it was phenomenal. the bike weighed about 230lbs with fuel, made in the neighborhood of 100 hp rear wheel. Mine was radared at the end of the straight away at Pacific Raceway (here in the Seattle area) at 172 mph with my large a$$ on it. Corner speeds were unreal, front braking was one finger and so powerful that you could spin the tire on the front wheel. You had absolute feedback and feel at what it was doing all the time. Power delivery was so smooth, that you could dial in the setp out on the rear and throttle steer with the rear easily and without fear of getting tossed off the high side.
The track record for motorcycles (in 1997) was 1:28 and change, the 250's were doing 1:30 flat (giving up 20 mph to superbikes on the straight away)
Gearing changes were a 5-10 minute effort, by pulling out the cassette transmission and putting new gears on. Jetting both carbs took about 5 minutes each.
Mine had a RAM air set up on it. One of my friends that I knew got me a set of A kit cylinders for it. Back then, you could not buy those for any price, Honda gave them riders with the right pedigree. My friend was one of those riders and he passed them onto me. They looked identical, but hey were worth almost 10 mph top end, and needed 2 main jet sizes bigger to run them.
It was the most fun I ever had road racing. A purpose built race bike that performed like nothing else I have ever ridden/raced. Too bad they no longer make them, they were very inexpensive (relative) to four stroke road race bikes today. Maintenance was very easy to do and working on the bike was easy too. Honda had a great spares program, and the manuals they provided were the best I have ever seen for any motorcycle. It came complete with service intervals for every part on the bike. Such as pistons were good for 50 hours, rings, 25 hours, crank 200 hours, etc...
