Copyright (c) 2008 GoodMotorcycles.com
The GPZ900 has a curious reputation. When introduced in 1984 it was hailed as vastly better than the old air cooled fours, combining excellent performance with at least reasonable handling. Such was the balance of qualities of the machine that it is still available with minor changes to wheel sizes and suspension being the only necessary modifications to take it into the nineties. And yet, the pages of the UMG have in the past been full of stories of seized top ends and cooling problems. A great ride that could turn out expensive if you didn't know what you were doing.
Well, I didn't but I knew what I liked. On offer was a 1984 example with 5000 miles on the clock and one owner. The owner was at least reasonably honest, he explained that the 5000 miles was really 105,000 miles.....I had already gathered this because the machine was in a bit of a state. Faded and rusted paint, white alloy where the black had worn off the engine, a Motad exhaust that had holes in the silencer, back disc that was seized, front discs that were worn down to the metal, tyres down to the carcass.
The general air was one of a machine that had just about worn out. The engine ran, the bike accelerated with an outrageous urge to my CB500T trained mind, and steered with a precision that was shocking after all the old hacks I'd owned. The owner said it had a nearly new top end, cylinders and pistons at 60,000 miles but was otherwise untouched. The gearbox could have been called notchy but it was no problem to myself, used to Honda boxes with more neutrals than gears.
He wanted a thousand notes, I had half that! No deal but I left my phone number. Three weeks later he phoned, I had added another hundred notes to pile and it was mine! Then it was down to trekking around the breakers. It was quicker to swap wheels than rip tyres on and off. In fact, I swapped a whole front end with an '88 model which solved several major problems in one go. It cost £150 to solve all the problems and a weekend's hassle in the garage with a spray gun to get the bike looking like new.
The engine produces great gobs of torque at low revs, by the time seven grand are on the clock your helmet's being crushed into your face and your arm yanked out of your sockets. No one would believe the bike had only cost me £750. I kept rushing around with a huge grin on my face, whacking open the throttle and overtaking everything in sight. I quite often saw 150mph on the clock, which was 50% more than I could get out of any of my previous bikes. I was in a kind of heaven. Even the fuel consumption, at 45mpg, was no worse than many old hacks.
A month later I was not so happy. 1750 miles had worn out both tyres, nearly new Metzelers. The chain was shagged and there was a nasty clanking from the engine. A dealer balanced the carbs for £20 and the noise went away. After 2500 miles the front pads started clanging and I almost had a heart attack when I asked the local Kawasaki dealer how much a new set were - back to the breakers.
I do a lot of town work and hurling 500 odd pounds of GPZ was beginning to get tiresome. The bike was also a bit on the wide side and I often had to sit in traffic jams where previously I would slip through on a smaller bike. To cheer myself up, I started perfecting the art of wheelie-ing. Great fun, until I gave it a bit too much stick and the damn thing went so far back I thought my head was going to scrape along the tarmac. I quietened down a bit after that.
Wet weather work was no fun, I had to lope along at low revs, there was so much power that the back wheel would squirm all over the place if I tried to accelerate hard. I began to miss the joys of thrashing bikes to within an inch of their life. There was no way, unless you were completely insane, that you could ride the GPZ900 flat out everywhere.
I went on a long tour around the UK on the bike, packing 500 miles into every day. The bike itself was fine, comfortable, economical and able to cruise along at ridiculous speed, but it went through tyres, pads and chains so quickly that after three days on the road I had to start hunting around for replacements. I had been used to changing consumables every 12 to 15,000 miles not a tenth of that.
It soon became clear to me that if I wanted to do high mileages, for which the bike was ideally suited, there was no way I could afford to run it. If I wanted to just run around town it was quite reasonable on consumables but too big and heavy to be any real fun. A cheap GS125 came along and I started using that for local work, actually getting places faster because it was so much easier to run through the traffic jams. The GPZ sat, looking impressive, in my garage for most of the week, only taking to the road on sunny weekends.
