Tyler’s teammate Jeremy McWilliams finished second in the championship both years for a 1-2 Indian blitz of the points table. The new streetbike was created in collaboration with Indian’s longtime partner Roland Sands, who indeed created the Super Hooligans series, first on the dirt ovals, then from 2021 onwards in road racing. I was fortunate to be the only non-American in a small group of seven journalists invited to test ride O’Hara’s title-winning FTR racebike at a sunny but chilly Chuckwalla Raceway in Southern California. This is the bike from which the new Super Hooligan streetbike is directly derived, making this an exclusive look at the background to its creation.

Read our other Racer Tests here…

The ongoing expansion of Super Hooligan racing makes this a series on the way up, with Harley’s Pan American ADV bike now in contention for the podium (it already finished third in one race last year) as well as the only category in which electric bikes compete on even terms with ICE motorcycles, with Energica’s Stefano Mesa fourth overall in the 2023 championship after finishing second in one of the rounds. Moreover, this year will see three-cylinder bikes up to 900cc in capacity from Yamaha, Triumph and MV Agusta join BMW, KTM, Indian, Energica, Zero and Harley in the class hosting more different brands on the grid than any other in US road racing.

Road racing in the USA at National level is currently enjoying a purple patch, with MotoAmerica’s stacked grids for a wide variety of contrasting classes delivering nail-bitingly close, handlebar-clashing, all-action competition – even between rival teammates! The result has been a sharp spike in racetrack attendance by paying spectators, as well as in logins by online race fans – and especially so now that the century-old warfare between Indian and Harley on dirt ovals has finally been transposed to what in America is still termed by many such followers as ‘pavement racing’.

Three-time Australian Superbike champion Troy Herfoss, 37, joining the same-aged O’Hara in the factory Indian team for both classes…

For this two-wheeled equivalent of NASCAR has sold heaps of seats at MotoAmerica events, something that would never have happened without the presence on the race card of the KOTB/King Of The Baggers class and its junior sidekick – well, in engine displacement terms, at least – SHNC/Super Hooligan National Championship racing. Between them, the two categories are generating hundreds of millions of online impressions every year, and on YouTube, together they’re fourth in terms of engagement behind Formula 1, MotoGP and NASCAR – they’re even ahead of Supercross!

Both categories were essentially the creation of the fusion king of Custom cool, former AMA 250GP road racing champion turned trend-setting designer Roland Sands. He’s justly acclaimed as the leading exponent of the crossover culture between choppers and racebikes which so many other designers have since picked up on, moving the two-wheeled Custom scene from a backstreet art form to a mainstream element of modern-day motorcycle culture, with bikes that steer and go and stop and handle better than OK in real world riding, besides being a blank canvas for designers to express themselves on.

“I like the idea of racing things that were never meant to be raced,” says Roland, 49. “Baggers and Hooligans came at MotoAmerica from different directions, but I guess RSD [Roland Sands Design] was involved in making them both happen, from building early days Bagger racers back in 2020 as a kind of Covid peace dividend, to getting the Super Hooligans up and running. In fact, the whole Super Hooligan thing came long before that out of dirt track, when we’d put a 21-inch front tyre on a Harley Softtail, and go ride the s**t out of it at Costa Mesa Speedway’s dirt oval. This was the most fun that I have personally ever had on two wheels, still to this day! So since 2017 we’ve had a Super Hooligan National Championship dirt series, but then we took what was originally this kind of low brow flat track theme, and with Indian’s support we turned it into a road racing category for bikes that would never normally see the inside of a race track.”

So starting in 2022 with a four-round Super Hooligan National Championship that led to an eight-race series in 2023, the Mission Foods-sponsored series expands this coming season to 10 rounds of SHNC road racing at five events staged across the USA. The season kicks off in March on Daytona Speedway’s high bankings, before heading on to The Ridge in Washington State, Laguna Seca in California, then Mid-Ohio, ending with a grand finale in September at COTT/Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.

2024’s defending champion, Indian factory rider Tyler O’Hara, has won both the MotoAmerica Super Hooligan road race series run so far in 2022-23 on his S&S-tuned FTR, with former teammate and ex-GP great Jeremy McWilliams runner-up last year after the duo took lumps out of each other in the final turn at the COTA decider last September. Jezza has now decided that with his 60th birthday coming up on April 6th maybe it’s time to step back from full-time factory road racing.

But there’ll still be a major international element in both SHNC and KOTB racing this year, with reigning three-time Australian Superbike champion Troy Herfoss, 37, joining the same-aged O’Hara in the factory Indian team for both classes, and after winning the 2008 AMA Supermoto Championship, this particular Aussie is well versed in racing in the USA.

