I found a bike that I had been looking for for a while and luckily it was just down the road. When I went to collect it, I met Doug, the owner, who had an amazing collection of bikes inlcuding several Kawasaki Z1000, a couple of Nortons, Matchless and BSA from the sixties. Although all the motorcycles were stored it was clear that Doug spent a lot of time in his garage maintainng them all.
WATCH IT ALL UNFOLD / UNRAVEL ON YOU TUBE
The Kawasaki KZ650 itself was a little scruffy hance the good price I picked it upo for, but as I began stripping it down it became clear that it had been well maintained. All the nuts and bolts came free without a sweat and everything was in good working order.
As always, I wanted to do away with the regular seat situation and chop the rear end. This time around I wanted to keep the original tail piece as it's one of my favourite aspects of this bike and the kawasaki's of this era, the seventies.
Next up was deciding on a paint scheme and of course I wanted to go green. I found some great candy paint online and decided on teal as the base, but a mix up in labelling meant that it ended up a greener green after all.
Despite the difficulties I experienced with the fork swap on the Honda CB750, I decided to try again, this time with the front end from the Yamaha R6 project which had become available when I scrapped that custom motorcycle project. Again, thanks to All Balls Racing and their bearing conversion kit, this front end swap proved a lot simpler, with everything slotting into place once I had the right size top bearing.
The exhaust had a fed dents and scrapes, so I opted to paint the down pipes black, along with the frame and motor itself. I sourced some Y pipe joints from the UK which were a prefect fit and then an adpater to take that size up to a more usual size for a silencer should I decide to fit one.
Custom foot pegs were relatively easy to fit and I retained the original spoked rear wheel as the chrome was in very good condition. I replaced the wheel bearings, sprcoket and chain and refitted everything.
All the bodywork, fuel tank, side panels and tail were modified and painted with a deep candy metallic green.
Fitted a really cool custom LED tail light, similar to the one I created for the Suzuki GS550, using the other half of the Suzuki air filter housing.
With all the modifications it was really just a question of getting the bike running, which shouldn't have been an issue, but I could not get the starter motor to fire up. The electrics had become tangled and confused and after a lot of deliberation I decided to try something different. Having fitted a MotoGadget Blue Unit to the 1982 Honda CB750, I thought I'd go a similar route but try an alterantive and so I invessted in an Axel Joost Eletronikbox B-Box.
This was perhaps simpler to fit than the MotoGadget unit and within a few hours I had all the lights working and the starter motor! Now it was just a question of hooking up the ignition circuit and trying to start it. Sadly no spark. So it's time to get an expert in to check through that ignition system.
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