassing it and it was easily capable of clearing the jumps at the top."And because of all this torque you can be a lot, lot lazier with the gears. The knock-on effect is that second gear starts are easy which will save vital time in the rush to the first turn."Another good test of the engine was the man-made sand section that was very deep and power-sapping. This sort of builder's sand can be very hard on the motor but the bike just lapped it all up."The chassis took me a few sessions to get comfortable with. At first I found it a little bit tricky to turn through fast corners and it was even more difficult in slow ones. The front end pushed away from me entering turns - although the typical French track and the greasy conditions didn't help matters. So I came in to make some adjustments to the forks, speeding the rebound up because I felt they were packing into the turns and softening them up a couple of clicks. These tweaks worked - especially at the top part of the stroke - but I still feel the middle to bottom part of the stroke needs to be a bit stiffer."Landing off a couple of big jumps - in particular a BIG downhill one - I was a little bit uneasy because of this soft bottom part to the stroke."At the rear I went harder on the compression and went a couple of clicks harder on the rebound as well to make it a little bit faster because it was a fast track. This was a big improvement - although the rear, I've got to say, wasn't a big problem and hooked up nicely. But it did chop slightly where the rebound was a bit slow going down some of the faster straights."I laid the bike down a few times and did struggle to restart it afterwards. Despite the bar-mounted hot-start it took probably five or six kicks to get it going but that does tend to be the way with hot four-strokes."The feel of the bike is very similar to a 125 two-stroke - slim and streamlined - and the brakes are what you'd expect from a new Japanese bikes nowadays and that's very, very good. I never suffered any fade and there was a great feeling coming through the lever."The verdictA big thumbs up to Kawasaki/Suzuki - this bike is a great benchmark for their future four-stroke projects. Nimble and fast with a fiery throttle response, once the suspension was more dialled for me I found I could really push hard and felt confident with the predictable ride. Lovely!Words by Tony Marshall