Indian Motorcycle’s involvement as the SHNC series’ title sponsor has extended to not only winning two championship crowns with race developed versions of its FTR1200 60° V-twin hotrod, but to marking those victories by teaming up with RSD/Roland Sands Design to make a limited-edition Super Hooligan streetbike inspired by the run-what-ya-brung race series. The so-called FTR x RSD Super Hooligan just unveiled for 2024 is built on the Indian FTR R Carbon platform, and will be limited to only 300 units for global sale, 150 of them in the USA with prices starting at $28,995 AUD, and each bike bearing an individually numbered commemorative tank console.

It features fully adjustable Ohlins suspension with an upside-down 43mm fork and rear cantilever shock. Also included are twin 320mm Brembo front brakes, a four-inch touchscreen display with Bluetooth connectivity, and an Akrapovič silencer and heat shield, plus Gilles Tooling adjustable rear sets, oil cap, radiator cap, and bar-end weights. The bike features Black Metallic bodywork with Super Hooligan race graphics, a red frame with matching wheels with gold accents, and Indian Motorcycle Racing’s No.1 Championship logo on the front and side number plates. There are more logos from team sponsors on the rear seat cowl, and additional graphics for the radiator shroud, front fender, and front forks are available as options.

Check out the Indian FTR x RSD Super Hooligan Video

“Super Hooligan has always been about more than just racing,” says Roland Sands “It’s about pushing boundaries and having a blast riding motorcycles with your friends. Far from the full-fairing machines you normally see on the racetrack, a Super Hooligan bike has effortless attitude and a custom aesthetic, with an exposed powertrain. So when Indian Motorcycle approached us to co-design an Indian FTR for consumers, it was a natural fit and something we’re very excited to be a part of.”

SHNC rules are deliberately kept vague, so as to open the class up to as wide a variety as possible of motorcycles that were never really meant to be raced, albeit may have sporty pretensions. They must use stock frames, have no bodywork and last season liquid-cooled bikes couldn’t weigh less than 397lb/180kg in the state they finished a race or qualifying, including all remaining liquids (350lb/159kg for air-cooled V-twins, which are also permitted to modify the frames). That’s now been lowered to 377lb/171kg for waterpumpers in 2023.

Minimum displacement is 750cc, there’s no upper limit, but maximum horsepower is 125bhp, and for added spice, electric motorcycles are also eligible with the same minimum weight limits as the liquid-cooled twins. Good luck in getting an e-bike to scale anywhere near that figure with sufficient battery capacity to be competitive at the end of even a seven-lap Laguna Seca race, let alone a six-lapper on the Daytona bankings! Now for 2024 to broaden the lineup even further, three-cylinder bikes with a maximum displacement of 900cc are also included. Welcome to Super Hooligan racing, Yamaha, MV Agusta and Triumph!

In fact, 2023 saw the lineup of bikes comprising the grid considerably more variegated than in 2022, with the so-far dominant Indian FTR’s supremacy now seriously threatened by the KTM 890, joined by the BMW RnineT, and various Ducati V-twin models. But a key player was the more competitive of the two electric motorcycles on the grid (a Zero was the other) – Stefano Mesa’s Italian Energica, which scored the first-ever e-podium in Open class racing against ICE rivals with second place in Race 1 at COTA, after McWilliams bit the dust in a last-corner confrontation with teammate O’Hara.

Mesa finished fourth in the final points table, while third overall with five rostrum finishes putting him just four points behind McWilliams at season’s end was Andy DiBrino on a self-sponsored KTM 890, with one of those a rare non-Indian race victory at The Ridge, when both O’Hara and McWilliams were disqualified for an illegal handlebar shape/height. Yes, really – Super Hooligan Technical Regulations state that “No clip-ons that have been converted to top-mounted handlebars are permitted. The end of the handlebar must sit above the top plane of the upper triple-clamp.”

That protest was filed by H-D rider Cory West’s Team Saddlemen, entrant of the only Harley-Davidson on the grid, an eight-valve liquid-cooled Revolution Max-powered Pan America ADV which must adopt two velocity stacks and the more restrictive airbox of the Sportster S to keep a lid on its stock 150bhp output. “If there was one brand we wanted to add to the mix, it was Harley,” says series godfather Roland Sands. “Obviously, they bring a massive audience, and it’s also the one place where they can improve the Pan America platform in a serious way.

The only way to really expand what your platform is capable of is if you go racing, and we’re seeing that with Indian and the FTR, and on the Bagger side with Harley and the Road Glide, and Indian and the Challenger, and now Harley is trying to achieve than in Super Hooligan with the Pan America. Harley versus Indian, air-cooled versus water-cooled, electric versus ICE – I want to see all different styles of bikes racing together.” And that’s indeed what’s happening…..

