Zontes

Zontes planning triples By Ben Purvis

China's Zontes brand turns out an interesting range of single-cylinder machines in the 350 cc market, but last year the company announced it was to sidestep the increasingly popular twin-cylinder market in favour of creating the first homegrown Chinese three-cylinder motorcycle range.

In response to images that leaked on social media, showing it using Yamaha-branded oil filters, the company has now revealed new pictures of three generations of prototype three-cylinder engines. The implication appeared to be that Zontes was reverse-engineering Yamaha's MT-09 engine, something that the company strongly denies.

There are clear similarities between the Zontes three-cylinder and the original 847 cc version of the MT-09 triple, but it's far from a straight copy. Zontes promises its engine will appear in 650 cc and 1,000 cc forms, showing different internal dimensions compared to the Yamaha, and claims that it uses a much higher 13.5:1 compression ratio. In a blog post on its official website, Zontes showed that the oil filter it uses is a standard component, available in a variety of branded forms including Yamaha, Honda and Kawasaki, so the use of 'Yamaha' oil filters wasn't an indication that it is borrowing technology from the Japanese company.

Zontes says it will offer four versions of the engine - two states of tune in each of the two capacities. The high-end version is claimed to rev past 13,000 rpm, which suggests it will make superbike levels of power in 1,000 cc form.