Ok, wow what a couple of hours.
Firstly the whole race team is located in a "bunker" deep in the Kawasaki Aust HQ.
All the rooms are airconditioned and spotlessly clean, it is quite an impressive facility.
First on the agenda was the assembly/dissaseembly area. here the 4 new zx6's were in various states off dissassembly. mainly due to the fact they are still waiting on the kit parts to arrive from japan. race fairings are also comming straight from the land of the the rising sun as no one here is making them yet.
the 07 bikes that have been running round have a modified 06 exhaust and rear shock. also the fork legs were swapped from the 06 untill the parts arrive to rebuild the 07 forks. IMHO the 06 forks look much better with the gold stauncions, the new ones look like foil
i took a couple of photos in this room, i'll post them as soon as I get them from the camera.
next up was the dyno room, glenn willing had one of the freshly built 10's on the dyno. the whole room is about a 3-4m cube, with a huge fan in the roof and sound deadening stuff on the walls etc. the is also a fan that blows cooling air to the front of the machine. next to that is the fabrication room, lots of welding equipment, drills and benches, all lovely and clean populated this rectangular room - about twice the size of the dyno room.
next up was the suspension room where all the forks and shocks are rebuilt - now with dave "radar" cullen AND glenn willing in the team i'm relativley sure the suspension will be the least of the worries for mad maxwell and shannon this year. some of the special little tools they use to cast their magic over the suspension are quite strange.
next up was the office and a chat with radar cullen the new team manager/co-ordinator, glenn was busy reading my copy of amcn with the review of 3 of the factory superbikes from this year, gilesy's gsx-r, jamies ahhh1, and shannons immaculate zx10r.
the sly smile on glens face when he was reading the article was priceless, especially when asked about alex's claim of 142kW+ - i'd farkin hope so - was glenn's response
2 of the engines have been built for the 10's, shannnons one was in the dyno room and wayne's was going thru final assembly. the 6's will need to wait for parts.
glenns thoughts were that he would hope the riders would be able to drop 1.5 odd seconds a lap just thru having the engine at full aus supersport spec, at present they are bog std except for the exhaust.
last up was a quick - and i mean far to quick - journey thru the "parts bin". ohlins shocks, with and without springs, there was a box that must have had 20 ohlins springs in it alone. spare akra exhaust cans....drool.....farings and consumables. i also found all the race fairing that was used on the z1000 that sam maclachlan raced in nekkid bikes as discussed earlier, still had his number on it. boxes of road gear for zx6's and 10's it was all there
i think the guys will be working their asses off over the next few weeks getting the bikes ready for the season opener at eastern creek 16-18 feb.
pics should be good 