THE RIDE
For an idea of what Troy Herfoss can likely expect to find awaiting him in contesting a catch-all category that doesn’t exist outside America, I was given the keys of Tyler O’Hara’s title-winning Indian FTR for what was supposed to be just five laps of Southern California’s 17-turn 2.68mi/4.31km Chuckwalla Raceway on the edge of the Mojave Desert, where on a bitterly cold but sunny February day I was invited to be the only non-Yank in a small group of journos invited to sample the bike. But I guess the flagman must have got distracted, since he forgot to wave me off until I’d done seven laps on the factory racer. Look, every little bit helps!

That came after 10 laps on a stock Indian FTR Sport, equipped with a flyscreen, a chin fairing, and a seat cowl, as well as 17-inch wheels front and rear rather than the 19/18-inch combo the FTR debuted with five years ago in 2019. This was the first time I’d ever ridden one of these dirt track-derived Indian V-twins on a tarmac racetrack, and besides providing ideal training wheels to learn Chuckwalla’s fast but featureless twists and turns, it also reminded me how much fun these Indians are to ride in something approaching anger, even if the lower-set pegs will readily drag in turns thanks to the good grip from the Dunlop tyres. But the sportier steering geometry provided by the smaller wheels helps provide added agility, helped by the high, wide handlebar, while the stock FTR’s relatively long 60in/1524mm wheelbase delivers good stability

“As a 20-year veteran of ProTwins competition, this is my kind of motorcycle”…

The footrests will touch down because the FTR’s riding position is relatively spacious as befits an all-statures streetbike, but switching swiftly to the RSD-built S&S-tuned factory race version of the same bike revealed that the already shorter Tyler O’Hara likes a super close-coupled riding position which was quite cramped for me in measuring 180cm/5’10” tall. Plus the super-flat Pro Taper handlebar stipulated by O’Hara for his bike meant I had to reach forward to grasp it, thus lowering my torso for a more aerodynamic stance which nevertheless felt pretty uncomfortable.

Ironically, the one thing I’d have liked to help me stay in place under acceleration would have been a bum pad at the rear of the long, flat, raised Saddlemen seat that could have stopped me having to hold on so tight to that low, flat handlebar under the pretty vivid acceleration delivered by the tuned 1203cc 60° V-twin motor.

For swapping the stock FTR Sport for the SH racer had meant going from a sporty streetlegal café racer hotrod to a full race Battle of the Twins bike which, despite its nominal 125bhp power ceiling, would surely give a good account of itself locked in battle with many more potent twin-cylinder racers. As a 20-year veteran of ProTwins competition, this is my kind of motorcycle. The blueprinted engine is otherwise stock, apart from race camshafts and a less restrictive airbox for better breathing.

But there’s a freer-flowing under-engine race exhaust concocted by RSD and S&S Cycle that’s seemingly devoid of any silencing properties other than those that deliver increased performance, resulting in a stirring cacophony of the sound of thunder, interspersed with relatively frequent pistol-cracking backfires on the overrun under braking into a turn. Some other Indian Super Hooligans were fitted with a much quieter Italian-made SC-Project pipe with a large titanium silencer, but not the test bike, which appears to be even skinnier and minimalist when you ride it without the bulk of a silencer.

Despite its tendency to run on into turns after you’ve closed the throttle, you soon come to terms with the backfiring, which is presumably caused by unburnt fuel in the combustion chamber on a motor too rich for ambient desert conditions. But on the other side of a given turn the motor’s huge eagerness to rev made it seem unlikely that the crank hasn’t been lightened compared to the stock FTR Sport I’d just been riding.

“Compared to its street-legal cousin, the Hooligan racer had a much more vivid pickup from a closed throttle”…

Which it hadn’t – but the free-breathing motor with a single injector per cylinder and twin 60mm Mikuni throttle-bodies makes the most of the extra hit of top end power seemingly delivered via the race cams to broaden the strongest part of the powerband, and the way Lloydz Garage has reflashed the stock Polaris ECU has surely also helped with this. It was all sufficient to propel Jeremy McWilliams on an identical bike through the Daytona speed trap at 166 mph/267km/h last year – some going for an unfaired 1203cc V-twin, and a strictly subversive turn of speed for a bike that was never conceived as being a road racer.

Yet that hasn’t been achieved at the cost of sacrificing the Indian motor’s wide spread of torque, which made it a forgiving ride as I completed my Chuckwalla learning cycle. It pulled well from as low as 3,000 revs before coming on strong at 7,000rpm in a punchy way which the standard FTR Sport hadn’t done nearly as emphatically, before hitting the soft-action rev-limiter at 9,500rpm.

