Honda VF-1000R
V4 victory
If you have a look back at the history of Honda big-bore specials, they generally revolve around the theory of engine first, chassis second. Horsepower is the winner of all wars, according to the Big H, and for the 1984 model year, Honda released what was easily its most exotic, hardcore machine to date. The 124hp, 998cc, V-four, gear-driven cam VF1000R was the pinnacle of Honda’s production line-up. Built in a time where Superbike racing was in its infancy and companies like Yamaha and Suzuki were still investing in two-stroke development with their RZ500 and RG500 models respectively, the VF1000R was four-stroke power at its finest, married to a chassis that really couldn’t handle it. This was a bike born from the racetrack thanks to the domination of Honda’s Formula One RS860 and 750 in the hands of Malcolm Campbell and Andrew Johnson on the Aussie stage and Joey Dunlop and Wayne Gardner in Europe, however with the fuel tank topped with 25L, the VF1000R tipped the scales at a whopping 270kg ready to ride. It was also unfortunately graced with a 16in front wheel and inadequate suspension travel, making it a real handful on anything other than billiard table smooth roads. The weight alone meant this bike was instantly out of the game when pitched in the production racing domain against the Kawasaki GPz900, and all of them would be blown into the weeds when the smaller capacity, but much sweeter handling, Suzuki GSX-R750 would arrive on the stage one year later. The VF1000R’s engine was an evolution of the VF1000F’s 998cc V-four. The big difference (and selling point) on the R was the gear-driven camshafts that helped the R score a claimed seven horsepower increase, resulting in a huge (for 1984) 124-claimed horsepower. Both engines ran 36mm CV carbs and had the same basic architecture for the cylinder head, however the gear-driven cams necessitated different exhausts and valves,
“When I got the VF1000R, it had a lot of corrosion as it got ridden a bit on the salt roads in Austria, so I just pulled the entire bike to pieces and slowly rebuilt it.”
crankshaft and camshafts (obviously). The R also had a point higher compression ratio of 11.0:1 and a 500rpm higher rev ceiling over the F. How’s this for a comparison? In 1984 the 998cc VF1000R – the pinnacle of V-four technology – had a claimed power to weight ratio of 1.92kg/bhp. Fast forward to 2015 and the 999cc Aprilia RSV4 RR – the new pinnacle of V-four technology – has a claimed power to weight ratio of 0.9kg/bhp. That’s more than double the figures of the VF1000R – it’s amazing how far we’ve come…
But back to the past
Nowadays you hear many scribes going on about the technology of slipper clutches but few will be aware that the R had one back in 1984 to go with the five-speed gearbox. The clutch acted like a twoway slip, gently easing the plate pressure off under heavy loads when downshifting. It did work, sort of, but more than anything it helped pave the way for the technology to come to the mass-produced market in later years. Where the Achilles heel lay for the VF1000R was not in the engine, but the chassis. The main bones of the structure was a skinny square section, wide cradle steel tubed frame, nowhere near stiff enough considering the weight it had to hold up and the cornering forces it was expected to take in the hotbed of production racing, which at the time was really firing up. The chassis itself made for a bike that was very long and had an almost Manx Nortonlike stretch to the ’bars, meaning that if you were on the shorter side, your crown jewels were going to cop a hammering on the tank as you kept yourself in place. The ’bars themselves where adjustable for span as were the race-style rearset footpegs. The front end of the VF1000R got a set of redpainted anti-dive telescopic forks, which were adjustable for compression and rebound but not preload. The 130mm wheel travel probably could have been raised to at least 150mm to compensate for the average roads we had in Australia. The forks were equipped with Honda’s quick release axle system straight from the factory endurance racers and braking at the front was completed via the twin-piston calipers biting down on fixed (not floating) rotors. The rear saw a monoshock fitted with a damping rod near the rider’s left knee for compression, which in fact was a bit gimmicky and didn’t really do much for overall feel of the bike on corners. Rear braking was taken care of by a floating caliper fitted underslung of the swingarm. The whole show rolled on Comstar alloy wheels, a pattern similar to the one found on Freddie Spencer’s 1983 World 500cc Championship-winning RS500 (although his were magnesium wheels). More than anything, the looks were the star attraction of the VF1000R. Coming from the dull appearance of the VF1000F, the R looked like a real race replica which at the time, no one was doing in a four-stroke machine. The paint, decals and fairing all screamed HRC and no matter how the bike went in corners or in a straight line, there were always going to be riders