Oh good lord - no I didn't mean that at all and said nothing remotely like that. Just because I'm not sure your idea is the greatest thing since sliced bread like you do doesn't mean I hate it, there is no reason for your overreaction. The response you're in a bunch over was to one statement made by Jeff. Please read the quoted text above my words and you'll see that it was talking about changing the rules and then changing back if the try didn't work out - aka go ahead and allow bikes that may be dominant into a class not designed for them and if it kills the class for the bikes it was originally designed for fix it later. Well that doesn't work when the bikes the class was designed for have money they can win. I can't take away potential winnings from riders by allowing bikes into their class that are dominant. That would be utter bullshit and I won't do it. Since two days before you first brought this up I have been on the road and I have not been able to sit and read the idea and think about it. We got home last night, I have been busy today and now wasting more time soothing your ruffled feathers. That doesn't help find me time to figure out the upsides and downsides. I hope to be able to tomorrow or over the weekend and make a final call yes or no.
Well in that case, I am just going to my standard fallback position, "I might be wrong". I'll just blame Jeff for this whole thing, until it turns out OK and then it will be mine, again.
As cool of an idea that I think it is...an air cooled vintage twin like a kz400/440 will get the crap kicked out of it by a new ninja 400. We're talking 30ish hp KZ400/440 at best compared to 55ish hp on a new Ninja 400. Allowing old air-cooled 400s to run in the new "F" class against modern 300's would be a little better. http://forums.13x.com/index.php?threads/2020-information-schedule-rules-whatever.364713/ Maybe someone should just build one and show up...and see how it goes.
Why don't all of these bikes run D where they're already legal? If they're out there why haven't they been showing up?
Yeah technically they are D legal (Up to 883cc 4 stroke air cooled twins)...but I think the idea was for the smaller capacity air cooled twins to be able to run against the new liquid cooled 300's. But I also agree...if these bikes existed...where have they been? D SUPERSTOCK EXPERT & NOVICE and D SUPERBIKE EXPERT & NOVICE Up to 490cc water-cooled multis Up to 700cc 4-stroke water-cooled twins with 3 valves or less per cylinder Up to 600cc air-cooled multis & water cooled twins with more than 3 valves Up to 883cc 4-stroke air-cooled twins Up to 775cc singles based on Formula Rules in DSB, SB rules in DSS Up to 450cc 2-stroke water-cooled twins Up to 500cc 2-stroke air-cooled twins Regards, Chad
They aren't running D because an FZR400 would kill them as would a 650 Hawk or an FZ600 or an XS650 or an RZ350 or an RD400. The older 2 valve air cooled < 500 twins and singles really don't have a good place to be. The fact that none of them are out there kind of shows that. Making them legal for E probably means that none of them will show up for that either, but that doesn't hurt anything. But, if you make air-cooled 500 singles legal for E, I will run mine at some race or another this summer. Maybe Grattan, Tally or Barber.
What Ken said. I think the last time this group of bikes were talked about it was to index them in super stock form in V2 before the recent changes to the vintage classes. The GS can be hopped up some, Bob Weber used to ride one which went pretty good in F500. Does anyone make any performance parts for the CB/CM or KZ? As someone who has owned more CM400’s than the rest of the world combined I just can’t see how one could be made fast enough to threaten even stocker CB350’s. To Mongo’s point though, who is actually going to race one of these? It isn’t like they are so cheap, well they can be, but relative to other “cheap” race bikes and the overall cost to racing it isn’t like the cost is a big deal. They were never popular race bikes so it isn’t like there are a few hundred sitting around ready to hit the track again. The various 250-400 twins of today aren’t that much more money, are already class legal, and would have to be much easier to live with. I don’t think there is any harm in letting them in but as much as I enjoy this era of bike I am not sure there is any point either.
If you want to run these old twins against an R3, come to DSS... more E bikes bump up to it than "real" D bikes run.
And according to you guys the Kawi 400 will as well. I'm just not seeing an upside here to offset any potential downsides.
Most likely my last post on this, unless somebody says something really stupid that I can't resist. I guess this is not going to make any difference one way or another and isn't worth the change. It really isn't a big deal to me since I have plenty of classes to run if I want.
Little bikes do that to people evidently. Ken, send me an email for next year, right now I need to get the rules posted today and we've got enough changes for one year that I worry about being rushed.