Then the motor started misfiring. The ever helpful dealer diagnosed one of the black boxes on the way out and quoted almost as much as I had paid for the bikes. Breakers shook their heads sadly, not a chance sonny. Back to the dealer, the bike running decidedly poorly at low revs - did he want to make me an offer for it. By then it had 17500 miles on the clock, needed yet another set of consumables but at least looked pretty good. He offered £750 and we eventually agreed on a grand in used fifties.
The last I heard, he was advertising the bike as low mileage, only two owner, a snip at £2500. I bought a genuine low mileage CB650 with the money which I am happily thrashing everywhere and which is a lot cheaper to run.
Eric Williams
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I couldn't believe it was happening to me. Standing by the side of the road I surveyed the damage. It wasn't too bad, both right indicators smashed and the front brake lever bent. Except that two minutes before the GPZ900 had been immaculate, almost brand new. Worse, it wasn't mine and I'd been using it without the owner's permission!
It had started innocently enough with me calling on a mate and asking if I could use his garage and tools. As usual he was obliging but said that he'd be at work and would see me when he returned at four o'clock. I wanted to give my old SOHC (Seized Overhead Camshaft - the bugger did it twice) Honda a service and do the carbs.
I arrived at the house, which was empty but unlocked as usual and opened up the garage. Geoff had taken his car to work and left his collection of bikes at home. I knew what was there, of course, but I never failed to be impressed - and jealous. The guy who shared the house had a disgusting Yamaha XS250 Custom, which he was out on. He also had a Benelli 900/6 which he had recently crashed and broken his leg. The Benelli sat, minus exhaust and tank/seat unit in a corner of the garage, a sad sight. His brother's GT750 Kettle sat next to it, awaiting his master's return from somewhere in Africa.
My mate's collection was British, Italian and Japanese - he arguably had the best of each. A Triumph Trident, a Ducati 900SS and his latest buy a Kawasaki GPZ900. Lucky bastard, I thought, as I wheeled the Duke and GPZ out to make space to work on my tired old 750 Honda. It took less time than I'd thought to do the service, the tappets were okay, the carbs only took half an hour (it took half an hour to get the middle plugs out and back in again - nice one Mr Honda).
Replacing the tank on the Honda, I glanced over at the GPZ. The keys were in the ignition. As someone once said, I can resist anything except temptation. A matter of minutes saw the speedo drive disconnected and I was ready to go. As far as the nearest small village I let the engine warm up, but once past the 30mph limit I gave it as close to full welly as I dared. The straights just weren't long enough to hit maximum revs, but I must have reached 140mph.
Even more impressive than the speed and acceleration was the way it tracked smooth and easy round long sweeping bends at up to 120mph. To put it simply, it was fan-bloody-tastic. I had ridden a 1000cc Katana before and been impressed, but the 900 was better. Much better.
My downfall, literally, came as I swept out of a 100mph righthander on to a short straight. I spotted the tractor and trailer coming along a field toward the road and automatically backed off a bit and covered the brakes. I had the headlight on but the sod didn't look. As he trundled on to the road I went into emergency braking, bum clenched mode. I nearly stopped in time, the GPZ pulling up quicker from 90mph than my Honda could from 50mph but with both wheels locked and the back end sliding around, I thumped sideways into the trailer.
So there I was, surveying the damage and visualising what my mate, who is 6'5" and has the build to go with it, would do to me for this. I turned the air blue around the ears of the tractor driver but as with a lot of apparently dumb country folk he wasn't as daft as he looked. He knew I'd been speeding and as threats of violence were out of the question (there were two large yokels riding in the trailer, grinning from ear to ear) he chugged off, leaving me to consider my fate.
I checked my watch. It was five to three. I might just make the 30 mile round trip to the Kawasaki shop and fit the bits, if nothing went wrong. I jumped on the slightly battered bike and screamed up the road. A mile or so up the road I made a very rude gesture as I passed the tractor.
There wasn't a lot of traffic, which was just as well as the speed didn't drop below 100mph very much, even through several small villages on the way into Aberdeen, where I rode like a demented despatch rider using every trick in the book. Overtaking on the inside, ignoring keep left signs and bulldozing oncoming traffic out of the way. Threading my way to the front of a traffic light queue, I ended up between a Porsche and three litre Capri, both of whose drivers saw this as a personal insult.
