5000 MILE TEST
Being fast is easy, but combining that with comfort and economy is much, much trickier. We ride the world’s fastest sports tourer round Europe in a long weekend to see if Kawasaki have pulled it off…
WE RECKON IT requires around 5000 miles to really get to know a bike, which usually takes us five to six months. But this Big Test is slightly different because guest tester Philip Weston did 4813 miles on our Kawasaki H2 SX in a long weekend. In just four days he lapped Europe, taking in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Italy, France, Spain and to cap it all, Gibraltar. Admittedly he missed out on several things you do over a year of ownership, such as polishing, popping to the shops and going to a bike meet. But he did fill it with petrol 33 times, rode in snow (Austria), scratched down warm, dry twisties (Monaco), sat at 80mph for an entire tankful (Spain), blitzed it to 171mph (Germany) and, in the interest of thoroughness, dropped it in a garage forecourt (Maidenhead). Welcome to most comprehensive ever test of the new H2 SX…
Engine and transmission
As riders of S1000RRS, GSX-R1000S and Blades will gladly tell you, a 1000cc engine can produce ferocious amounts of power. Now imagine one with a highly sophisticated supercharger, that from 4000rpm upwards gradually crams air into the combustion chambers until it hits peak boost (the supercharger impeller spinning at 100,000rpm) at around 9000rpm and sits there until the 11,000rpm redline. The H2’s top end power is savage. From the saddle, the magic number is 8000rpm at which point H2 SX accelerates so breathtakingly fast that it takes a while for your brain to take in what’s happening. ‘It’s a phenomenal engine,’ said Philip, the day after getting back and sleeping for 12 hours. ‘Most of the time I was at low and medium revs so it felt quite ordinary but occasionally if I pulled out and needed to get away it was incredibly powerful. And it just keeps pulling – on one of the autobahns in Germany I put my head down and it clocked 171mph easily. At that speed you come up to cars quickly.’ Indeed. Not bad for a bike with panniers. ‘I like the fact that it’s consistent all the way from tickover to the redline,’ continues Philip. ‘I pulled away in sixth by accident in Prague and it just accelerated, no complaints – the fuelling is amazing. ‘At low revs you can hear the supercharger chirping away, but at higher speeds I didn’t notice it. Also, at the speeds I was doing – apart from on the autobahn – there wasn’t much boost. Top gear was 5000rpm at 80mph and the boost was showing about 15%. In France the limit is 81mph so I kept it around 85 and the boost was around 20%.’ This might help explain how the H2’s fuel economy was so impressive for a big bike with a ballistic engine – sitting at 80mph, Philip got 45mpg. At normal motorway speeds, you are barely using any boost. It wasn’t perfect though. Higher up in the rev range the throttle response was sweet but at low revs it was annoyingly coarse. ‘Filtering was easier in third,’ says Philip, ‘because the throttle response was gentler. If you shut the throttle at low revs, there was a jolt, as if you had a loose chain. In higher gears I didn’t notice it.’ The SE model Philip rode came with an up and down quickshifter. ‘Going up gears, it works very well once you get used to it,’ says Philip. ‘The downshifter works well from higher speeds and revs – I was using it when coming off motorways, just stamping on the pedal instead of braking and that worked nicely. At lower revs going down it was more clunky and not so smooth – it would have been rather annoying for a pillion.’
Handling
The H2 has a steeper head angle than a ZX-10R, so although at 260kg it’s not light, it turns quickly and feels positively darty compared with something more laid back like a Z1000SX. ‘I didn’t get to push the handling because I stayed on motorways a lot of the time,’ says Philip. ‘But according to the clocks I got 33 degrees lean on both sides going into San Sebastian in northern Spain. There’s a dual carriageway that weaves down the hill so you can get a move on and the H2 felt secure and not as heavy as I’d expected. I really enjoyed it when the roads got twisty. ‘The brakes are very strong too, though I didn’t have to use them in anger. The only time I should have done, I didn’t because I was distracted – I was on a bit of motorway in northern Italy and had cruise control on and was fiddling with the dash and when I looked up there were three cars all stopped in front of me. I shut the throttle but that didn’t switch the cruise control off (you have to roll it off a bit further than normal closing), so by then it was too late to brake so I just went through the gap. ‘I was amazed by the tyres (Bridgestone S21s). The grip throughout the trip was very good – in the snow and wet, and in the twisty stuff near Monaco – so I assumed that 5000 miles would easily wear out the rear. But although it was squared off a bit, it still had plenty of life in it. The front looked barely used.’
Ride quality
On standard suspension settings the H2 feels soft and compliant – it’s a decent road riding compromise between comfort and performance. ‘I thought the ride quality was very good,’ says Philip. ‘There was only one time when I questioned it, and that was in Poland when I was riding on a road made of concrete slabs that weren’t very level. The bike started to pogo a bit – it felt far too bouncy and soft. Over the cobbles round the Arc de Triomphe in Paris it was the same, but the rest of the time I didn’t notice it, which is always a good sign.’