that wanted it. The twin-headlight main fairing was huge, and the seat low and flat, helping to angle the rider forward into the wind as they wound out the mighty V-four. The adjustable ’pegs helped here, but the riding position was still a very racy one that put a lot of strain on your wrists. Thankfully for the rider however, the weight was carried quite low in the chassis making for a low C of G. This enabled the VF1000R to be extremely stable in long sweeping corners, although not terribly nimble when flicking side to side. I can only imagine what this thing must have been like to race around Oran Park in the 6 Hour against the far more nimble and equally fast RZ500, but then I’m not Wayne Gardner or Wayne Clark for that matter. There was no denying that the engine was a monster. The V-four’s mid-range power was its biggest draw card, which went well with the chassis’ inherent laziness. You could stick the Honda in fifth gear, line up your favourite fast twisties and let the ride take care of itself. The irony with the VF1000R is that, despite the race-style riding position, it made for a much better roadbike than a racer. The weight and its overall positioning in the chassis made it a handful on track but on the road the R was a stable proposition, able to munch up miles with the best of them, provided your wrists and lower back could take the pain. And you could get over Honda’s insistence of putting a 16-inch front wheel on it when they really should have been running 18s, like all their factory racebikes of the time.
John Fretten’s Honda VF1000R
Like many good builds, former Superbike racer and well known dealer principle John Fretten’s betterthan-new VF1000R came about almost by accident. The now semi-retired rider from Razorback in NSW was on the hunt for an RC30 for his ever-expanding collection, and as luck would have it he found one in Austria. But there was a catch. For John to get the RC30 he had to take a crate with this VF1000R and a couple of other bikes, so he bit the bullet and handed over the reddies. “I had one of these when they were brand-new,” John states, “and I thought I may as well have it in the collection.” John’s collection is small but astounding. He doesn’t just collect bikes for the sake of it; he totally restores them from the ground up. In his stable are bikes like a Kawasaki Z1, Honda CX500 Turbo, Honda CB750, Suzuki RE5 rotary and that RC30, all in better condition than the day they left the factory. “When I got the VF1000R, it had a lot of corrosion as it got ridden a bit on the salt roads in Austria, so I just pulled the entire bike to pieces and slowly rebuilt it. “Things like the mufflers, mirrors and wheels were a bit of a challenge to get them back to original spec. I de-riveted the mufflers, slid the shell off, panelbeated the dents and scratches out and had them satin-chromed. The best thing is, the colour they now are is identical to how they were when they were brand new.” When it came to the engine, Fretten pulled the thing apart to be on the safe side. “There really wasn’t anything wrong with it – they are very strong motors,” he says. “I recut the valve seats, put new valves in them, new rings but kept the old pistons, honed the bores to standard spec and checked the gearbox, because I’d hate to put it in the frame, start it and find out it only had a three-speed gearbox or something! If you’re going to go that far in a build you really need to do the whole thing. “I’d been fortunate that I’d worked on these things when they were new and I’d raced them. I knew what to look for and what I was up against. But I’d never restored a bike that had so many panels and covers, nuts and bolts as this thing. Honda went out to build a bike that was really well finished, so they put covers covering covers everywhere. There was a lot of work. I had the bodywork repaired and repainted, the seat cover is new, but it was all there. Someone had fallen off it, but not at high speed, so there wasn’t much repair work needed. “As far as the suspension went, I put new oil in the rear shock and had the forks re-chromed because they were all rusty. The bushes were all fine, so no need to replace them. I repainted the swingarm, got the frame sand-blasted and repainted, but it didn’t need straightening so I was lucky there. All up the bike only had 23,000km – not bad from a 30-year-old bike. I think the key to that is the Europeans can’t ride the bikes in winter, they can only ride them for three to four months of the year, so that’s why the kilometres are so low. “Finding parts for them can be pretty hard – I couldn’t get an original screen but I wanted one the same colour as the original and that was tough. So I got a guy to make one after a bit of searching, and it’s exactly the same colour – I even put the factory warning stickers on the left side to make it look extra original! No one would even notice. The black chrome mirrors were also a challenge in trying to get the glass out so they could be worked on. Right now one has the standard glass but the other has new glass.”