Keeping it revving that high was easily done via the stock six-speed gearbox whose ratios suit the bike well – although the two-way IRC race-pattern powershifter was a disappointment, with a harsh change that needed refinement, plus the actual lever itself had a sort of kink in it which prevented me getting at the pedal, so I had to shift gear on the kink. Easily fixed if it were my bike, I’m sure. But compared to its street-legal cousin, the Hooligan racer had a much more vivid pickup from a closed throttle, sending the front wheel in the air exiting Chuckwalla’s slower turns in second gear – all accompanied by the raucous racket from that under-motor exhaust.

In compliance with SHNC rules, Indian has retained the stock FTR’s main frame and swingarm plates, but has fitted a 75mm shorter RSD-designed Trac Dynamics chrome-moly swingarm to reduce the wheelbase to 1450mm in pursuit of more agile handling. Coupled with the unchanged stock 25.7-degree head angle with a special set of triple-clamps delivering what bike-builder Roland Sands confirmed was 121mm of trail, that nimble yet stable steering was aided by the reduced rotational inertia and unsprung mass of the twin lightweight Dymag UP7X forged aluminium wheels which the Super Hooligan racer carries.

The rear wheel is a relatively narrow 5.50in item bearing a 180/60-17 Dunlop KR441 slick, so it’s not over-tyred at the rear, a common fault among those who think bigger is best, but don’t consider the reduced drag a fatter rear tyre brings in its wake, reducing top speed and also making it harder to shift the bike from side to side. That absolutely wasn’t a problem with the Indian Hooligan, which made nifty work of Chuckwalla’s tighter turns, thanks partly to the handlebar which even in fully legal form delivered a welcome degree of leverage in changing direction. It’s even sweeter-steering and sharper-handling than the FTR Sport streetbike.

Having moved weight rearwards via the shorter swingarm and the larger RSD aluminium fuel cell extending rearwards under the seat after Tyler O’Hara ran out of gas at Daytona in 2022, Indian had made every effort to increase front-end weight bias, from lengthening the cantilever Ohlins rear shock by 20mm to lifting the rider further up via the raised Saddlemen seat. This also provided extra clearance when cornering at extreme lean angles.

But even with fully adjustable Ohlins front suspension that’s supposedly sourced from the FTR R Carbon version of the model – though I’m sure the fork legs had heavily modified full-race internals – there was pronounced front-end chatter from the Indian racer at full lean in a couple of Chuckwalla’s faster turns. Unfortunately, with just seven laps allocated to me I couldn’t begin to try to resolve that, but for sure Messrs. O’Hara and McWilliams didn’t race the bike like that – though I’m sure they didn’t have to cope with the backfire, either. It would have been nice to have more time to spend getting the fuelling and suspension set up ideally on a bike that by winning seven of the eight 2023 Super Hooligan championship rounds was amply demonstrated to be the class paragon.

No complaints about the Indian’s braking, though, and there was much less weight transfer than on the stock FTR Sport under the super stopping power provided by the Brembo brake package, via twin 320mm steel discs with four-piston Stylema M4 Monoblock radial calipers, a Corsa Corta 17mm master cylinder and custom Spiegler metal brake lines. Braking hard for the tight second-gear hillside chicane while leaned over to the left saw the Indian hold a tight line leading into the crest-top entry, and it was forgiving, too, without insisting on sitting up and heading for Mexico if I miscalculated my entry speed when cranked over for a fast sweeper, and touched the front brake lever to lose a little momentum.

“The 300 owners of the streetlegal replicas of this racer have a treat in store”…

Weighing 429lb/196kg with oil/water, no fuel and bereft of street equipment, the Indian racer is about 90lb/40kg lighter than the FTR Sport, so there’s that much less to stop. But the way the Brembo package delivers such ferocious but usable stopping power is totally addictive – and effective. As indeed is the whole motorcycle. Indian has delivered a contradiction in terms – a well-behaved Hooligan of a motorcycle, that’s a thrilling real world ride. The 300 owners of the streetlegal replicas of this racer have a treat in store.

INDIAN FTR SUPER HOOLIGAN SPECIFICATIONS

Engine
Liquid-cooled 60º four-stroke liquid-cooled DOHC, four-valve per cylinder V-Twin, gear driven counterbalaner, 102 x 73.6mm bore x stroke, 12.5:1 compression, 1203cc (73ci), closed loop EFI with stock Polaris ECU reflashed by Lloydz Garage, single injector per cylinder, 2 x 60mm Mikuni throttle-bodies, six-speed gearbox with gear primary drive, wet multiplate slipper clutch.

