Australasian Dirt Bike — January 2018

MOTO TOURIST I JAPAN

http://www.adbmag.com.au JANUARY 2018 | 193

A rare photo of Ricky doing over 200km/h, with his

eyes closed! The pace was red hot all week

Lee Hogan showing the Japanese locals, and Ricky,

how it’s done in the full Fox kit

BEHIND THE SCENES

One of the coolest parts of the trip

was our visit to two of Suzuki’s

assembly plants. We were taken to

some of the secret production lines

where we witnessed an RM-Z450

engine come together. It is really

quite amazing to see the bottom-end

being put together and then watch it

move, piece by piece down the

production line until there is a

complete engine.

Theproductionlinerunsonan

automated rail system and the speed

at which it travels is approximately

onemetreeveryfiveminutes.That

may sound slow to you, but when

youonlyhaveanallocatedtimeto

getyourparticularjobdonethereis

no room for mistakes. And this

production line ain’t slowing down

fornobody!Thelinehasafew

robots, but mainly humans playing

theirpartintheassembly.

Itwasplaintoseethatsomeofthe

technicians piecing their allocated

part together on the production run

were a little bit more skilled and

worked slightly faster than others.

We saw one particular gentleman get

a tad flustered by our group of

visitors standing and watching in

awe at their work.

There were so many jaw-dropping

things to be seen in both of the

assembly plants, including a separate

production line where we witnessed

a GSX-R road bike come together

from scratch, including the engine

being put into the frame. At the end

of the line the bike has a small

amount of fuel put into it before it

gets wheeled into a dyno room. It

getsstartedforthefirst time and,

afteraquickrunonthe dyno, each

bike gets ridden slowly around the

factory.

Itisverycleartosee from the get

go that the technicians in all

departments are clinical in the way

they go about their bu

They take so much

work,nomatterhow

small their role is.

We were allowed to place

ourselves in all kinds of

precarious positions, snapping

photos of the local riders

Lee and his mate Ricky Carmichael, who helped out

on We Come from a Land Down Under