CrotchRocket
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Bracket Racing with Betsy
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posted August 16, 2003 04:59 AM
I heard a rumor that Kawasaki may drop the ZX12s!!!
I hope that will not happen...If not, did anyone hear what colors the 2004s will be???
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Hells Dark Lord
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posted August 16, 2003 05:39 AM
havent heard what the colors will be, nor that they are going to drop it from the line up......
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swft
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posted August 16, 2003 06:24 AM
They'll produce it one year longer than Suzuki does the Hayabusa, IMHO. Certain motorcycles of both manufacturers are 'free' to make. In that, I mean that they don't spend a dime on engineering or development. Good examples include the Concours, ZR-7 and Voyager for Kawasaki, and the Bandit for Suzuki. I'm sure there are other examples, but that's just what I immediately thought of. Suzuki, other than throttling the 'Busa for '01 and beyond, hasn't put any engineering into the bike. Oh wait, there's the redesign of the cam chain tensioner. Kawasaki redid the front fairing, reprogrammed the ECU, redesigned the crank after two years. Lotta funds in R&D there. So they want to recapture the cost of it if they can. Or they might just write those costs off and stop production. Every company works this way, I would think. But sportbikes have to be considered the utter black hole of R&D. Think about it, every year you have to be aggressive as possible in the development of the motorcycle, but still have to answer to a bottom line. So it's a self fulfilling prophecy in that if you sell enough bikes, you get to design the next generation. If you don't, you sweep up the floor and turn the lights out.
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necro
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posted August 16, 2003 10:08 AM
 Edited By: necro on 18 Aug 2003 19:40
We all drop our 12's sometimes.
For example I dropped mine when it was new, but then I picked up 
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worm~hole
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posted August 16, 2003 11:22 AM
...damn, necro...ya' beat me to the punchline! (#%$@*&! Cannot Find Server POS account!) 
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TurboBlew
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BUSY DOING THE SCHIAVO
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posted August 16, 2003 02:00 PM
Yeah I doubt Kawi will drop the 12. Just look at how long the ZX11 was out for. 
If the 12 becomes old hat in the sportbike arena.... Kawi could discontinue the Concours and fit a set of bags to the ZX12, flatten the seat and raise the bars some....lol Instant sport tourer
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Y2KZX12R
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posted August 16, 2003 03:58 PM
"But sportbikes have to be considered the utter black hole of R&D. Think about it, every year you have to be aggressive as possible in the development of the motorcycle, but still have to answer to a bottom line. "
I agree, welcome to Kawasakis nightmare. Really thou, with CAD/CAM/CATD the costs of overall design are getting smaller. So over the last several years design costs have been offset my savings in tooling design and manufacturing savings. Thats why you can see a 30% retool bi-anually and still keep prices at $10,000 or so. They have the enginering manpower at thier stations so you gotta keep them busy all year. Two year cycles are here to stay as long as sales stay as brisk as they have been.
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swft
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posted August 16, 2003 06:16 PM
What's that old line? Honda says "Our engineers graduated at the top of their classes." Kawasaki says "Our engineers graduated!"
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necro
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posted August 16, 2003 08:31 PM
quote:
Really thou, with CAD/CAM/CATD the costs of overall design are getting smaller.
Except the cost of all the up keep for those computers keeps going through the roof
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jonwright
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posted August 16, 2003 09:22 PM
Hey. Maintence $$$ on computer equipment is nice. If it isn't, we'll be happy to put you into some new shoes that fit better.
SWFT: Don't say a FOOKIN' word!
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Y2KZX12R
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posted August 17, 2003 05:06 AM
Per seat cost hasnt gone up much in any in the last several years.
For example, Autocad R-11 thru 2000 (not that they use AutoCad) has stayed arounf $3000.
Pro-E has stayed at about $20,000 a seat. Unigraphics is about $25,000 a seat. They havent gone up much if any sence 1995. Not that they should, becuase you can build a RISC proccessor work station to run any of the top several CAD packages for about $3000 real cost. But they wont sell you the software. You need to buy "seats" at $20,000-$25,000 a pop. They even come set them up for you !! How thought full. But the aircraft companies do go shop around when they buy 3,000 seats. They just pass the cost on to the feds/taxpayer.
