Got, then gone, then bought, then gone again

This is the sad story of this P3 ZX7R. It came one day and worked like hell, then left with its owner a couple of months after. He called 4 months later with huge money issues asking if I wanted it. I bought it and could only keep it for 3 months, having my own "balance" problems.

Keep the postman busy

The postman's been sweating the hell out these days delivering part boxes to either my personal mailbox, work address or even my parent's home ...

Some Honda steering stem caps and washer for 929 CBR forks (plus a pen goodie, yoohoo !)

ZX7R fork seals (plus a keychain goodie, yoohoo !)

A spare ZX7R subframe that will serve as a racing seat unit support, hence it's going to be cut

A ZX10R lower fork clamp to start the mocking up front ends job with a fork swap as a target

Projects are still a bit stuck for now, but parts keep on coming, so there's no reason they linger for too long any more apart from a significant one : me having no sort of time to work on the bikes.

Racing battery

One of the easiest and quickest way to pull some weight off a motorcycle, as well as put a whole in your wallet, is to install a lightweight battery. There has been one in order for a month and it made it to the garage's door last week.

A standard ZX7R battery, say a Yuasa YT12B, weighs a heavy 4.09kg. The Racing Batteries RB240400 is as light as 1.05kg, which makes a full 3.04kg gain once installed.

Of course the tiny battery does not have the same dimensions as the standard one, causing a short head scratching moment during the installation process in order to attach it properly. Of course, there are some maintenance instructions that you should follow thoroughly so you don't damage the LiFePO4 battery permanently. But it's still an easy mod for a huge saving.

Now, to the pics. I put a well-known toy next to the RB240400 so everyone can figure out how small is this battery.

Racing Batteries recommend the use of a specific charger and suggest you get an Optimate Lithium battery tender. You can buy one direct from them.

The whole set came in what is certainly the worst packaged box that made its way to the garage last year.

Stripping a fatty

The stripping process has begun last week. As always with this sort of operation, it may bring its own kind of nice surprises and disappointing finds. One rarely come without the other and there's no reason a 15 year-old green panzer would make an exception to the rule, as clean as it may look.

So off goes the fairing. The engine looks clean, so is the radiator. Unfortunately, the reason to this is that the latter has been repainted. So has the frame in order to cover what looks like a nasty solvent damage.

Right side, no real fuss. The cooler still looks too clean, but the rest is aged reasonably, down pipes included, and period related.

Up front, with air intake covers removed, the cowl shows a cracked light mount. It's worse than I imagined while still being fixable. It's not in the priority list anyway.

Finally, I found a way to shave some weight out of this old fatty. There's at least 1kg of rust packed in the tool set.

Front wheel shows signs of leaking fork seals.

Leaky front end

Among other thingies here and there when buying project Green Panzer, there was a leaking fork seal on the right leg. It wasn't that bad at the time of pushing the bike on the trailer in order to bring it home. But now that is sits on the bench, there's a big oily spot growing right under the brake caliper and I noticed the left inner tube was starting to feel greasy as well.

The front end needs a full rebuild anyway. And as later posts will show it's only just the beginning of other nastier finds. Hey, it's a 15 year-old fatty after all ...

The 2 scales trick

Weight is a sensitive topic when working on a ZX7R. There are loads of forum threads around the web quoting dozens of ways to address the heaviness issue with solutions ranging from "buy another bike" to "put yourself on a diet". Now there are some really interesting posts about how to really shave a couple of pounds out of a ZX7R, but you have to know where you're actually starting from.

I knew too much about the bike's real weight before buying, but I'm seeing this as challenging and am pretty sure there's potential to make this green Panzer tank behave. So to size up progress, I bought these 2 mechanical scales last week.

Then the work began. I put the ZXR on the bench, then on paddock stands to have both wheels raised enough from the ground to be able to slide the scales underneath.

With the scales positioned, it was time to measure out which, being alone, turned out to be a tricky operation. I had to lower down the front, then the back while trying to keep the bike up straight but my own weight away. Next time, I'll opt for a simple solution.

Time for the real figures now. The scales measured the bike's weight distribution as being settled this way :

- 112kg rear

- 107kg front

And that's being without a battery and with a drained fuel tank. So with a additional 4kg battery the ZX7R sets a new record high of 223kg. There's room for improvement so let's start the diet plan.

New toy

The place on the bench couldn't be left empty for too long. After some time thinking about a new project, I went to see a couple of bikes, mainly sportbikes from the 1990 era. I seem to be stuck there, somewhere between 1992 and 1998. The more motorcycle-related things change, the more I want them to stay as they were back then. Modern, electronically-tempered motorcycles are not that much appealing ... 'til I change my mind, that is ...

Em ... long story short, I found this very nice and low mileage 1998 Kawasaki ZX7R. It's amazing for how little money this old glory can be bought nowadays. Yes, I know I've read this and that already : it's heavy, doesn't have the top end of a GSX-R, it's way too much green, and on ... But the thing is I've always had a soft spot for ZX7Rs and there's certainly potential for a nice build.

Did I mention this is the 20th motorcycle I own since I started riding in 2001 ? Wanna ride this one ?