Comfort
‘The seat is comfortable and there’s plenty of room,’ says Philip. ‘What I like to do on long trips is keep moving backwards and then forwards again so you don’t get uncomfortable and there was plenty of room for that. The pegs were a bit higher than what I’m used to and I had a pain in my dodgy left knee for a while but that went away after a day or so. I never had any trouble by the time I got to Slovenia. It’s certainly not cramped like an out-and-out sportsbike, but it’s not as roomy as my Triumph Tiger 800.’ The upper body position is pure sports tourer. It feels exactly like the original VFR750 – bend your elbows if you want to hunker down and get sporty, but you can cruise along comfortably upright if you prefer. ‘The bars are a bit lower than my Triumph’s, but it’s not wrist heavy and was comfortable the whole time,’ says Philip. Because the H2 has such a high top speed, Kawasaki couldn’t get an adjustable screen to withstand the wind pressure, so stuck with a conventional one. It’s not bad, but Philip got irritated by the turbulence. ‘When I went for it on the autobahn there was a lot of buffeting around my helmet – it was shaking it so much it was blurry and difficult to see. The wind seemed to come over the screen at about half way up your lid – you couldn’t get fully tucked in. Even at normal speeds the screen produced a lot of noise – if I stood on the pegs everything quietened down and there was virtually no noise at all. I would experiment with aftermarket screens to see what works.’
Electronics
The H2 has all the riding aids you’d expect of a cutting edge new bike except for semi-active suspension – expect that to be transferred from the new ZX-10R SE (see p12) at update time. There are three levels of traction control, three power levels, cornering ABS, wheelie control and cruise control. It all works effectively and makes riding fast in iffy conditions a doddle – you just concentrate on lines and let the electronics stop the rear spinning up. ‘I didn’t read the owners manual before I went because I thought working it all out would give me something to do on the motorways,’ says Philip. ‘It was all pretty intuitive though. I tried switching between the three traction control settings, but couldn’t tell the difference so left it on one (least interference). I left the power on Full too, because I couldn’t see the point of anything else. ‘Coming back up from Gibraltar I used the cruise control rather a lot. You can switch it off by twisting the throttle a bit further than the closed position but that really jolts the bike, it’s a sudden
loss of power that feels harsh – not something you’d want if you had a pillion. If you hit the off button at 80mph it’s bad too – it feels like you slammed the brakes on. I ended up switching it off by putting some throttle on first then giving the back brake a light touch.’
Controls
All the controls for the electronics and fancy TFT dash are on the left bar. Philip was not impressed with the layout: ‘The switchgear seems the wrong way round. The button nearest your thumb is the one for the heated handlebar grips which you don’t need to use very often. The next nearest buttons are for the trip, the traction control and other information which you set and leave alone, and then the button furthest away is the cruise control, which you need to use a lot if you’re on motorway. I was constantly accidentally changing settings on the dash when I was trying to adjust the cruise control. ‘I was pressing away thinking the cruise control button wasn’t working and then I’d notice the dash was flashing with loads of different settings. The buttons are all different shapes, but with winter gloves on you can’t tell the difference. At one stage I accidentally switched on the hazard lights in the dark and had
to stop under a street lamp in Prague to switch them off because I couldn’t find the bloody button.’ The switchgear is not backlit like the kit on Triumphs and Ducatis. ‘Putting the cruise control next to the throttle makes much more sense to me,’ says Philip. ‘I set the dash up to show me exactly what I needed so I had overall distance, distance to empty, air temperature, and supercharger boost – not necessary, but I was interested in it. ‘All the other controls are fine. The throttle is light and the response is mostly good and the clutch isn’t heavy.’ Practicality After sitting on the H2 for 91 hours over a weekend, Philip had a lot to say about this. It was like listening to a Motogp rider downloading to his crew chief after a test session. ‘The best I got was 214 miles on a tank - that’s when it ran out north of Paris. I was at the back of the petrol station and I could see the pumps but couldn’t get there – I had to push it round a Mcdonald’s. I put 19.5 litres in (official capacity is 19). ‘I was getting 170 to 180 to a tank. I did a stint in northern Spain where I rode at 80mph for a whole tank and it did just under 200 miles. It’s a real shame that a touring bike like the H2 has such a small tank. In theory you can do 200 miles, but you never use the last 20 miles. You don’t go a long way by going fast, you go a long way by going for a long time. ‘The fuel gauge is pretty accurate provided you keep doing the same speed – it will run out when it gets to a range of zero miles. The problem is that the numbers disappear when it gets to about ten miles to go, which is odd (it’s mad, and all Kawasakis do it – Ed). I was constantly taking it down to the last half litre everywhere except eastern Europe because you’re never sure where the fuel is – in France and Spain, they’re on your satnav. ‘The panniers were good – easy to use, and the straps meant stuff didn’t fall out when you opened them. The fact that you have to lock them to get the key out is a good idea as I have ridden off with panniers open before. ‘They’re good crash protectors too. It fell over when I stopped to fill up in Maidstone. I knocked it into gear (easy with the quickshifter) and it flopped over onto its pannier and the bike wasn’t damaged at all. It was pretty easy to pick up too because the pannier held it up. ‘I found I could filter easily with the panniers on too – they’re not much wider than the bars so I just forgot about them. That worked fine apart from going through Berlin when I was trying to weave round a car in front of the Brandenburg gate and I clonked him with a pannier. He was quite upset but no harm done. ‘The heated grips worked ok but I got a feeling they worked off the generator rather than the battery because they seemed to get hotter the faster I went – a couple of times in Spain and Germany I had to turn them down. Also, the right one seemed hotter than the left, but that’s probably because I grip the throttle slightly tighter. ‘The green light showing the heated grips are on is far too bright at night, it was so distracting that I stuck a piece of tape over it. The cornering lights take some getting used to too (these activate at certain angles of lean). You go to overtake someone on the motorway, pull out, the cornering light flashes on, I think someone is coming up behind me and panic. It took me until Austria to get used to that. They did work well going through all the hairpins into Monaco though, lighting up exactly where I wanted to see. I’d still prefer it if they were permanent running lights though to increase the chances of cars recognising you as a bike in their mirrors.’
‘I was constantly taking it down to the last half litre everywhere’