Chassis
Tubular steel trellis frame with engine used as stressed member, fully adjustable 43mm Ohlins inverted forks, 120mm travel, Trac Dynamics chrome-moly steel swingarm with fully adjustable Ohlins TTX cantilever shock, 120mm travel, 1450mm wheelbase, 25.7º rake, 121mm trail, dual 320mm Brembo steel rotors, four-piston Brembo Stylema M4 calipers, Brembo Corsa Corta 17mm master-cylinder, Spiegler stainless-steel brake lines (f), single 254mm Brembo floating steel rear disc with two-piston Brembo caliper, Dymag UP7X forged alloy wheels (3.50 x 17in, 5.50 x 17in), Dunlop KR448/KR441 slick tyres.

Performance
Top Speed: 267km/h (McWilliams, Daytona 2023), Weight: 196kg oil/water no fuel, Power: 125hp@8250rpm, 120Nm@5900rpm.

The post Racer Test | MotoAmerica Indian FTR 1200 Super Hooligan appeared first on Racing, Riding, Motorcycle Reviews, Race bikes, Tech Tips, Rider Training....

Words: Alan Cathcart Photos: Andrew Moreton                                     

Just like its rival Zongshen company which became the first Chinese manufacturer to take part in GP racing in the 2005-2008 seasons with customer 250GP Aprilias, CFMoto’s two Spanish riders Xavier Artigas and Carlos Tatay are mounted on rebranded versions of the reigning Moto3 World champion KTM RC250GP machine.

Check out our other racer tests here…

This reflects CFMoto’s close links with the Austrian firm whose Indian-made 200/390cc singles it has assembled in China for local sale since 2014, with various KTM twin-cylinder models also slated to enter production in coming years at CFMoto’s ever-expanding Hangzhou factory.

However, CFMoto already became the first Chinese manufacturer to compete in International road racing with its own products designed and built in China, and successfully, at that, with British rider Gary Johnson finishing fourth in the 2016 Lightweight TT on the gruelling 60.74km Isle of Man TT Mountain Course on the CFMoto 650NK-TT racer entered and prepared by the company’s British importer, WK Bikes.

This class caters for 650cc streetbike-derived Supertwins, and except for this Chinese-built motorcycle it’s been dominated for years by Kawasaki’s ER-6 (aka Ninja 650R in some parts of the world), and the Italian Paton powered by a Kawasaki motor, which have won all eight races since the class was first conceived back in 2012, with the Suzuki SV650 V-twin very much a supporting act. Johnson had in fact held onto third place for the first two laps of the race before slipping back to fourth after a pit stop for refuelling, yet at the end was only two seconds off the podium after 240km of gruelling road racing aboard a bike rejoicing in the nickname of ‘Madagascar’. Well, movie fans, look at the colour scheme …!

“After the very first time I rode the CFMoto, I was pleasantly surprised by its potential,” said Johnson. “It’s based on their production 650NK streetbike, but you shouldn’t discount it because of where it comes from. It’s basically a very good motorcycle, and WK Bikes have put in a massive development programme which has seen the race bike move to a far more competitive level. They’ve got good power out of it, and we’ve tried to blow the engine up to make sure it’s up to the job, but we could not blow it up!”

WK Bikes kicked off the CFMoto TT race project in 2013, when Aussie rider David Johnson rode a race-prepared but essentially stock 650NK sponsored by China’s Tsingtao beer for them in that year’s Lightweight TT, but retired with a dropped valve.

But DJ had been delayed travelling from Down Under to the Island in time for practice, so since two-time TT winner Gary Johnson (no relation) lives near WK Bikes’ Lincolnshire base, he offered to do a lap on the bike just to shake it down ready for the Aussie rider to hop onto it.  A 108mph lap from a standing start proved it had some potential, so Gary signed up to race it in 2014, now with official support from the CFMoto factory in China.

Johnson was fourth fastest in practice, but sadly crashed his Kawasaki ZX-10R in the Superstock TT, and injured himself too badly to be able to race the CFMoto that year. However, 24-year old TT newcomer Callum Laidlaw brought his own CFMoto 650NK using a standard engine home in 33rd place out of 38 finishers, averaging 105.045 mph for the race – a very respectable speed for a TT tyro on a motorcycle essentially just as it left the Chinese factory, except for a race exhaust, suspension and fairing. In 2015 it was Gary Johnson’s turn to DNF on the very first lap with a broken conrod – but next year it all came good, with that fast, trouble-free ride to fourth place at the finish line, just a tantalising two seconds off the rostrum.

The chance to ride Gary Johnson’s Chinese-made Supertwin came at Cadwell Park, on the full 3.47km circuit whose Woodland section complete with wheelie-friendly The Mountain is a mini-TT Course of its own. It came under the eagle eye of the man responsible for developing the bike, Grimsby-based performance engineer Chris Gunster, a former UK National level 125/250GP racer.

