This FireBlade has more trick bits in it than a Witch's handbag, but rather than eye of newt and wing of bat, this thing has £70,000 worth of the very latest in two-wheel technology to produce an amazing 180 brake horse power at the rear wheel and a top speed of 200mph.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the worlds fastest, most powerful, and probably the most exotic, expensive, FireBlade project that has ever been carried out. In road racing, Honda are very big players - in fact the biggest - and want nothing else than to score with race wins.
Our story begins in June 2000, when Honda set out to take the TT by storm, employing four professional riders and previous Isle of Man race winners, all on factory Hondas. That's the way Honda like to do things.
Jim Moodie and Iain Duffus were signed to ride the highly tuned, all-new fuel-injected F1 Fireblades, whilst John McGuinness and the late, great Joey Dunlop would be piloting the works SP-1s. At the time, in the SP-1 Honda Britain/Vimto team, things were not going too badly. A Formula 1 win for Joey the legend - sadly his penultimate TT win, as he died just weeks later at a road race in Estonia. McGuinness was third, as Jeffries broke down whilst in the lead on the V&M R1. Moodie took a fifth place, complaining that the FireBlade was underpowered , whilst Duffus retired on his CBR.
Results started to suffer slightly in the Senior race when, Sir Joey finished 3rd with McGuinness 4th. Moodie refused to race the Blade and Duffus retired once more. This left Honda just a touch sore, and aiming to pull out all the stops and return the following year to dominate. Over the winter months no expense was spared, and a FireBlade was designed purposely for the job in hand. The Blade project was commissioned by Honda UK's Roger Harvey and was to be built to a highly-tuned spec by Paul Bird Motorsports. Technician Stuart Bland was appointed headman, keeping in close contact with Japan's very own Tadao Baba - Mr Honda FireBlade himself. No one in the world knows his or her way around a FireBlade like this man, who designed every version of the CBR900RR. Baba-san and Stuart were in regular contact with each other throughout its creation leading up to the TT, and Baba himself even visited the FW developments base in Garstang, Lancashire.
Baba-san has had success in the states in the Formula Xtreme class in America, where they are allowed to run almost fully tuned engines with full race chassis set up. Erion are one of the US' leading engine tuners, and have been working closely with Baba-san, sharing further development s in race performance and technology. The culmination of all this work, is probably the world's hottest and finest FireBlade, which you see on these very pages. Honda really went to town, determined not to return from the Island without at least two Gold replicas from the 2001 TT races.
But then a mad outbreak of Foot and Mouth halted the proceedings. Who would of belived it! Not Honda, they were devastated. All dressed up and nowhere to go. This left them with plenty of time to develop their baby even further and a extensive testing programme. The first time the Blade turned a wheel in anger was at Darley Moor. McGuinness was on board, and he smashed his own lap record by a full 2 seconds, which he'd taken the previous year on his Grand Prix NSR 500 V-twin two-stroke pure race bike.
Roger Harvey insisted they put the bike in the van when John did this, as he said McG was trying too hard. John couldn't understand what the problem was, saying he felt in total control, and wasn't even near finding the Blade's limits. The annual Stars Of Darley meeting was to be the first time the Blade was to be ridden in anger. John put it on pole position in the wet, but sadly the meeting was a complete washout and was cancelled. The Blade's next big blind date is the Macau GP in Hong Kong this November, again McGuinness is the jockey and is desperate to finally prove just how competitive this machine is. [McGuiness would win the race by over five seconds.]
So what makes this particular FireBlade the trickest in the world?
Let's start from the ground up. Tyres are Dunlop slicks, stickier than a bag of boiled sweets left in a car on a hot day. Wheels are Marchesini kit items and are the same as used on the Vimto Honda VTR 1000- SP1 that James Toseland used in British Superbikes last year [2000]. You have a choice of 16.5 or 17 inch rims - but the 16.5 is the wheel of choice at the moment for grip and longevity. Also, smaller wheels help with stability and are easier to flick around through fast bends. Brakes are stainless front discs.
