Rice's Rocket
RICE'S ROCKET
Ninja most quick
IF STEVE RICE LISTENED TO THE “EXPERTS,” HE WOULD have given up on his Kawasaki ZX-11-based dragster four years ago. That was when he was told the Ninja motor was too fragile, and that various parts (crank, clutch, cases-take your pick) never would work when pushed to the extremes required to run with the boys at the front of the Funnybike class.
The dominant powerplant is, and has been, Kawasaki’s bulletproof KZ 1000 Four, an engine that American tuners have been tweaking since the mid-’70s, and which holds the Funnybike record of 6.74 seconds at 211 mph under Gary Clark. Don’t look now, but Rice’s Ninja is only .25 second away from the record. Of course, in dragracing, a quarter-second is like all day, but consider that Rice only bolted this bike together in May, 1997. He broke it in at Bakersfield with a 7.19-second pass, then headed to the Indianapolis ProStar event with his entire crew: namely, Kathy Mortensen. Three days later, the pair left Indy with a 6.98-second pass and the fastest trap speed of the event, 198.98 mph.
The experts have quit giving Steve Rice advice.
The Ninja’s road to the Sixes was navigated by Rice, a product support specialist with Kawasaki Motors Corp., USA. The 42-year-old has won ProStar and NMRA national championships in Funnybike and Top Fuel with his homegrown, KZ-based turbobikes, but his employers haven’t paid much attention to his extracurricular racing activities because winning races on an archaic motorcycle doesn’t do much for new-bike sales. Kawasaki’s official interest blossomed when Rice began experimenting with the Ninja’s liquid-cooled engine, but despite early promise, the combination was only good for a best run of 7.34 seconds, about three-tenths slower than his KZ-powered combination.
Says Rice, “We bolted the Ninja motor into the KZ’s chassis, and it would get out to about half-track and get really squirrely. We tried a bunch of different combinations and finally discovered that the bike was making so much power that the rear tire was spinning on the top end!” The next step was clear: “We needed to develop a frame to house the power.”
Rice got together with Kosman Racing and developed a chassis that went nice and straight under an onslaught of almost turbo’ed 500 horsepower. Unhappy with the threespeed transmissions available on the market, Rice sought out Wiseman’s Traction Products, makers of Indycar and F1 powertrain pieces. Rice showed the Wisemans what he needed (they laughed at the existing technology), and TP developed a $3500 three-speed capable of handling the horsepower without breaking parts every few runs. The pieces of the 6-second puzzle were coming together.
Asked why the engine is only 1109cc, Rice replied with a grin, “It’s already faster than I can handle.” In fact, Rice’s runs at Indy were all grouped within one-tenth of a second, nicely illustrating his virtuosity on an alcohol-burning turbobike that is notoriously difficult to launch. “All the hours of work are worth those few seconds of acceleration,” he says. “It’s wild...and scary.”
Additional excitement comes from working with an allnew machine that shows sky-high potential, and that’s powered by a modern engine design that appears capable of toppling the ancient Funnybike and Top Fuel hierarchy.
One thing is certain: The bosses at Kawasaki USA are a lot more interested in Steve Rice’s racing activities these days.
Nick Ientasch