So with all that said, I thought I’d take John’s new mirrors for a spin. The thing that was instantly noticeable is how long that reach to the ’bars was. The seat is low but I felt extra stretched out – having ridden an RZ500 earlier in the year, this bike felt like it was from a decade earlier and come straight off the GP circuits, not one from the 80s. The footpeg position canted me forward towards the screen and I was instantly locked into a race-like stance. Initially the weight didn’t feel that big a deal but once up to speed it’s extremely noticeable. Tight turning is far from this machine’s specialty, however once on the open road and gliding through some fifth gear uphill sweepers the weight of the chassis was actually an advantage as the VF1000R was solid as a rock, only deflecting off line when hitting a decent-sized pothole – but that’s no fault of the chassis. The brakes, I must admit, were not much chop. There
was a large amount of free-play and when matched to the spongy front end, you had to be careful under heavy braking into tight corners.
While I could feel the engine liked to rev, it was tight and struggled to surge through the 6000rpm range. Reading an old test in Revs from back in the day, they commented the engine would need up to 10,000km of running before nicely bedded in. John’s engine is not a full rebuild but not far off it, so a few more hours on the road should see all the components bed in nicely and thus give off more performance. Regardless, there’s still a large amount of mid-range torque on Fretten’s VF1000R and one of the best exhaust sounds in the business accompanying it; the throttle response was quite good and the gearbox action particularly sweet. It’s a 30-year-old machine, albeit a restored one, so you can’t thrash it. But if you ride the VF1000R smoothly (and on some nice flowing roads), it’s a rewarding experience. The longer I spent in the saddle the more I liked it, and the more I didn’t notice my aching wrists! A cool thing with riding the VF1000R is you can see and hear the link this bike had to one of the greatest machines ever built in the RC30; like a dad who passes on certain traits to his son, the VF1000R’s engine clearly has the same characteristics as the RC30’s. And we all know how good that bike turned out to be.
Close, but no cigar
When the Castrol Six Hour Race shifted from its traditional home of Amaroo Park to Oran Park for the 1984 race, many felt the wide open spaces and long straight would highly favour the new VF1000R, four of which were entered. Star entry was the Mentor Motorcycles team of future World Champion Wayne Gardner and John Pace, but none of the others could be discounted. Vince Sharpe put himself out of the race by crashing his Matich Racing VF1000R in practice, breaking an arm, and was replaced by Alan Blanco, but qualifying saw the Hondas pushed down the order by the Kawasaki GPz900s of Rob Phillis and Len Willing, with Michael Dowson’s Yamaha RZ500 taking third. The best VF1000R was Rob Scolyer in fourth on the Bennett Honda entry. The race itself ended up as a battle royal between the Mentor Team and the Dowson/Richard Scott RZ500, and was decided controversially when the chequered flag was shown to the Yamaha just over two minutes early – then the big two stroke ran out of fuel on the slowing down lap! Honda was furious, but the result stood. One year later, the VF1000R was parked in favour of the lower-spec (and at 240kg, fat) VF1000FF – a curious decision to many and one that ultimately failed to come off. What was the thinking behind this? John Fretten, who worked for Honda, advances his theory. “Production racing at the time was all about…well…how you got around the rules. The VF1000FF had chain driven overhead camshafts, which meant the head could be ‘matched’ to the block (read; shaved, giving higher compression) and the slack adjusted in the cam chain. This was not possible with the gear-driven VF1000R, which was also much more expensive and hadn’t sold in the numbers Honda had anticipated.”
It made little difference, as the best Honda after a miserable, rain-lashed race dominated by the Yamaha FZ750, was the Malcolm Campbell/Ben Middlemiss Team Honda Australia machine in fourth place, one lap behind the winners.