Four stroke, transverse four
cylinder, DOHC 4 valves per cylinder
Capacity
749 cc / 45.7 cub in.
Bore x Stroke
70 x 48.7 mm
Compression Ratio
11.8:1
Cooling System
Liquid cooled
Induction
TDD Fuel injection
Ignition
-
Starting
Electric
Max Power
98.4 kW / 132 hp @ 10000 rpm
Max Torque
82.6 Nm / 8.4 kg-f/ 61 ft-lb @ 8500 rpm
Transmission
6 Speed
Final Drive
Chain
Lubrication
Wet sump
Frame
Double perimeter beam "Straight Line Connection"
(SLC).
Extruded in aluminium, the beams join at the steering shaft and the swing
arm without joins only cast parts.
Front Suspension
46mm Paioli telescopic forks, bump and
rebound adjustable
Rear Suspension
Öhlins shock, preload, bump and rebound
damping adjustable
The successor to the SB6 had one very
significant change; a fuel injected GSXR750 Suzuki motor, delivering even
more horsepower. The SB7 was another step along the road for Bimota in
refining their unique vision of what the ultimate sports bike should be all
about. In every other way the SB7 was pretty much the same as its
predecessor, a stunningly beautiful, handcrafted, bespoke missile.
Incredibly light, with superb suspension and brakes, the SB7 was built for
riders who wanted to indulge themselves at high speed and damn the expense.
It was almost the perfect road, and the SB7 was just about the perfect bike
on which to tackle it.
The route
back to Rimini from the hilltop principality of San Marino was a mixture of
fast and medium speed bends, separated by short straights, with a
racetrack-smooth surface and hardly a car in sight. The Bimota gobbled it up
in fine style, much happier to be back on the right kind of tarmac after the
tighter, bumpier country roads on which it had been far less comfortable (in
more than one sense) earlier in the day. On the straights the SB7 stonked up
to its 14,000rpm redline through the lower gears, flicking crisply back down
the close-ratio box before slicing effortlessly into a bend. Then it howled
off again, fat Hi-Sports gripping hard and the tacho needle never dropping
below eight or nine grand. All too soon I was back at Bimota's base, pulling
off my helmet to enthuse about the ride - and to discover that I'd just been
hammering down factory test-rider Gianluca Galasso's favourite local stretch
of road. The SB7 had been developed partly here but mainly on the racetrack,
they told me, which explained a lot about the most single-minded of this
year's new Bimotas. Although the GSX-R1100 engined SB6 is a blindingly fast,
no-compromise sportster, the SB7 - powered by a modified version of the
water-cooled motor from Suzuki's GSX-R750 SP - is revvier and even more
narrowly focused. It's more of a racer on the road, designed as the basis
for the machine that Bimota hopes will be a contender in next season's World
Superbike championship. Paintwork apart, the SB6 and 7 are visually almost
identical.
The twin-spar alloy frame, linking the
steering head and swing-arm pivot directly with what Bimota calls "Straight
Connection Technology", differs only in a minor mod to clear the smaller
motor's oil cap. Cycle parts are also identical. That means a horizontal
Öhlins rear shock on the right of the bike, multi-adjustable and working the
swing-arm via a linkage. Up front sits a pair of 46mm front forks, made by
Paioli to Bimota's specification, which incorporate sliders constructed from
a composite of aluminium and carbon-fibre. One major difference is that
instead of using carbs like the SB6, the Seven gets its gas via a TDD engine
management system that monitors revs, ignition advance, ambient air pressure
and the temperatures of both intake air and coolant. (Bimota blames the
SB7's late arrival on cold winter weather delaying the system's final
development.) The motor itself is basically the lump from the SP or Sport
Production version of the GSX-R, which isn't officially imported to Britain.
The 749cc SP unit is very similar to the standard water-cooled 16-valver,
the main difference being a close-ratio gearbox. Bimota adds its own
camshafts, each giving more lift and duration, plus a set of colder plugs
and a slinky exhaust system that ends up with twin alloy cans tucked away
inside the self-supporting carbon-fibre seat unit. Finish of this
pre-production bike was not quite up to Bimota's normal high standard but
the bike still looked the business, and felt lean, light and low. It weighs
186kg dry, fractionally more than a Fireblade but 22kg down on the standard
GSX-R. Its wheelbase is just 1390mm, 15mm shorter than the Honda's and 45mm
shorter than the Suzuki's.
