Mr.Turbo Katana 1100
MR.TURBO KATANA 1100
APPLY TURBOCHARGING TO a motorcycle that's already a bullet in stock form, and what do you have? You've got Mr. Katana, a monsterbike that'll chug around town in the best cruising tradition until you get its turbocharger spinning fast enough to pressurize its intake tract. When that happens. you've got a bike with enough suds to blitz the quarter-mile in 9.86 seconds, to see 164-mph top speeds, and indeed, to spin its rear tire, in top gear, at speeds well beyond 100 mph, should you be depraved enough to wish to do so.
Mr. Katana, a 1990 version of Suzuki's rider-friendly 1 1 OOcc sport-touring mount, had nothing special in the way of chassis work, but it had just a bit of work done on its engine, starting with an 1197cc piston kit. those pistons dropping the bike’s compression ratio one full point to an even 9:1. The bike got racing valve springs, oversized wrist pins, heavy-duty clutch springs, a water-injection kit to cool combusion and thus eliminate detonation, plus a few other bits and pieces, all fettled and assembled by Orient Express Racing (375 W. Sunrise Highway, Freeport, NY 11520; 516/5465232). The parts, bore job and water-injection system cost about $1270. And then the capper: A turbocharger from Mr. Turbo (4014 Hopper, Houston, TX; 713/ 442-4472), list price, $2460.
As you’d assume, Mr. Katana’s horsepower took some getting used to. The first couple of times we sampled it on the street, the tach needle advanced to 9000, boost tell-tale got to 1 1 pounds, and the tach needle then instantly zinged to its 1 1,500-rpm redline.
“Huh?” we said. “Gotta be clutch-slip.” Nope. The clutch was fine. The bike was making so much horsepower, even before reaching the 13 pounds of manifold pressure it was set for (enough to produce an estimated 230 horsepower), that it was smoking its rear tire on the slippery public pavements, even in top gear. Needless to say, this is not a condition to be sought during hard cornering.
Had to be careful about cornering for more reasons than Mr. Katana’s bodacious power delivery. The bike’s exhaust exited the turbo system from the left, crossing under the chassis on its way to the muffler. Until we jacked the rear preload way up, the round exhaust lower on this prototype kit would touch down hard in lefthanders. Terry Kizer, major domo of Mr. Turbo, says exhaust pipes on production kits will be oval in the area where they run under the bike, minimizing this problem.
Truthfully, if you’re a hard-core sport rider, there might be better ways to extract managable, useable power from your bike’s mill. But if you’d rather hurtle down straights than zing around corners, this is one very exciting way of making your bike deliver a rocket-sled ride.
—Jon F. Thompson
