A lot of umph can be had with a cam and some head work. This is easy enough to do for someone with the right skills and equipment. However, as far as I know, it's never been done. Seems that nobody wants to be the first, or maybe nobody wants to take the chance. Who knows. It's been said before around here that FJR owners don't want to do something like this because it would sacrifice gas mileage, ridability, maybe reliability and perhaps longevity. And with a driveshaft, HA... good luck extending the wheelbase. Could it be done? Sure, with enough money. However, this is. certainly not going to improve handling. However, the FJR has a rather long wheelbase already, and could probably handle a good bit more power before needing to extend it.
H2: LONG ON POWER BUT SHORT ON WHEELBASE
That's one of the reasons a 72 Kawasaki H2 750 Mach IV SEEMED to be so powerful: that short wheelbase. I believe it was advertised as having 74 hp by Kawasaki, just about half of what our FJR's have. As scary as the 69 500 Mach III was, this beast was even more fearsome. And not surprisingly, it inherited several of its predecessor's flaws, namely squirrely handling, a propensity to wheelie, and horrific fuel mileage. It was perhaps the ultimate performance two-stroke of the day,
STEELING MOTORCYCLES DOESN'T PAY
I watched a buddy "launch" an H2 when I was 17. He'd "borrowed" his older brother's H2 without his permission. This brother was a drug dealer and we believed he picked up this bike in a drug deal. He'd put knobby tires on it and ran it out in the fields and woods behind his house. It could pull wheelies for ever and just about rearrange the landscape with that back tire. As far as I know, it had no title and was no doubt stolen. Anyway, little brother Dave decided to take his girlfriend for a joy ride in the field behind the house and I was tagging along behind trying to keep up on my Suzuki 500 twin. I was about 25 yards behind them when he grabbed some throttle, probably in second gear. What happened then is still a fog. The girlfriend started sliding off the back (I think) and panicked. She had her hands on his shoulders and ****** him back... trying to hold on. As he told me about it later through some very fat lips, he figured that caused him to give the bike full throttle just at the moment when he should have shut down the throttle.
3-2-1 LIFTOFF
Immediately, the bike launched in the air, spewing both riders.I would guess that the front wheel reached 8 or 9 feet as the rear wheel shot underneath it like a freight train. It looked like it was all happening in slow motion. It came down squarely on the front wheel, bending the forks up into the motor. David and girlfriend were busy tumbling across the field. After they limped back to the bike and we got it upright again, I helped both of them to push the bike back to the garage.He tried in vain to straighten the forks and various bent levers. Oh, and the fat lips I mentioned? That didn't take place when David crashed the bike. His brother Louie came home about 1/2 hour later. When he saw the bike, he grabbed the nearest thing he could find and beat David senseless with a helmet. I stood there dumbfounded as dad, responding to all the cursing and yelling, came out to rescue David and calm Louie down.
Memories.
Gary
