I picked up a basketcase 1991 Honda "nighthawk" 750. The idea is to fix it up over the winter, and use it as a commuter in the spring, but I accidentally found a youtube video of some guy racing his. Wherever he's racing, it's a small track, so the lack of horsepower isn't completely killing him. Anyway, that got me thinking, "I wonder where this would be legal with WERA..." Turns out, the answer is "nowhere it has a prayer of being competitive!" So what's the procedure with performance indexing? This is a 500+ lbs. bike with 75 horsepower on its best day, and an 18" front wheel... I would guess performance is somewhere close to a (stock) EX500, with a slight acceleration advantage going for the Honda, and a handling, braking, and front tire advantage for the Kawasaki. I know the rules can't open the flood-gates for the old oil/air cooled GSXR's, but would it be unreasonable to request a shot at the D bikes? I haven't explored the possibilities of a fork/wheel swap, but if I could get an F2 (or similar) front-end on the bike, I'd be happy to get beat up in V7. On the same topic, how much could I raise the rear-end before I'm just asking for instability at 100mph? I'm thinking an inch is a good starting point - that's all assuming I get the thing running before the snow thaws.
According to the current rules it should fit in V7 HWT. I think it is a bit heavy and a bit underpowered to be competitive. I think the same would hold true for v7 lwt. I think it would fit best in V6 lightweight with the earlier liquid cooled 600s since they are lighter and make about the same power. It would probably be an easier sell to index it into V6 Hwt. It isn't pre 90, but is close to like design to the 86 CB700SC, which was a 750 and chain drive in some markets. An F2 or 3 front end should pretty much bolt right on and an F2 rear wheel should fit as long as you got the caliper and bracket and such, so you could convert to a rear disc brake. I suspect the F3 rear wheel would be a tight fit and getting the chain lined up might be difficult, but not impossible. Come on Mongo, let him run in V6
Hell, let it in v5... Hell its basically an updated CB750. Air/oil cooled...single disc front brake, drum rear....not much power, heavy.... I think an ex500 would smash it...I know a gs1100 would smash it.
Ha! I'm still not going to be much help on the PI portion of this. Our Vintage rules are hard as hell to explain to someone as it is, the more one off bikes we add to classes where their motor type or year doesn't fit the worse it gets. I prefer not to do it unless it's a model popular enough to justify the long term hassles. Not saying I won't, just saying I prefer not to and why. In the meantime I'll keep reading
A lot of bikes would smash it - hence my first response. One guy getting a good deal on one bike isn't really a whole lot of reason to change rules. And yes I know this is income for WERA, that's not all there is to what we do though.
FWIW - at one point I had 4 or 5 Yamaha XS400's. I asked some people who raced anything and everything what they thought. Their advice - don't even bother. There are some bikes just not worth racing. Not many granted, but there are some. So I do have some idea what it's like to want to run an odd bike...
Should have raced it anyway. In the late 70's at an SCCA event at SP there was a guy racing a Pacer in the showroom stock class. It had an automatic trans. I bet your xs400 would have been more competetive than the Pacer was. So if the guy wants to race a Nighthawk, he should race it.
I actually agree on racing the Nighthawk - kind of glad I didn't get the 400 out there, they couldn't handle the stress of being ridden briskly on the street for very long without blowing up
well, the nighthawk was traded straight-up for another not-really-racing bike. I'll just suck it up and race the GSX-F 750 in B superstock though. It will all be liquid-cooled 600's anyway, so that seems almost fair ...if the riders all weigh 280 lbs. or more ...and I get a rolling start or something
Damn....still the wrong bike. Get a 600 motor in it and you can actually have a shot at some races. Hell, We arent far away. I have some projects that will actually fit into a class....bring your bastard bikes down and trade lol
