So, I am not one of the messenger-attackers.
While I believe that a different attitude in your wording would help you winning more acolytes, I understand your point of view and I too am puzzled by the total lack of detailed communication from the mothership (here in Canada we did not even get the letters explaining the delay).
I have to admit though that I am one of those who in the end will very likely be pleased with this bike as it comes out the factory floor. Yes I did drink the kool-aid by the gallon, and yes I hoped the end result would be more "beyond belief" that **it seems to be** (written this way to convey that I know we have scarce final information).
The power and torque figures will plenty good by me anyway, but I really disapprove that Kawasaki is releasing a forced induction engine that doesn't display (directly from numbers printed in the service manual) a really substantial improvement in performance, when compared to other comparable N/A engines of same displacement/class.
On Sunday I read the service manual too (hardcopy) and it contains information about minor tweaks between regions, which points to some (small) flexibility in the state of tune to appease regulators around the World.
I agree with you that the hardware will likely limit what modifications are possible, but since the golden era of turbo engines (mid '80s), small modifications to ECU maps always brought decent performance improvements (10%/15% ?), without engines necessarily disintegrating all the time. This does not make me an expert at forced induction engines, I only interpret what I saw over the years, and I might be wrong.
All in all, for me there are positives and negatives.
Positives:
- The H2 is one of the most stunning bikes I have ever seen
- The H2 has a supercharger, I would buy it even if it came disconnected from the crank
- The H2 has high-enough quality components, received enough R&D work, and is of limited enough availability to justify its price (in my opinion, by all means)
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Negatives:
- The H2 performance figures, while excellent for a bike overall, are disappointing (in pure numbers) for a supercharged engine, especially given the weight it adds. I understand regulators, insurance, emissions and whatnot, it still remains disappointing.
- The suspension package, while super high-quality, is not active/semi-active.
- It has now been nearly two months since I paid the deposit, and I have received ZERO information whatsoever
I will be very happy with the H2, I just wish they had truly pulled out all the stops on the tech, and kept us in the loop, I would even have paid some more for that kind of treatment...
Frio