Green with Envy

mick grant
Green
with
Envy
Kawasaki’s gorgeous KR750
was the factory’s first bigbore
prototype racer and
turned Mick Grant into
an Isle of Man superstar
Words by Mat Oxley. Photos by FoTTofinders & Bauer Archive
LEFT: Granty on a high
at Ballaugh Bridge on
the KR750 in 1975...
before the chain broke
RIGHT: On a KR250
he raced later in his
Kawasaki tenure
T
he Isle of Man is a green and pleasant
island, and it’s probably never been as
green as it was in June 1975, when Mick
Grant won the Senior TT on a Kawasaki
H1-RW and broke Mike Hailwood’s
eight-year-old record aboard a KR750.
Grant’s new lap record – 109.82mph against Mike the
Bike’s astonishing 108.77mph achieved while duelling
with Giacomo Agostini in the 1967 Senior – produced a
famous response from Hailwood, who was sat in the
press box when the commentator announced his record
had been beaten. Hailwood turned to his manager Ted
Macauley, grinned and said: “The bastard!”
Grant still loves Hailwood for his remark. “It was the
best accolade I ever had,” he says.
The summer of 1975 was Grant’s first as a fully paidup
factory rider. Twelve months earlier he had won his
first TT – the production race on Triumph’s oily legend,
Slippery Sam – so now it was time for him to really
make his mark. Signing for Kawasaki seemed like a
good idea at the time. The Green Meanies were still
building up to speed, attempting to match the awesome
achievements of Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha. But their
bikes didn’t have the best of reputations. The 750cc
H2-R, based around the scary air-cooled H2 road bike,
was fast but fragile, just like the air-cooled 500cc H1-R.
Grant hoped he had got his timing right. After all,
Kawasaki had promised a water-cooled 500 for Grands
Prix and a water-cooled 750 for F750 rounds. He would
use both bikes on the Island – the 500 in the Senior and
the 750 in the week-ending Classic.
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mick grant
1
2
3
4
It all came together for
the KR750 at the 1977 TT
with a win in the Classic
1 Granty leads Peter
Williams and the John
Player Norton
2 Mick flanked by Chas
Mortimer (left on a
Sarome Yamaha) and
John Williams on
another TZ in 1975
3 Pulling a wheelie
powering uphill
on the KR750
4 Landing the 500cc
Kawasaki H1-RW at
Ballaugh on the way to
winning the ’75 Senior
Everett, who later worked with Grant at Honda and
Suzuki. “Kawasaki got everything right with it, the
engine spec, everything. It was very, very light and very,
very fast, plus it was easy to work on, quite rideable and
pretty reliable. The KR750 was the first of the proper
race bikes that Kawasaki turned out; most of the stuff
prior to that was a bit thrown together.”
The 750 worked so well around the TT that Grant
broke Hailwood’s record on the second lap of the 1975
Classic and was happily climbing the mountain for the
second time when the revs went skywards and all drive
disappeared. The chain had snapped. This DNF cost
Grant a lot of money and he wasn’t happy about it, for a
moment at least. “The chain broke coming out of the
Gooseneck. I was really pissed off. Then I looked back
down the road and a spectator had jumped over the
fence to pick up the chain for a souvenir. Of course it
was red hot,” Grant stops talking and starts laughing, a
lot. “That put a smile on my face.”
But the 750 had more surprises in store. In October
Grant took part in a big international at California’s
Ontario Motor Speedway, a banked oval like Daytona.
“It was the second or third lap and I was flat-out in
fifth, cracking on, when I heard this bang. I thought the
crank had gone, so I pulled in the clutch but the bike
kept on sliding... oh no, it’s the gearbox. Everything
happened in slow motion. I remember going through the
air, thinking: ‘oh shit, this is me gone’.”
Grant had suffered the same fate that befell Sheene at
Daytona seven months earlier – his rear tyre had
delaminated. A huge chunk of wayward tread embedded
itself like an axe in the KR’s seat unit. There was only
one difference between the Sheene and Grant prangs –
Grant walked (or at least hobbled) away.