While they revved their engines in a macho manner, I hotshot the lights on amber, slipping the clutch to feed in 7000 revs and pulled the biggest wheelie ever done by accident as well. The big GPZ was on the other side of the junction before the two cars had moved. I crashed through the door of the Kawasaki shop, leaving the GPZ on the pavement outside, shaking like a leaf and wild eyed with adrenalin charged excitement.
The guy behind the spares counter and the two waiting customers froze and watched with slack jaws as I sprinted up to the counter. Briefly and breathlessly I explained the situation and pleaded to be allowed to jump the queue. The two customers agreed and the man started beavering through his files and computer while I hopped up and down, filling in the details to the two guys waiting.
Luckily, they had the parts in stock, and wincing a bit at the price, I bounced a cheque across the counter, stuffed the bits down my jacket and with a shouted thanks ran from the shop. The journey back was relatively uneventful, it took about 12 minutes to cover the 15 miles, almost half of which was through built up areas. I could almost feel my licence quivering in anticipation of more points being slapped on. A copper with a radar gun could have collared his fastest ever speeder that day.
Screeching to a halt outside the garage I checked my watch: 3.30. Great, I could do it. As I started to unbolt the broken indicator the fan on the bike switched on and started to cool down an almost overheated engine. Frantically spannering away, I muttered fervent prayers that it would cool enough not to arose suspicion by the time its owner arrived. Then I'd done it! I even remembered to reconnect the speedo. With minutes to spare, I picked up the 750's tank, suddenly realising I must have used a couple of gallons on the GPZ. He was sure to spot that. There wasn't enough in the Honda, but I raided the Benelli - it wouldn't be moving for a while.
I just had time to put the Benelli tank back before he arrived
'Managed it all alright, then?'
He never did think much of my mechanical abilities. 'Yeah, no problems,' I lied. He noticed something odd in my appearance and said,
'What's up with you, you're shaking like a goat shitting a soup tin?'
I blurted out a tale of taking the 750 out for a spin to see how it was running, and some blind bastard pulling out and nearly killing me, which was true enough apart from a minor detail. What's more, he believed me, 'cos I'm still alive.
Mike Moore
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I bought a 1986 Kawasaki GPZ750 with the intention of using it as a long distance tourer. 26000 miles of abuse by just two owners and £1800, made, to my mind, a reasonably good buy, especially as the local dealer wanted £2750 for a similar bike. It pays to buy private even if it means running around a lot, wasting time looking at thrashed machines and having to be a bit flexible in choice of bike.
The 750 is basically similar to the GPZ900, a machine, in its time, famed as much for its chassis as its four cylinder, watercooled engine. The 900 was once a leading sports machine but now has been redefined as a sports-tourer. So successful was the bigger four that the 750 sold only in small numbers, its combination of 85 horses and 490lbs rather less attractive than the 900's 115hp and 500lbs.
85hp was quite enough for me, even if the 750 needed a bit of action on the throttle to make it really move and a change down from top gear if some exciting acceleration was needed to take a line of cars at say 70mph. The aerodynamics of the bike were good, though, allowing the speedo to play with 145mph, maintaining just about any cruising speed under that, so it was never, once it got its sails up, a slow bike.
It is a complex one, with watercooling, 16 valves, four carbs and a complex array of black boxes. Kawasaki are not famed for the durability of their ignition systems, so before I did anything else all the electrical stuff was given extra rubber mounting. The battery was found to be lacking in acid, with a bit of white corrosion around the terminals. It was then three years old so I thought I'd play a safe hand by replacing it. Further experience revealed that an eye had to be kept on the level as acid would burn off at the approximate rate of 10mm every 500 miles.
The switches were easy to use but they got a dose of WD40 just to be on the safe side. The front headlamp was well up to 70mph jaunts down country lanes at night but the rear lamp blew twice in the initial 500 miles. This caused by a dodgy earth connection rather than the vibes that came in at 5500 to 6500rpm. A direct wire from lamp to battery solved that one. I bought some bulbs just to be prepared but, typically, never had to use them in real life.