There's less of a reach forward to the bars
than with most race-reps, and the seat height of just 755mm adds to the
impression that this is one tiny motorcycle. This bike had been set-up for
high speeds and smooth surfaces and its Öhlins shock, in particular, was
tough enough to transmit every road bump directly to my kidneys as I pobbled
through the outskirts of Rimini. Once out of town and into its stride the
SB7 felt much better, though the shock was still too stiff for the rougher
bits of local back road. With no C-spanner to hand, I backed off the shock
compression damping (easily accessible on the remote reservoir, unlike the
rebound knob alongside the hot exhaust), which made little difference. Best
bet was simply to get on the power and put some force through the shock,
which worked better the harder the SB7 was ridden. Barrelling out of bends
with the motor screaming at five-figure speeds, the Bimota cranked well over
and its hot 180-section rear Hi-Sport keeping it all in line, the bike felt
brilliantly taut. Up front the hefty Paiolis were also set up firm
(compression and rebound damping are tuneable, but you have to pay extra for
a preload adjuster...), though not excessively so. Steering was light and
very neutral, too, as you might expect of such a tiny bike with rake and
trail figures of 23.5 degrees and 94mm. Fork angle is adjustable by half a
degree either way, and on the standard set-up the Bim was superb.Some of
that was due to this bike's 120/70-section front Michelin, which gave a much
more reassuring feel than the 120/60 tyre of the SB6 I'd ridden previously,
particularly when entering tight and unfamiliar bends.
The lower profile Hi-Sport is more rigid,
better suited to a track, but tends to flop into slow bends. With the taller
tyre the Bim simply went where it was pointed, except when one thick
mid-bend tarmac seam provoked a momentary wobble. High-speed stability was
otherwise flawless, with no Fireblade style twitchiness despite the bikes'
obvious similarities in size and performance. And high speed was definitely
what the SB7 liked best. Provided the revs were kept up, its fuel-injection
gave a superbly crisp response that had the Bimota screaming towards a top
speed somewhere in excess of the GSX-R's 160mph.Its big horses live at the
top end of the rev range, with the claimed max output of 132bhp arriving,
like the standard GSX-R's claimed 118bhp, at 11,500rpm.
The close-ratio box made it easy to
keep the motor on the boil, and on the right road the Seven felt fast enough
to live with just about anything. The Bim certainly had to be ridden with a
fair degree of aggression, because it refused to pull from below 5000rpm
once out of its tall (but not RC45 tall) first gear, merely stuttering and
croaking until it reached that figure. Bimota's excuse is that the
fuel-injection butterfly and exhaust pipe diameters are very large, to work
best at high revs. Midrange response above five grand felt pretty good by
750cc sportster standards, even if the strong acceleration didn't arrive
until 8000rpm. The SB7 was also reasonably smooth, transmitting some typical
four-cylinder tingles but being noticeably less buzzy than the
GSX-R11-engined SB6. Less impressive was the occasional fuel starvation when
accelerating hard with a half-full tank of gas.
This prototype's fuel pump was fitted
at the front of the tank, but production models will have the pump at the
rear. Braking power from the big 320mm Brembo's and four-pot calipers was
predictably fierce, though after a series of hard stops the system developed
enough lever travel to worry riders who brake with just one or two fingers.
Excessive lever travel has afflicted several recent Brembo-shod sportsters
(916 included), so there's room for improvement. As for the SB7 itself, the
easiest way for Bimota to improve its appeal would be to trim the price
which, at £17,000 on the road, makes this bike £1000 more expensive than the
SB6 and almost as dear as Honda's RC45. But if the SB7 is hardly good value
as a roadster, its high price is inevitable given that only 15 will be
imported this year, out of a total production run of 200 necessary to
homologate the fuel-injected 750 for next year's Superbike championship. For
make no mistake, this bike has been built for a purpose - to recapture the
road-race glory that Bimota last enjoyed with Virginio Ferrari's Formula One
title win back in 1987. Despite this year's sales boom (production is set to
top 1200, double last year's figure) the factory's 1995 World Superbike
challenge will go ahead only if a sponsor can be found. Assuming that
happens, the hard-and-fast SB7 looks set to make Bimota a racetrack
contender once again.