The KR750 was kinder on the British mainland.
Grant won the 1975 MCN Superbike crown and hoped
better was to come as Kawasaki withdrew to their
humble race department for the winter.
“When I rode for Honda a few years later I visited
Honda R&D and it was a massive complex. Kawasaki
had a wooden hut, out of which came the 750s, the
500s, the motocross bikes, everything.”
Back on the Island in June 1976, Grant and his new,
milder-tuned KR750 were 17 seconds faster than
‘It was a cracking-looking
bike And so light, only 130kg’
Granty had previous form
on Kawasakis. Here he’s
on the Padgetts 500 in 1972
In fact the Yorkshireman had a whole load of horror
coming his way: seized engines, broken gearboxes,
snapped drive chains and 150mph tyre blowouts. Then
again, these were only the same fears that haunted
most racers’ nightmares during the 1970s.
Three months before the TT, Grant travelled to
Florida for the Daytona 200, where he met his brandnew
KR750 for the first time. “It was a crackinglooking
bike,” he recalls. “And so light. The 750 was
water cooled but it only weighed 130 kilos. I don’t
know how much Barry Sheene’s three-cylinder Suzuki
weighed, but it must’ve been about twice that.”
Kawasaki had been able to take a giant leap forward
because the FIM had reduced F750 homologation
requirements, from 200 bikes to 25, so Kawasaki
parked the H2-R and started again from the ground
up, building their first prototype 750. The all-new, fully
square (68 x 68mm) engine was significantly narrower
than the H2-R and made 120 horsepower.
But it wasn’t all hunky dory. “The 750 had chocolate
gearboxes. The American Kawasaki team and our
team never managed more than two or three laps of
Daytona without a gearbox breaking. We could hardly
start the race, because we had run out of everything.”
None of the KRs that started made it to the finish,
even though Kawasaki had flown in modified
transmission clusters. Not an auspicious beginning,
especially since Yamaha TZ750s took the first 16
places. And most of these were over-the-counter Tee
Zees, available to anyone with $4750 in their pockets.
Grant was delighted when Kawasaki said they’d fix
the gearbox gremlins for the TT – the last thing you
want while racing on Manx roads at mind-boggling
speeds is a gearbox seizure. Instead it was the H1-RW’s
engine that seized, just moments after the start of the
Senior. More than anything, Kawasaki wanted to win
the Senior, which is why they had sent over a watercooled
version of their 500 triple. Ironically, its watercooling
was very nearly the bike’s downfall.
“The ACU made everyone stop engines 20 minutes
before the start, which was no good for water-cooled
engines, because you would start the race flat-out with
a cold engine. I got to Quarter Bridge and as I knocked
it off the engine locked solid. I sort of careered down
there into the corner. My initial reaction was: ‘fuck it,
I’m not walking back!’ So I dropped the clutch and it
started again on two-and-a-half cylinders. It was a
damp sort of a day, so I thought I might as well see if
it’d go the whole way around. The engine was quite
peaky, the power didn’t come in until 8000, but I was
changing gear at 8500, just to be safe. I did a steady
first lap and I was on the leader board, so I thought:
‘bloody hell, I better keep going’. It was bizarre. After
I’d done five laps I thought: ‘it won’t seize now,’ so I
gave it the licks on the last lap and won it.”
Kawasaki had won their first Senior TT. Now for
the KR750. Grant loved this motorcycle, once its
gearbox had been sorted. The piston-ported engine
gave a soft, friendly power delivery, which is just what’s
needed on treacherous road circuits. “It was lovely to
ride and always a good Isle of Man bike. It just had so
much torque that you didn’t have to rev the thing.”
Grant’s mechanic Nigel Everett still has a soft spot
for the big triple. “It’s one of my favourite bikes,” says
ABOVE: In nicely
colour co-ordinated
1975 Senior
winner’s sash
Below: Grant loved
the KR750 once the
gearbox was sorted
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mick grant
‘The potential of the 750 was
enormous. It was bloody quick’
everyone else in practice. “I’m not being big-headed, but
that year it wasn’t a matter of whether I’d win the
Classic, but by how much. The most bulletproof thing
about the KR750 was the clutch. So I set off at the start
and the clutch was slipping before I go to Bray Hill.
