Thank God for that. The recent recall that Kawasaki has had to instigate for the new ZX-10R will not affect peak power output, which in case you'd forgotten is 197bhp. I for one wouldn't have noticed a drop of a few ponies and I suspect most others wouldn't have done either, but it's the principle that counts.
The problem was to do with valve spring surge. Or what used to be known rather more brutally as valve bounce. At high revs the valve spring resonates which causes the valve to bounce on its seat with the result of a loss of power and eventually valve and seat damage. Kawasaki says it's changed the camshaft to prevent this surge from occurring
I'm looking forward to a go on the new ZX-10R which is apparently more than a match for the BMW SB1000RR. I remember the first edition of the ZX-10R and it was an animal. Extremely vicious power delivery that could easily catch you out. I rode one to Barcelona and back in company with all the other Japanese litre superbikes and came back with grey hair.
In theory Kawasaki could have done with the new ZX a couple of years ago so that it'd have been ready for BMW's first superbike. However, I doubt it wouldn't have made a huge amount of difference because I'm pretty sure that many people have bought the SB1000RR because it's a BMW, European and not Japanese; and not just because it's a brilliant bike. Anyway, the ZX arrives in UK dealers - a little delayed by it's pre-on sale 'recall' - at the end of this month.
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