When I worked for Team Kawasaki we traded bikes with Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha.  The Japanese companies did that because they knew that the competition was going to test each other's bikes.  To save money by not having to buy competitors bikes, the companies had an agreement with each other.  It went something like this.........We will loan you a KX125 if you will loan as one of your CR 125, YZ125, RM125.  We will loan you a KX250 if you will loan us a YZ250  and so on.  One of Kawasaki's buildings in Santa Anna was full of competitors street and dirt bikes.  At the end of the year or when the new models came out, they brought us a new bike and picked up their last years model.

Every american company that I know of, tests the competition's products. It is not about copying others products but knowing how your product compares to the competition.  When we developed our HPR19 pipe for the LT500, we tested competitors pipes and we continued our development until we believed that our pipe was substantially better than the competition's pipes, then we released our pipe.


We tested the FTZ inframe and the FTZ out of frame.  On our test engine, the in frame pipe worked the best.    The pipe LT250R development project has been on hold because I lost a key employee.  It will resume when I find a replacement for him or when I catch up on the mountain of work that is in the shop.