Random from the archive

Abstract:

Back in 2005, I was looking for another project bike. I had already played with the idea of rebuilding a Kawasaki ZX7R P model in 2001, but stayed on the reasonable path and chose a ZX6R F model instead with co-builder Tom. When I heard there was one to sell at some new breaker I had not dealt with yet, I decided to pay the latter a visit and look at the stock. The bike you see on the picture is what I've been presented with as being the said ZX7R for sale. Of course I knew this was a damage bike - after all I was visiting a breaker - but this very bike was anything but a damaged repairable. Picture this, the side displayed here is the best of both. A close inspection revealed multiple deep dents on frame, swing arm and wheels, broken triple trees, bent subframe, smashed gas tank and torn downpipes and the list goes on and on. There were not enough recoverable parts to excuse the asked price. Every time I mention that breaker to someone who knows him, the same is always said about him : "he sells dogs for gold money".

PS : Some may also have observed the smashed 955i Speed Triple on the foreground. Nothing was salvageable on that one either.

Eric Bostrom's ZX7RR

I used to have this picture as a wallpaper on my computer at work 10 years ago. I remember thinking this picture as being motorcycle racing in one of its purest form. It had so many ingredients to look like the perfect picture : a focused rider, nice details (like the heat dissipation through the exhaust pipes) and a mythical factory bike. But the truth is the ZX-7RR was so far from the production bike and the later forms of this superbike racer was down on power compared to the competition.

In its last years of use, Kawasaki had no liter bike to put on the superbike grids and the ZX7-RR was the most developed factory race bike they had. Eric Bostrom made it looked like it was a real title contender with extreme lean angles and a lot of attitude. Unfortunately, it had no real chance to win anything but a green paint contest against the newer bikes, the likes of the R7, RC51 or the GSX-R 750.

Random from the archive

Abstract:

Circa 2005. Back then, we were waiting for our new house to be finished in a long term cottage. With the lack of any sort of workshop (not to mention a simple garage), motorcycle projects could have been stopped short but kept on thanks to cottage owner's kindness. The old farm had horse stables with a strange domed-roof extension. Despite being a rather high building, it had a low roof once inside and very narrow window holes. The owner had used it as an extra stables stall since he'd bought the place, but would have lent it for just a cleaning session. That's what I did and this is how I ended up building a 2003 Kawasaki ZX9R track bike in a WW1 bunker.

Kawasaki Z800

More plastic ? No thanks ... The new Kawasaki Z800 reminds me of those bad motorcycle caricatures ... Please Mr Kawasaki, update your styling.

Naked glories

I just love those old superbikes. They're literally oozing with race history and glorious memories.

Kawasaki ZXR750RR

Honda RC45

Ducati 888

Honda RC30

More monkeys

Looks like Monkey and pocket rocket customization is in fact a whole movement. Now look at these cute tiny replicas.

Both ape 80s Bol d'or glories like Honda RS1000 or Kawasaki 1135R.

Restoration to drool for

Click the link below if you want to drool looking at a ZX7RR restoration performed by a real fussy spoiled boy. Not only this rather rare bike receives the restoration treatment it deserves, but it also gets shiny tasty performance parts in the same process. Really nice to look at. Check it out here.

Goose frenzy

Hey what's up with the recent Jim Goose frenzy ? I've spoted at least 3 blogs publishing an entry about the man and his machine in the last 2 months. I want my part of the cake, so let's begin with a little introduction to understand what makes Goose so ... interesting.

Jim Goose is Max's mate in the first Mad Max movie. It' hasn't been seen a lot around here, because the movie was a bit too harsh when it was ready to be broadcasted on TV. How times have changed since ... Nowadays any of the top 5 TV channel could schedule it prime time without raising a single complaint.
Anyway, back to Jim and his bike. Jim is a member of the MFP, a local Police force in the movie. He's riding a Kawasaki (a Kwaka if you read close on the tank) KZ1000 with a very strange fairing and is burning tire at every of his starts. A few sequences show him lone riding his nice bike pretty fast on desertic roads. This solely would be enough to make this movie a classic to any motorcycle enthusiast.

Having not seen this movie for a while, I thought I had forgotten how cool Jim looked on his bike chasing hooligans riding fast japs. I know why Jim Goose and his bike deserve to be discussed somehow, but how come this happens now ? Has Mad Max been broadcasted recently ? This would be a simple but well enough explaination : as soon as the movie credits started scrolling, I remember having jumped on Yahoo (it was a while from now) and typed any keywords related to Goose and his Kwaka to find out how difficult it was to build one myself. Talk about attraction ...

Caiman show part 2

How time's fleeing sometimes ... I remember promising to post the second part of my picture coverage of the last Caiman show in Croix like it was yesterday. But it's been more than a month now and it's not online yet. Hopefully, there are still some highly motivated guys that will always remind me to post pictures. So here they are :

The last two ones are a great opportunity to push my own special reminder to a friend. Yvan do you remember you're having a KR1S rusting in your garage ? Don't waste too much time in your home's improvement ... and go back to a real project !! :D
Having said that, I may add a little more pressure by expecting you're getting close to this result with your bike ;)