As I intended to use the bike for long distance touring, with as much as 750 miles in a day, I took off on some milder excursions to test the water. The seat didn't impress after the first 150 miles but the riding position was on a par with one of the older boxer twins (ie excellent) and smooth cruising at around the ton on motorways proved a cinch. I sent the seat away to be recovered and upholstered, the returned article providing vastly superior comfort.
The engine wasn't ideal for really long distance work as a bit too much effort was needed on the gearbox, itself not the smoothest and slickest item in the known universe. Better under acceleration than changing down but trying to pull away in top from 40mph with any suddenness on the throttle had the transmission leaping around, making some most disturbing noises. The engine never ran entirely cleanly on the carbs, only when there was a bit of dampness in the atmosphere did it run with any fluidity. On really cold mornings it seemed to be seizing up, only just stopping itself from cutting out; early Kawasaki fours being famous for carb icing but it wasn't that cold and the bike was supposed to have been modified.
The engine certainly gave every indication of running very lean. In Europe, careering around the mountain passes the temperature gauge went deep into the red only reviving when I pulled over and switched off the motor, the electric fan swirling away furiously. In the high passes it would run okay for ten to fifteen minutes until the thin air caused the engine to overheat again. Through miraculous hairpin bends with sheer drops I had my heart racing as the massive mass of the Kawasaki threatened to let loose on the dubious road surface.
Coming back down to normal altitudes, the Kawasaki coughed a couple of times and then ran away with the throttle as the engine ran fine and hard. I almost melted the disc pulling up for the next set of curves, which twisted every which way and by the end of them I was down to 25mph with shoulders that felt like they'd been dislocated. It was only afterwards, when I caught my breath, and my heart beat had returned to normal, that I revelled in the sheer buzz of it.
The big fat Metz's were worn out in 3500 miles of high speed abuse. This led to some amusement finding a shop that sold replacements where the Frogs spoke enough English to understand my strange needs. Buying from motorcycle shops cost twice the mail order price in the UK but fitting and coffee were thrown in for free. On worn tyres it didn't feel safe above 70mph, a real downer as I relied on fast cruising to break the back of my need for high miles, wanting to visit France, Spain, Portugal and Italy in a few weeks.
The expensive O-ring chain was much more impressive, hardly ever needing any attention and lasting for well over 10,000 miles. The pads were okay as well, but mainly because on the high speed bashes I rarely used them, relying more on looking where I was going and backing off the throttle. Save when some lunatic tried to run me off the road with sudden brutality. Then the brakes were harsh enough to lock up the suspension and squeal the wheels. Saved my life about three times.
And one time not even the brakes were enough. It happened on an Italian autostrada when I was roaring along at 90mph and some Wop lunatic shot out in front of me, joining the motorway at 70mph, or so, from the slip road. I caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, had time to lose maybe half my speed before the side of his car hit my bike. I went flying into a chorus of horns as the cagers behind tried to avoid running me down. I was wearing full leathers and some body armour, having suffered bruising and gravel rash in my youth, and as I rolled between a couple of cars I thanked god for having such foresight. By some minor miracle I came to a rest next to the central barrier, grabbing hold of it as I spewed my guts out.
The bike had wrecked its fairing on both sides, crushed the silencers and lost mirrors, indicators and most of its paint. There seemed to be about twenty cars that had piled into the back of each other, a thousand Wops who were screaming at each other, waving their hands around like Ken Dodd on speed, and a million wailing police cars and ambulances suddenly descending on the chaos. By the time the first plod had reached the scene I'd pulled the GPZ750 upright to stop all the water, oil and fuel pouring out. An act of charity that caused the policeman to go berserk, waving his pistol under my chin and screaming incomprehensible Italian at me. It was only then, as the shock was wearing off, that I realised why he was holding his nose, the violence of my departure from the seat had made me shit myself.....
About a week later I was let out of the jail, after beating the shit out of a couple of amorous perverts, and allowed to push the Kawasaki out of the pound. Exactly what happened I'm not sure but it seemed like a good idea to get out of town as fast as possible. This involved tearing off great chunks of plastic, using six rolls of insulation tape to hold important bits together and fitting a Fiat 500 headlamp on to the front of the bike (it was the nearest car and it popped out with a few taps of the hammer, he had two after all).