“We’d done a lot of work with Gary setting up his Superstock and Supersport bikes for TT racing,” said Gunster, “so when he agreed to race the CFMoto Lightweight bike they gave it to us to develop it properly – the first year when the Aussie guy raced it, it was dead stock, and very underpowered in comparison to everyone else at the sharp end of the field. Gary did that single 108mph standing start lap with just 79bhp, so we knew it had potential if we could start tuning it successfully – and reliably.”

Taking the stock CFMoto 650NK DOHC eight-valve parallel-twin engine measuring 83 x 60mm for a capacity of 649.30cc, fitted with a 180 degree crank, offset chain camshaft drive and a single gear-driven counterbalancer, Gunster had to retain the stock crankshaft under Lightweight TT rules, but after the 2015 DNF fitted British-made Arrow forged steel conrods, carrying JE forged pistons machined to suit the cylinder-head and valves.

These delivered a 14:1 compression ratio, up from an already quite respectable 11.3:1 stock as the bike left China, achieved by skimming the block that already came standard with chrome bores. The cylinder-head was also skimmed to help achieve the high compression that’s so important for good drive out of turns, while retaining the stock gasket, and then ported and flowed by the late ace TT tuner Steve Mellor – one half of the famous V&M team which helped David Jefferies beat the factory Honda racers to complete a clean sweep of all the world’s greatest public roads races in 1999 aboard the V&M Yamaha R1 tuned-up streetbike, including the NW 200, both the Isle of Man Formula 1 and Senior TT races, the Ulster GP, and finally the Macau GP in China.

Mellor, who passed away in 2018, was THE top tuner in the Supertwins class since the category was invented in 2012, and professed himself impressed by the quality of the stock Chinese bike’s engineering, before setting to work to wrestle more power out of it.

The resultant tuned-up CFMoto 650i race engine was now fitted with billet camshafts made by Kent Cams to Steve Mellor’s spec, with a very similar profile to the ones Gary Johnson used in his Kawasaki ZX-10R Superbike.

“These operate slightly shortened stock 33mm inlet and 28mm exhaust valves,” said Gunster, “and the reason for that is the original 650NK motor has the shim as part of the bucket, which is a quirky thing I’ve not seen before on any motorcycle, meaning if you want to re-shim it you have to change the entire bucket! Because of the logistics and expense of carrying several different buckets to adjust the valves, we shortened the valve stems to run a conventional shim under bucket system, like everyone else. We retained the stock valves, though, but with dual springs, running in standard valve guides.” 

The inlet valves are fed by twin Marelli throttle bodies, each carrying a single 5-hole Marelli injector, and these originally started out as 38mm units before Gunster began boring them out. “We tested different bores from 38mm to 45mm, and settled on 42mm as the best balance between top-end performance and low down rideability,” he said. “Even so, the motor is quite lumpy at low revs before it smoothes out at around 6000rpm, and a lot of that is with the size of the throttle-bodies and the injectors, because everything is geared around making it go fast. I was quite amazed to discover the throttle is wide open on a Lightweight bike like this for 68 per cent of a full lap of the TT Course.”

“I was quite amazed to discover the throttle is wide open on a Lightweight bike like this for 68 per cent of a full lap of the TT Course.” said Gunster.

“Now I understand why top riders like Gary who race them like them so much – you can really dominate them, and just ride the wheels off them!” An Italian Arrow race exhaust was fitted as is practically standard in the Supertwins class – most Kawasakis run one. There was no oil cooler, but with the extra power available the larger Pace coolant radiator earned its keep. Engine management was taken care of by the stock Ducati Energia (no relation, though – well, not since 1953!) ECU to which the team were given the access codes by CFMoto to permit modification and remapping.

Getting the airbox right is apparently a key issue in Supertwins said Gary: “The biggest problem seems to be how much those things want to breathe – there’s a midrange gain of as much as 7bhp if you can significantly increase the airbox volume from standard. So we basically cut the top off of a stock airbox to accommodate very long 50mm velocity stacks fed by an airscoop that lives above the radiator, to let it suck as much air as it wants. It’s a combination of airbox, throttle-bodies, injectors, fuel pressure and exhaust, which together with Steve Mellor’s tuning magic have collectively got us where we are. Where’s that? We have 102bhp@10,300rpm at the rear wheel, and peak torque of 74Nm@9,400rpm, which makes it on a par with the best Kawasakis in terms of performance.”

This tuned up motor was fitted in a 100 per cent stock unbraced tubular steel 650NK diamond frame which used it as a fully stressed member. This carried a fully adjustable 43mm Öhlins Road and Track fork housed in Harris adjustable triple-clamps designed for a GSX-R1000, which allowed the offset to be varied between 25-33mm, and thus the trail. With the stock cantilever steel swingarm and fully adjustable Öhlins monoshock offset to the right, this resulted in a fairly tight 1415mm wheelbase.

