Huge amounts of superbike goodness for the not-so-huge price of R139,995.
At this years Barkfest Run, the QJMotor SRK800 caused quite a stir, sitting right near the shop entrance in Bikeshop Boksburg’s now-crowded parking lot.
Bystanders couldn’t help but notice this strange new sports bike. It didn’t look like anything they recognised, but it looked good. After spotting the gold logos on the black paintwork, it struck them: “This is one of those new QJs? What’s it like?”
By Don Fourie
They sat on it, felt its exterior and admired the snazzy TFT screen.
“It looks pretty good,” they concluded with an approving nod.
“Want to hear the best part? It’s R139,995.”
Jaws dropped as the impressed look changed to astonishment.
With the pet food piled up, we navigated our growling swarm through Boksburg and onto the N12 heading east towards the fabled Red Star.
While the SRK800 might look good for the R139,995 price tag, it needs more than a pretty face to warrant a trip off the showroom floor.
Engine:
It has a motor, a rather good one, in fact. It has four cylinders arranged in a straight line, tallying 778 cc and pushing out a respectable 128 hp and 74 Nm of torque. As far as motorcycles in this broader version of “supersport” go, that’s really not bad.
Down the freeway it had a peppy feel, something often uncommon in the superbike realm. The peak horsepower is decent, but the midrange grunt is exceptional. That makes sense, because instead of concentrating only on outright power, QJMotor has put equal effort into the breadth of it.
For example, the Suzuki GSX-R750 has a 749.7 cc motor, so its capacity is down by around 28 cc. Yet its bore is 3 mm larger than the QJMotor’s, which makes up for this deficit with a stroke that is 7 mm longer. In simple terms, the longer the stroke, the broader the power throughout the rev range.
While this formula may take away some outright power, it makes the bike easier to ride. The rev limiter comes in at 12,000 rpm, which is not huge but also not bad, and the power band gathers momentum as low as 4,000 rpm, fantastic for a four-cylinder performance motor.
More so, the redline starts at 9,000 rpm, at which point the TFT dash lights up in an evil red. That red also appears as the bike hits 200 km/h in sixth gear, and stays lit until the top speed of around 250 km/h.
Comfortable;
Straight freeways like the N12 are normally the grey bane of the superbike, often supplying the ergonomics of a circus contortionist folding into a shoebox. The SRK800 somehow avoids that. It’s still a superbike with a superbike stance, yet it isn’t crippling. It’s difficult to put into words how that happens, but later that day (spoiler alert), riding home from Red Star, I was enjoying a light 180 km/h cruise up the N4 towards Rustenburg and had already been on the road for a good hour. Instead of agonising pain, I found myself thinking about what I would do for dinner, wondering if an air fryer can cook soup, pondering how soup is considered food when it is a liquid, and all sorts of things that were not the motorbike I was riding. If I were uncomfortable, and there’s a long list of superbikes that would have left me crippled by this stage, I’d be thinking only about that. But I was completely fine, and could therefore focus my mind on the culinary mysteries of the world.
At Red Star, the group settled in for breakfast before everyone lined up for their track session.
The point of this event was to encourage people who do not often ride on track, or who have never ridden on track before, to give it a go. There were no track-kitted bikes, no lap times and no leathers. Indeed, I was in my Metalize road-riding kit, which is fine, because we suspect this machine is aimed more at the road rider who wants a thrill than at the lap-record breakers. And so we set off.
Track:
QJMotor does not cut corners when it comes to kit. The electronic package includes two rider modes, traction control and ABS. The suspension is from Marzocchi and the brakes are good, old-fashioned Brembo.
Where it loses out to some of its rivals is on the scales. Where a GSX-R750 tips the scales at 190 kg, the QJMotor SRK800RR comes in at a rather denser 214 kg, including all fluids and 16 L of fuel and yet, admittedly at road-kit speeds, it didn’t feel particularly heavy. The ABS might kick in a little early when you really throw out the anchors, but otherwise the bike was stable and fun.
This exact motorcycle is the demo unit from Bikeshop Boksburg (go give it a go at the shop).
They have ceremoniously removed the catalytic converter, a process endearingly termed “de-catting”, so it is louder than the standard SRK800. It sounds great, but became a problem for me as I had my Insta360 mounted on one of the mirrors and was hoping to get some shots of Barkfest runners enjoying their track time for The Bike Show.
The problem is that people, many riding their nine-to-five everyday bikes, heard this monster behind them going WOOM WOOM as it changed down, skrikked emphatically and made every effort to move out of the way.
It is glorious for motorcycle cacophony, but disastrous for television production.
So the QJMotor SRK800RR will not scorch the laws of physics around a racetrack, but it will give your adrenal glands a mighty workout in every environment. Again, all for the jaw-dropping price of just R139,995.
This one’s at Bikeshop Boksburg.
