Being talented is a hard road, for soon you are the person everyone asks to do the hard stuff. That happened to Rob Muzzy in Kawasaki's US race team because the equipment he built worked best. Racing manager Gary Mathers - who believed in delegating work to those able to do it - gave Muzzy the responsibility of getting the team's Superbikes built, of developing them to stay ahead of the competition, and of managing the equipment at trackside. This required so much more than hard work. It required careful thought and organization to get maximum results from limited time, resources, and people, race after race. The commandments that follow are a distillation of that intense period. --KC

1 Analyze the work to be done—reliability first, performance second.
When he started with the Z1-based four it sometimes broke a rod close to the small-end. There’s little point in increasing the power of an engine that may not finish races, so the first job was to achieve reliability. First, to stop rod breakage in the short-term, he’d put a crank in a plastic bag with just one rod sticking out. He’d polish the rod’s surface just where failures had occurred. Polishing removes surface defects – pits, scratches – that can nucleate cracking. This could be done in time for the next race.

The second stage was to get stronger rods made in the US, and then to build cranks with those rods (These were pressed-together cranks with all rolling-element bearings and one-piece rods).

The third stage was to get Japan up to speed, building cranks with stronger rods that could be used “out of the box.”

2 Work on jobs that pay off quickly. Don't pin down talented people on low-yield projects.

This works just like those meetings that take place after every practice. One turn at a time, the rider, crew chief, and the several specialists identify what is keeping the rider from achieving his goals in each. Working on such immediate problems pays off quickly in lap time, lower perceived risk, &c. Always remember the value of rider confidence. Don’t waste time on projects whose goals are vague and whose time of completion is unknown.

3 Keep away from the dyno and the flowbench unless you know what you want and why you need it.

Explaining this one, Muzzy said, “There are guys who’ve lost their minds on the flowbench. “ Adding CFM (cubic feet per minute) becomes addictive, such that projects can never be finished.

He clarified this further by saying, “Never go after more than 80% of what you think is achievable in a given area.” The goal is to bring an improved bike to the next race. You can’t do that if your head is filled with numbers that might be possible if you could stay awake day and night forever. You can’t – only so much can be done in a day. When you have a useful gain in one area, move to the next area where work is needed.

4 Run combinations that work together. An engine is a system, not a parts list.

Another way to put this is to say, “Race what you test.” Don’t imagine that just because a certain carb setting worked on the dyno with a test engine, you can drop that setting into all the bikes and win races. Race with the combination that worked in testing – same head, same carbs, same pipe.

5 In a system of parts that must work together, choose the cheap parts to complement the expensive ones.

We’ve all seen people buy super ultra-strength screws, then torque them up to their higher strength, with magnesium from a trick mag case cover squeezing up around the bolt heads. This is stupid. The factory knows hardware-store 6 mm fasteners will keep it sealed with the stock gasket. You can’t afford make-work like this.

When engine vibration at the higher revs of racing caused base-gasket scrubbing and leakage, Muzzy set aside the stock base gaskets and ran solid copper ones that could survive crankcase and cylinder bending. Those copper gaskets weren’t just eye candy. They solved a black-flag-sized problem.

6 If there are two good ways to do a job, one simple, the other complicated, use the simple way.

The job is to win races, not to win the trick machinist award. The simple way saves time that you will need soon enough.

7 Use everything you know in your work, even if it seems irrelevant.

Muzzy once said to me, “The more you tune on a four-stroke, the more it begins to act like a two-stroke.” Before he got involved in Superbike, he was developing the 490 Yamaha two-stroke MX engine. Two-strokes work by releasing their exhaust into an acoustic supercharger – the exhaust pipe. You can bet that pressure-wave stuff he’d learned with the 490 two-stroke influenced his thinking about getting air into and out of the Superbike engine. Don’t lock things away in categories – there is only one reality.

8 Do everything you can in your own shop.

The late Phil Schilling was having his TZ250 engine professionally prepped up in Northern California. When it was decently close to time for the first race (that is, he still had time to install the engine and put everything in readiness) he phoned the builder to ask if he could come pick up his engine.
“Uhh…not really.” Seems the builder (a notorious perfectionist) had heard about a new, ultra-trick aerospace sealant and had torn down the nearly completed engine to upgrade to the latest ultimate.

What’s wrong with Yamabond and making the first race? Nothing. If he’d built that engine in his own shop, he’d have had it in the frame in plenty of time to get everything done. Don’t expect others to take your timetable as seriously as you do. Things you do in your own shop are under your direct control.

9 Have enough of the things you know you'll need.

This means what it says. At one point, one of the crew asked Muzzy if he should load up a certain piece of equipment. “That truck can carry anything we put in it. If there’s a chance we might need something, load it.”

If nobody does inventory, you’re going to run out of something. Special parts can have long lead times.

10 Big numbers on the dyno are no substitute for races won.

Spend much time at peak power on race day? As pointed out by the late, great Don Tilley, “We won a bunch of races by going after horsepower averaged over the rpm range actually used on the track.”

We all know that acceleration is what wins most races, and we all know too that the harder we try to push peak power up where it will impress our pub crowd (easy to do—just increase valve overlap) the more likely that just below that peak will appear a nasty flat-spot. While your engine sits in it, making a sickly moan, others leave you behind.

Think about the result you need, on this track.