Dry weight complete with a Harris Moto2 race fairing and Kawasaki ZX-10R seat is 161kg, stopped by twin 320mm Brembo floating front discs and four-piston Monoblock radial calipers, with a 220mm rear disc. The team ran Metzeler RaceTec tyres, with the rear upsized to a 180/55-17 on a 5.50in rim, instead of the stock 650NK’s 4.50in wheel carrying a 160/60 rear tyre – for better grip on the angle, as well as increased stability, said Chris.

It was the wet weather grip of the treaded Supersport-spec tyres compulsory for Supertwins racing that most concerned me when I took to the track at Cadwell Park for my first of three sessions that day with the surface still damp from overnight rain. I needn’t have worried – the rubber from Metzeler (then about to become Chinese owned!) shrugged off any damp patches, and the easy-steering controllability of the CFMoto brought reassurance in its wake, in allowing quick corrections when the back end stepped out.

The street-pattern powershifter originally wasn’t working properly – and not at all for the top two gearshifts – but the stock ratios in the six-speed gearbox seemed well suited to the power characteristics of the motor, even though these were quite a bit different than on the street 650NK I’d last ridden at Broadford in Australia four years earlier in 2012.

“5,800rpm is when it came alive with a serious burst of power that wasn’t so fierce it’d unhook the back wheel.”

That’s when I became the first journalist outside China to get acquainted with the products of the first Chinese manufacturer to really get it in terms of what Western customers are looking for – basically, a decent build quality coupled with reasonable performance, and comforting handling from a middleweight bike, all at the right price. The CFMoto 650NK had all these – and still has – but the 650NK-TT Supertwin racer derived from it was another step higher up the performance ladder, with 45 per cent more horsepower and 20 per cent less weight than the streetbike it was derived from.

So although Madagascar was perfectly tractable through the slow Woodlands section at Cadwell, and drove OK from 3,000rpm upwards on part throttle out of the slow Hall Bends, it wasn’t until the tacho sweep hit the 5,800rpm mark on the excellent Translogic dash – whose gear selected readout dominated your visual take on the screen – that the tuned Chinese racer really started to motor. That’s when it came alive with a serious burst of power that wasn’t so fierce it’d unhook the back wheel, but was controllable enough in its delivery to power the CFMoto out of slower turns really strongly – the legendary link between your right hand and the rear tyre’s contact patch was all there in spades.

There was then a second noticeable kick in power at 8,000rpm, all the way to the hard action 10,300rpm revlimiter where power was still building, and this meant it was really best riding the bike like a sort of gruff-sounding two-stroke racer, allowing the row of seven shifter lights above the dash screen to progressively light up till they flashed red at 10,000rpm and you needed to hit the next highest gear NOW!!

Even with the street ratios, you’d still be back in the fat part of the power band and especially the torque curve in said gear, so it really paid to rev the parallel-twin motor right out in each ratio to keep it on the boil. Yet the Chinese bike’s undoubted top-end power by the standards of the Supertwin class wasn’t delivered at the expense of low-down rideability – just that there was noticeably more power up high, so you needed to keep the motor revving. By the way, it was ultra-smooth in the way it did so – there was really no significant vibration at all, and this must have made it a good TT ride that wasn’t going to be tiring in a 240km four-lap race.

Back out for my second session with the track now dry, and the powershifter now working properly – if rather stiffly – I could start to explore the CFMoto’s handling qualities, and the best compliment I can pay it is to say that it seemed to be a bike with no surprises – it was totally predictable in the way it went, steered and stopped. OK, I was outgunned for performance with the 600 Supersports and 1,000cc Superstocks I was sharing the track with – but through Hall Bends or the bus-stop Chicane I could more than get my own back on them thanks to the Supertwin’s deft, agile handling, and especially on the brakes into Park Corner at the end of the back straight, or downhill into second-gear Manfield.

There, the ace combination of the 320mm front Brembo discs and their Monoblock radial calipers, plus the Sigma slipper clutch Chris Gunster had fitted (it was adjusted just right, so as to still provide some engine braking while consistent with stability) did their job really well in slowing the CFMoto racer predictably and effectively from high speed. I could also trailbrake on the angle into the Gooseneck Esses or Manfield without the NK650-TT sitting up and understeering on me, still turning in easily and forgivingly.

“I could trailbrake on the angle into the Gooseneck Esses or Manfield without the 650 sitting up and understeering on me, still turning in easily and forgivingly.”

But I didn’t care for the chatter I especially got at Charlies on Madagascar, after I upped my pace and tried to take this critical corner that determines your eventual speed down the back straight at Cadwell one gear higher, in fourth. A couple of times I got my line wrong, and had to feather the front brake to lose a little speed – no problem with a bike that’s so forgiving it’d surely make an ideal beginner’s racer.