Necro, you may be right, the maintainance contract and product support costs may be going up. Maybe thats where they make thier proffits... in residuals. ?
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swft
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posted August 17, 2003 11:19 AM
That's what pushes new hardware, really. Support costs for older systems escalate rapidly, as parts become more scarce for those systems. The entire industry computer has about a 5 year rollover, wherein anything 5 years old is almost impossible to get support on. Kinda goes hand in hand with Moore's law.
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flite leader
Zone Head
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posted August 17, 2003 07:49 PM
it is a distinct possibilty
the 12 hasnt set fire to showroom sales
the real arbiter of whether a bike sticks around
no one need a 185 politically incorrect rocket
& i know here are plenty of bikes that are nearly as fast
still the buzz moves them out of the showroom quicker
motogp aint helpin.... they might get limited in a couple of seasons
600'a are the best buy.....750's while not much attention of late
may not be dead yet
with most bikes from 600's on up on relatively same size tires
they are the limiting factor directly related to safety & performance
HP is toooo ez to come by on the street or track
so the escalation of HP will probably never stop
unless they stop building the big bikes
a real consideration
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frEEk
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ummm... yeah
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posted August 17, 2003 10:38 PM
surprisingl, 12's have been selling pretty well here, at least at Burnaby Kawasaki (where i bought mine).
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jonwright
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posted August 18, 2003 06:48 AM
Yeah, but if you compare the number of 12's with the number of Busas out there........
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ddpete3
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posted August 18, 2003 10:39 AM
quote:
Yeah, but if you compare the number of 12's with the number of Busas out there........
....You find that we are an elite grouop.
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jonwright
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posted August 18, 2003 10:42 AM
That's a great way to look at it.
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necro
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posted August 18, 2003 06:41 PM
quote:
...damn, necro...ya' beat me to the punchline! (#%$@*&! Cannot Find Server POS account!)
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necro
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posted August 18, 2003 06:43 PM
Pro-E is the most piece of shit I've ever seen. That company is clueless.
Solid Works is superior is everyway.
I could teach you SW in an hour.
That peace of shit is a bad excusse for a software.
All the companies that use it are being taken to the cleaner.
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necro
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posted August 18, 2003 06:44 PM
Solid Works runs perfectly fine on a home PC. If you know Windows, you know SW.
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necro
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posted August 18, 2003 06:45 PM
Did I say that program is crap. My goal at work is to convert all of our supplier to Solid Works.
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k bryant
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posted August 18, 2003 07:06 PM
I've hired engineers who used both. Biggest difference I've found is SW is completely user friendly and way easy. Both my son's even use it at home.
Pro-E required a full Johnny, god's gift to engineering degreed pre-ma-donna guy with a salary 2x my current engineer who uses SW. Every time we turned around, it seemed like there was a $5k update he had to have! Bought our system in 1998 and invested more money into it than I ccare to admit...
Fired that engineer. Now use SW exclusively. No complaints.
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necro
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posted August 18, 2003 07:16 PM
They also have free annual upgrades and awesome customer service.
They also could convert Pro-E files to SW, but Pro-crap sued them, so now that module is on hold.
What kind of engineering do you do?
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k bryant
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posted August 18, 2003 09:39 PM
Lot's of hard tooling for cnc bending, punching, forming, etc. Also lots of steel & billet parts for the OEMs and aftermarket like wheels, hubs, fwd controls, etc. Use CMM & Vector Tracer as well. Did some really cool stuff for Yamaha GYT-R division like Mag hubs & Triple clamps. What's really a challenge is working with the exotic materials like Ti, Mag, Inconel, and seeing how light you can get it starting with the original design and modifing to failure. Then you back it up depending on how much life expendancy or duration you actually need or is required. We did some stuff for HRC in Carbon Fibre that only had to last 200k. The engineers had a great time designing and breaking stuff that someone else was paying for.
Our final conclusion of Pro-E; if we were building and designing cars then maybe this is the shite. But we're not. SW gets the job done and allows us to hire younger more open minded engineers who see "what ifs" instead of "that's the only way you can design it".....
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necro
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posted August 18, 2003 09:44 PM
Actually Pro-shit is not any more powerful. It's a perception.
Do you use any FEA?
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