The team prefer to run 290mm diameter discs, which give better initial braking and only weigh 1.1kg each. The stock 320mm items weigh 1.7kg each, which makes a huge difference as smaller lighter discs offer much less gyroscopic effect at high speeds. This is the largest benefit for turning and changing direction quickly, making steering much more accurate. Brembo monoblock six piston calipers are machined from solid ally billet running with carbon brake pads. Rear brake is single disc, with a twin piston caliper to HRC spec.
With brakes that good you're going to need a substantial set of forks that can take the abuse and punishment the real roads at Macau throw at you. That's why the team has gone for Öhlins 43mm World Superbike spec forks at the front, which are re-valved to suit McGuinness' style, preference and not inconsiderable weight, eh Bulb? Suspension expert Ken Summerton tackled this along with ex-racer and 1992 British Supersport 600 champion Phil Borley.
Clamping the headstock and forks together is a set of Pro-Mach yokes with three different offsets available on the eccentric stem. This is very useful to sharpen up the steering for different circuits. A multi setting, Öhlins steering damper neatly hides beneath the clocks, keeping the front end steady over the bumps. The FireBlade frame remains stiffer than John Holmes in a porn flick as stock. The swingarm is extensively modified and strengthened by Spondon, incorporating an extra 20mm in length. For quick wheel changes, the team has incorporated a quick release wheel system.
Between the sexy swingarm and the shock is a factory HJ linkage (with a different ratio over standard) connecting up to the fully adjustable WSB-spec rear Öhlins suspension, also re-valved by Ken Summerton. Notice how neatly the preload adjuster sits nicely onto the back piggy-back of the shock reservoir. Spondon are also responsible for that super trick looking rear subframe, which supports the rider and carries all the electrics. The huge, tailor-made aluminium Pace rad' hides the thin-walled stainless steel Micron Serpent exhaust headers and system into the carbon-end muffler which weighs the same as titanium, thanks to its unique construction.
This is a huge advantage over the standard 120-130bhp Blade. But there is a price for this power. £70,000, to you me laddo, for that extra 60bhp and the chassis to keep it in check. A factory slipper clutch is fitted, keeping swift smooth operation on the downshifts through the HJ close-ratio kit gearbox. A KLS quick-shift gear linkage also connects to the super-trick looking Pro-Mach fully-adjustable rearsets.
All these things linked and working perfectly together make such a big difference to a race machine of this higher specification and calibre. Even the fuel tank has been carefully sculpted and designed by a British Aerospace craftsman during his fag break (55 hours..) and it holds 24 litres, 6litres more than stock. The extra weight in litres is cleverly hidden centrally above the rear shock in an aliminium extension box. This keeps tank bulk the same and evenly balances the extra bias, so it doesn't affect handling. Beneath this hides a beautiful lightweight carbon-fibre pressurized airbox, made to Honda Japan's own design.The work of art was hand crafted by QB Carbon's John Merrill. Two scoops curve neatly around the outside of the fork legs, into the front of the CBR600 replica carbon-fibre nose cone. These feed air directly into the Kit bellmouths, with a choice of three different sizes to choose from, also throttle bodies are increased from 40 to 44mm.
Factory ignition revs to 13,000 but can rev to 13,500rpm on the track. It works in conjunction with a Dynojet Power Commander. To get perfect carburetion (erm or injection) several different fuelling maps are made and hours are spent on the FW Developments dyno to perfect it. This transforms the fuelling and gives it a gain of a meaty 10bhp alone. The Dyno-Jet dyno has a water-brake retarder fitted, which means you are setting the Blade up under real-world load conditions, using the latest Dyno-Jet software. Three different sizes of bellmouths are used to tune in the power for different sized circuits, which in turn alters the fuelling, meaning new ignition maps.
Stuart has made his own wiring loom, doing away with all the road gear, starter-motor, lights etc. CBR600 clocks from the race kit are used along with a kit temperature gauge. The bike runs a generator for the TT, as the super-light Honda scooter battery couldn't do the distance on its own without it. With the factory carbon-fibre CBR 600 bodywork held on with titanium bracketry and lightweight bolts, the factory FireBlade goes on the scales with an empty fuel tank bang on the WSB weight limit of 162kg. It's eight kilos lighter than the stock, but feels almost half that weight.
So that's the story of the Blade Witch Project. More than a year in the making and £70,000.
