Kryptonite Express
Kryptonite Express
Rickey Gadson plus 2011 ZX-1OR equals quick!
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WITH MY FEET STUCK TO TARMAC LIKE a housefly to a quarter-mile-long strip of flypaper, I couldn't help but wonder how glue could be good for going fast. But run after run, I watched in amazement as nine-time world dragracing champion Rickey Gadson not only managed to break that bond with the pavement but disappear through the lights with truly quick elapsed times.
Certain motorcycles come along that get our staffers really excited, and the 2011 Kawasaki ZX-10R is one of them. After BMW raised the bar with its S1000RR, we couldn't help but wonder when one of the Japanese Big Four would build a worthy rival; Kawasaki's new literbike seemed to answer the question. Within days of receiving our 1 OR test unit, we booted Road Test Editor Don Canet out the door and told him not to come back until he had performance numbers in hand.
And he certainly did, getting the 10R to burn super-solid digits into the asphalt with the quickest E.T. (9.73 seconds) CW has ever recorded on a completely stock motorcycle. We then thought it would be cool to let a ZX10R off its leash for a no-holds-barred, traction-compound-enhanced, clutchthrashing run at the hands of Gadson (www.rickeygadsondragmcingschool. com), a well-decorated commander of the strip. We also wanted to see what kind of time RG could manage on that same bike after we made some relatively simple on-site modifications for flying straight and riding low.
Kawasaki's Jeff Herzog and Joey Lombardo hauled a pair of bone-stock ZXlORs out to the NHRA-sanctioned drag strip at Speedworld Raceway Park in Surprise, Arizona, where Bazzaz Performance's head of R&D, Ron Thibodeaux, joined us to apply his electronic wizardry. Accompanying hired-gun Gadson was his 24-year-old nephew and protégé, Richard Gadson, who I quickly nicknamed Little Richard. The kid already knows his way around a dragbike with wrenches and—as we would later see— is impressively quick in the saddle, too.
Gadson's first order of business was to make three base runs per bike to determine if one of the two stockers had a performance advantage over the other. After those six runs, RG clearly had a preferred ride: The second ZX-10R had turned an uncorrected 9.93-sec./144.14-mph run.
What's that "uncorrected" business all about, you ask? When quarter-mile runs are conducted in the thinner air of significant altitude, it's common practice to use a correction factor to adjust those times to sea level, where the air is denser. That allows more-equitable comparisons of E.T.s and terminal speeds. Speedworld Raceway Park is at 1300 feet, but the facility does not apply a correction factor to its times; we at CW do use one, however, because of the 2600-foot elevation at our test site. So, when comparing Gadson's times at SRP to ours, remember that his are uncorrected.
What Gadson learned on the base runs was that the tall stock final gearing (17/39) wasn't doing him any favors in the critical first 60 feet of the run. Getting off the line cleanly required a 9000-rpm launch with a lot of clutch slip to let rear-wheel speed catch up before battling wheelies as the tach passed the 11,500-rpm mark. And this was all before he grabbed second gear! He could also feel the bike throwing in the towel as the engine approached redline, and that had to be solved, as well.
As described in the road test, the new lOR's secondary throttle butterflies and its exhaust power valve are closed by the ECU just below 12,000 rpm to help the bike meet U.S. sound emissions requirements. This substantially limits top-end horsepower. The first solution: remove the secondary throttle plates altogether; we dealt with the exhaust valve a short time later. A quick pass confirmed a stronger top end as Gadson's trap speed improved to 145.21 mph on the following run. The focus then moved to getting the bike out of the hole.
Time was running out, so we elected to throw multiple mods at the bike all at once, something that is typically a recipe for setup disaster. All hands were summoned on-deck to transform the 10R into a quarter-mile-eating machine.
At this point, the clutch had quit contributing to the festivities. So, in went a fresh pack, and three of the six pressureplate springs were replaced with heavyduty ones from a Brock's Performance (www.brocksperformance.com) kit ($219.95), which also included six 0.280-inch spring shims for increased static pressure.
Gadson knew that gearing and ride height were easy solutions to the 60-foot challenge. One tooth was dropped from the countershaft sprocket and two teeth were added to the rear, and Lombardo cut a fresh chain that allowed the axle to slide as far back in the swingarm as possible. Meanwhile, the fork tubes were raised in the triple-clamps 1.25 inches while a Brock's radial-mount front-end lowering kit ($159.95) and a modified Roaring Toyz (www. roaringtoyz. com) Z1000 adjustable lowering link ($124.99) for the shock were installed.
With the stance and gearing to Gadson's liking, the crew made a few
engine-performance changes to eliminate the midrange bog and improve top-end performance.
First up was a LeoVince (www. leovinceusa. com) GP Pro slip-on ex-
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haust ($629) with cat-replacement
link pipe ($269) that eliminates the exhaust valve. To optimize air and fuel, we let Thibodeaux loose with the electronics; he installed the Bazzaz (www. bazzazperformance.com) Z-Fi Fuel Management System ($379.95), quick shifter ($479.95) and Self-Mapping Module ($299.95). The Z-Fi is shipped with a pre-installed base map tuned for a slip-on, so radical changes weren't necessary.
We all sighed with relief as the Ninja cranked back to life after surgery. Gadson headed out to make a few passes to let the mapping module learn the conditions based on the exhaust's 02 sensor and Thibodeaux's targeted ideal air/fuel ratio of 13.0:1. The system then made some suggestions, Gadson offered a few more, and eventually there was a good map in place for the 91-octane pump fuel we were running.
With these straightforward, bolt-on mods in place, times quickly fell. On Gadson's seventh run, the lights flickered 9.55 sec. at 150.16 mph. The new gearing allowed 6500-rpm launches, and top-end power had been fully unleashed, allowing him to shift at 13,500 rpm instead of 11,500.
The last trick was filling 'er up with VP's leaded MR 12 race fuel. Gadson made a few runs so the self-mapping module could adjust to the new fuel, then Thibodeaux made a couple of air/fuel-ratio tweaks before Gadson was cut loose.
Shortly thereafter, Gadson squeezed off his quickest pass of the day, a 9.40sec./154.22-mph run. (Corrected for SRP's 1300-foot altitude, that run equates to 9.269 sec. at 156.42 mph.) He then backed it up with a pair of 9.41s.
Not totally happy with his 1.62-second 60-foot time, and only a hundredth of a second away from the 9.3s, Gadson gave it a few more cracks—even attempting to utilize the bike's traction/ wheelie control and trying the Medium power-delivery mode (all other runs had been made with TC off and in full power mode). But in the short time he had to play with TC at the end of the day, it was clear that his times were going in the wrong direction. It will take a bit more evidence to convince this master drag racer that TC has a place on a tacky strip.
Not only had the modified Ninja matched—to the hundredth—the time that Gadson had predicted it would run early in the day, it was ultra-rideable. A testament to this fact is that at the end of the afternoon, Little Richard gave the 10R a try and ripped off a 9.49/153.53mph pass on his very first run of the day!
We were out of time, out of light and in need of a third clutch, so our day was over. Could Gadson have gone quicker? Well, he would have liked to work on the clutch setup and gotten the rear ride height even lower, which he felt would have put the bike into the high 9.20s. But considering that all the mods were made trackside in only a few hours, Gadson's accomplishments were pretty sweet. □
