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Short test Kainzinger 1680 V-Force
Racing max
“I was a Yamaha Vmax,” roars the black monster, lifts the front wheel and, with brutal power and lots of torque, degrades the established big bikes to a club of lame crutches.
I’m full of pants. Painted full. Even if Herbert Kainzinger taught his wild Frankenstein the best of manners, every further attempt to chase the V4 monster through the Motodrom at full throttle costs me the last nerve. Either it spins miserably or the box is upright on the rear wheel. In between there are only a few moments when something like controllable thrust pushes the 212 kilogram light Kraftmeier forward in a neutral position. It is not so much the brute peak performance as this angry torque hurricane, which already pulls me a needle’s breadth above idle speed onto the rear wheel, without the load moving forward significantly. Respect, says Herbert Kainzinger, is the most important virtue on the throttle of the mutated Yamaha Vmax. Fear, I say, is the only honest reason to want to evade the sheer violence of its dam. But it doesn’t work. Nobody there to whom I could pin the story on the eye. Only the photographer lurks behind his long lens for the right subject, the right moment. It doesn’t help, the four-cylinder is babbling hotter, Herbert grins and, after a short break, pushes his 138,000 mark one-off piece back into my hand.
As the saying goes: people grow with the task. And if not, I’ll just go half-throttle, that’s enough. If it still gets too much: clack, the next gear, or even better the next but one, is pressed in, the four 41 Keihin carburettors are wound up nicely, and the bad wolf is already pious. With every thrust of the gas, with every meter you learn something new, you can go round the corner faster. Just full throttle into the red area, I’ll still piss my pants and stop it until later.
Refined with a lot of precision work and complex special parts, the black monster amazes with its unbelievable maneuverability and driving stability. A handy frame geometry, similar to the Honda CBR 900, and the double tube loops, reinforced with all the tricks, do not disturb the calm even with the enormous forces of the engine that is pushed up and rigidly screwed into the chassis. Nothing wobbles, nothing wobbles, and in the event of an emergency, the hydraulic steering damper safely brakes excessive steering deflections.
On the left and right, voluminous aluminum struts between the engine block and the frame create additional stiffening that does not give the notorious Vmax pendulum the slightest chance. Maximum rigidity is also a priority for the wheel guides. At the front in the form of a quadruple clamped and 90 millimeter wide lower triple clamp, at the rear with the aluminum swing arm in superbike format reinforced with beams. Logically, therefore, the wheel sizes: 17 inches, soled with grippy radial tires.
Herbert Kainzinger likes to do without the low-maintenance cardan drive and mounts a light chain drive on the gear shaft supported by an external second bearing. But to avoid any misunderstandings: Not a single part of the Kainzinger variant is intended or suitable for the series Yamaha. It’s all or nothing here, and if so, then only of the finest quality: Magnesium wheels and racing brakes from PVM, carbon-coated White Power fork and tons of titanium and carbon fiber adorn the chassis.
Hidden behind voluminous aluminum struts sits the 1680 cubic centimeter, radically redesigned power plant, whose parts suppliers are also among the first in Formula 1. Gerold Pankl supplies the titanium connecting rods, the glued-in cylinder liners are coated with low-friction ceramic from the English company Aptec, in which 90 millimeter Cosworth slipper pistons slide up and down up to 10,500 times per minute. It goes without saying that enlarged and feather-light titanium valves control the inlet flow, which is pushed into the combustion chambers with the help of large air scoops under dynamic pressure. Beryllium valve seats, revised cam profiles and night-long fine work on the combustion chamber and ducts are the icing on the cake and the last step towards the magical 200 hp limit. The bullet presses exactly 203.3 hp at 9000 revolutions onto the roller. Even the performance curve of the currently most powerful series power bike, the Honda CBR 1100 XX, looks like that of the throttled 34 hp version.
The acceleration values in numbers: The sprint from to 100 km / h inevitably takes place on the rear wheel and with a fairly common value – 3.6 seconds. Makes every 600 with the left, that’s clear. The sprint to 200 km / h then gets down to business: 8.2 seconds from a standstill, not a single tuning bike, however inflated, has been that fast at MOTORRAD. But I’ll tell you something else. Well over two hundred have ?? I really pulled the gas cord up to the stop. Without flax – you should have seen the wheelie.
S.o, and now I just want to get out of my sweaty leather suit, swing on the small Suzuki GS 500 test machine and gondola comfortably in the warm evening light over the winding Strohgau to Stuttgart. And when it really goes straight ahead, then I turn the tap without hesitation and squeeze out the 45 hp until the bell rings. Motorcycling can be soooo fun.
Things that cannot be measured … – Aren’t we all a little bluna?
Before you cancel your MOTORCYCLE subscription, we promise not to publish any reports about nonsensical motorcycles with over 200 hp in the next few issues. 203 hp! What for, for whom? “To be honest, I am still a long way from mastering the performance of my V-Fource,” says the engine tuner and power freak Herbert Kainzinger himself. So crazy after all. Counter-question: Have you ever tumbled down a furrowed gravel pass unchecked on your highly polished full suspension mountain bike? No? But that’s what it’s built for. And why do people who can’t tell a piano from a clarinet put the headphones on their 10,000 Mark Super Duper music system over their ears? Although they are just as unable to implement the infinite finesse as the high-tech cyclist, they are fascinated by their technical gadgets. All crazy? According to the standards of the rational cost / benefit calculation, yes. But there are things that simply cannot be measured with it.
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