But the Öhlins fork needed some attention to the damping – it seemed too stiffly set up to let me max out the grip from the front Metzeler in pursuit of optimum turn speed, resulting in front-end chatter most laps there especially, if not at Cadwell’s other fast sweeper, Chris Curve. Probably that’s because I took that corner progressively harder on the throttle as it opened up, thus lightening the front-end a touch, whereas at Charlies I was on part throttle, so without as much weight transfer. Just needed some dialling in, surely…..

The riding position Gary Johnson had opted for was aimed at maximising front-end grip, because the ZX-10R seat had a thick pad on it which pushed you up in the air, and threw a good deal of your body weight onto the front wheel via your wrists, arms and shoulders. But it strangely enough didn’t seem too tiring a stance in my hour of riding the bike, and the tall screen did a good job of deflecting bugs, as well as making it easy to tuck well away behind it for those many miles of flat out riding on a bike like this which was clocked at 158mph through the TT speed traps.

With its now well prepared and even better tuned race engine fitted, the CFMoto NK650-TT was – indeed, still is – not only a serious contender for top honours in the Lightweight TT with a rider of Gary Johnson’s caliber aboard, it’s a bike that merits more widespread availability. At the point that the stock 650NK it’s derived from costs 40 per cent less than the ER-6 Kawasaki, the Chinese bike provides an affordable basis for anyone to go racing, beginner or expert, male or female.

I reckon the CFMoto factory itself should produce a customer race kit incorporating the performance tuning incorporated in Madagascar, or maybe even a turnkey racer devoid of street equipment but retaining the electric starter, just as KTM did with the RC8R Track. This is a very capable motorcycle within the context of its category, which deserves a wider audience – and it doesn’t matter where it was manufactured.

Guogui Lai Interview

Mr.Lai Guogui is CFMoto’s founder, president and principal shareholder, whom I first met when I visited his company’s factory in Hangzhou in 2014. The chance to ask him on a later encounter at the Milan Show about his company racing in the Isle of Man TT, was too good to pass up.

AC: Mr. Lai, why did CFMoto enter the Isle of Man Lightweight TT officially, with a factory-backed 650NK modified for racing by your British importer?

GL: “Competing officially in the Isle of Man TT is part of our planned strategy to develop awareness of CFMoto. As one of the most quality oriented and technically advanced manufacturers in China, CFMoto has been steadily advancing our presence in the powersports sector for some time, in producing higher end and more leisure-focused products. Participating in such a world famous race as the TT has been an opportunity to accumulate experience for our future marketing and racing programmes. In any case, our British distributor WK Bikes had already competed in this race, and we have had a long term partnership with them for some years, so we were happy to support their presence in the Lightweight TT.”

AC: What were your feelings when you saw Gary Johnson’s excellent 4th place result with the CFMoto racebike, against all the Kawasakis which dominate the class?

GL: In a world class event like this, most of the bikes in any TT race are Japanese, so I was very happy to know that CFMoto had this excellent result for our factory team. I want to say thanks to our rider Gary Johnson and WK Bikes, who I know have been working so hard on this project. Having a CFMoto entry become the first bike from a Chinese brand to finish a TT race over such a gruelling high speed course is a good encouragement for us for our future racing plans. 

CFMoto 650NK-TT Racer Specifications 

ENGINE: Liquid-cooled dohc 8-valve parallel-twin four-stroke with 180-degree crankshaft, chain camshaft drive, and single gear-driven counterbalancer, 649.3cc, 14:1 Compression Ratio, EFI with 2 x 42mm Marelli throttle bodies and single injector per cylinder, 83 x 60mm bore x stroke, 6-speed with gear primary drive gearbox, Multiplate oil-bath Sigma slipper clutch.

CHASSIS: Tubular steel diamond frame employing engine as fully-stressed member, Front: 43mm Öhlins Road and Track fully adjustable inverted telescopic fork, Rear: Extruded steel swingarm with tubular bracing and fully adjustable cantilever Öhlins monoshock, 1415mm wheelbase, 120/70-17 Metzeler RaceTec on 3.50 in. cast aluminium wheel, Rear: 180/55-17 Metzeler RaceTec on 5.50 in. cast aluminium wheel, Front: 2 x 320mm Brembo floating stainless steel discs with radially-mounted Brembo Monoblock four-piston two-pad calipers, Rear: 1 x 220mm Brembo steel disc with twin-piston Brembo caliper.

PERFORMANCE: 102bhp@10,300rpm (at rear wheel), 161kg with water/oil, no fuel, split 52/48, 253km/h top speed (Isle Of Man TT 2016)

OWNER: WK Bikes, Horncastle, Lincolnshire, UK

CFMoto 650NK-TT Racer Gallery

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