“The potential of the 750 was enormous. It was
bloody quick and would rev to 11,500, but that could
give us problems. Some F750 races were 100 miles long
and the crank would sometimes only last 90 miles, even
though they ran oil pump and premix. That’s why they
changed things for 1976 – different
porting and different pipes brought the
revs down to 9500 and there was power
from nothing. Fantastic.
“We had three stages of tune. For
British races and the TT I ran the middle
spec. We only used the top spec once, at
Mettet in Belgium – although it made the
bike unbelievably quick, the thing was
impossible to ride. And we only ran the
basic set-up once, at Mallory. I beat
Sheene with that and he was convinced
we were running an oversize engine. That
spec was great, like a tractor, so long as
there were no straights.”
In 1977 Grant and the KR750 finally
got it right at the TT. They won the
Classic at record pace and by three-and-ahalf
minutes. But the race was a near-run
thing. Once again the weak link was the
final drive chain, which stretched badly,
forcing Grant to ease off in the final miles.
This was after he’d been timed at 191mph
on the downhill run from Creg ny Baa to
Brandish. Many think the figure was
pure fantasy, but not Everett. “We worked
out the gearing and it was right,” he says.
The KR was fast, but the competition
was also gathering speed. Suzuki RG500s
ABOVE: Hurtling
down Bray Hill on the
KR750 in 1977, about
to bottom out the
expansion chambers
1975 Kawasaki KR750
specifications
Engine
Engine
Three-cylinder, water-cooled,
piston-ported two-stroke
Capacity
748.2cc
Bore x stroke 68 x 68.3mm
Compression ratio 7.0:1
Carburation Three 38mm Mikunis
Transmission
Clutch/gearbox Dry plate, six-speed
Chassis
Frame
Tubular steel duplex cradle
Front suspension 36mm Kayaba forks
Rear suspension Girling twin shocks
Brakes
Front: dual twin-piston calipers.
Rear: twin-piston caliper
Tyres
Dunlop
Dimensions
Dry weight 130kg
Wheelbase 1400mm
Fuel capacity 24 litres
Performance
Top speed 190mph
Max power Over 120 horsepower at 9500rpm
Fuel consumption 16-18mpg
and cantilever-framed TZ750s were filling grids. For
1978, Grant’s main aim was to exorcise the chain
problems that always threatened on the Island, which
had become a mammoth payday – Grant’s 1977 Classic
win had made him £6000 richer (that’s £35,000 today).
“We always had massive chain problems. I thought it
was the rubber-mounted engine, causing too much twist.
Nigel had to adjust the chain every time I came in for
fuel. For 1978 I got [legendary chassis genius] Ron
Williams involved on the quiet. He removed the bushes
on my bike and made the engine
mountings metal-to-metal.”
This time it was engine vibration that
nearly robbed him of Classic victory. The
vibes were so bad they fractured the KR’s
rear-brake mount. No rear brake was one
problem, running out of fuel was another.
Grant had earlier run dry in the Junior
race, so his crew told him to stop for a
splash-and-dash before the Classic’s last
lap. But if he pitted, a scrutineer would
spot the problem and stop him continuing,
so he gambled on staying out. At the
finish he had a litre of fuel to spare.
The 1978 Classic was one of Grant’s
greatest TT rides and raised the lap
record to 114.333mph, thanks to the
KR’s easy-going character. “I remember
going around Ginger Hall and over the
top, three gears higher than I should’ve
been, still accelerating and flattening out
the bumps. It was such a lovely bit of kit.”
And that was the end of the road for
Grant’s KR750. “By this time the
engineers in the little wooden shed were
spending all their time on the KR250 and
350. And anyway, the RGs were out and
Yamaha had got the job sorted, so we
were knackered.”
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