In this state I continued the trek home, having already covered 7000 miles on the GPZ. Speed was restricted to about 60mph as the frame went into frightening wobbles above that, down to slightly bent and twisted forks. After a while I just dumped the bike in third, relying for most of the time on engine braking as the forks tried to jump out of the yokes every time I used the twin discs and the back brake had been cracked in the crash!
This nerve destroying journey took about a week as my durability had been shattered by the bruises from the crash and the terrible time in jail. Leaving Italy I gave them a reverse Winston and have no intention of going there ever again. Back home I set to the bike in a frenzy of activity, picking up GPZ900 parts cheaply as the bigger bike usually blows its engine before 50,000 miles, so there are loads of chassis bits on offer.
Resurrected, I seemed to have lost my nerve, cursing the machine's heft, sure in my mind that had it been 100lbs lighter I would've had a chance of throwing it out of the way of the speeding car. Taking a job in Central London meant the bike was as suitable to the daily commute as using a Yamaha Townmate to do long distance touring. After a week the temperature gauge stayed firmly in the red despite the fan making more noise than the engine. I was tempted to ignore it, run the bugger into the ground as an act of retribution, but dripping coolant was making a mess of the garage floor so I put in a new length of hose to replace the torn original.
After a month of commuting hassle I decided the bike would have to go, so I asked at a nearby DR office if anyone was interested and almost caused a fight amongst potential purchasers. I went for the one who carried the ready cash in his underwear. He tested the GPZ by doing a hundred yard wheelie, crashing down on the straightened forks and then burning off half a layer of rubber with a 180 degree turn. As it didn't fall apart under him or blow up it was obviously alright and a deal was struck that made the pair of us happy. I later learnt the bike spat him off on a greasy road and he landed up in hospital with multiple fractures. The bike was a write-off that no-one wanted to buy back. A fitting end!
Rick Trench
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Cresting the rise I almost dropped a load. Coming towards me was a huge horsebox, so wide it was tearing off the hedgerow on each side of the country road. I was airborne at about 60mph; even if I wanted to I couldn't stop. Moments passed, suddenly both wheels hit the deck and I grabbed everything there was to grab. All I could do was twitch the bars, use the hedge to lose even more speed.
The GPZ has a pretty comprehensive fairing. After the front wheel carved a path through the dense foliage, the GRP took the brunt of the force. A few branches tried to whiplash my helmet but I got my head down. The bars were doing an almighty twitch in my hands as the front wheel dug into the soft earth on the other side of the hedge. I ended up wedged in the middle of the bush, the foliage trying to close up around us.
I felt the horsebox sweep past, not bothering to stop. I could see the cows in the field trotting over to have a look at the curious thing that had suddenly come into their midst. I gingerly levered myself off the Kawasaki, forced my way backwards. The GPZ remained upright, as reluctant to fall over as it was to come out of the hedge.
It was a hell of a way to start life with a new motorcycle. I thought I'd just got the bargain of the year. A 1986 model for £1275. I'd been having immense fun hustling the 450lb machine down a bit of country road I thought I knew like the back of my hand. Now, look at me, screaming abuse and wrecking my back trying to pull the bugger out. I just knew its immaculate finish would be ruined. A lesser man would've burst into tears! It gave an inch, then shot out of the hedge so fast I fell over backwards and the machine went sideways. Took out an indicator and brake lever. Now I knew exactly what a bike looked like when it'd been dragged through a hedge backwards.
Riding home at a much reduced pace, in line with my shaking form and blitzed brain, the GPZ didn't really feel too happy. The engine shared enough of its ancestor's design to have the same paucity of midrange as the GPz550. The extra capacity had gone to produce even more power, the watercooling ensuring that the reliability gained for the air cooled fours would not be easily lost. If the engine would run down to low revs in top gear, it'd required slicing down the box two or three ratios before it'd produce acceleration in line with its flash style and cubic capacity.
The chassis was similarly better at the high end of the speed range, at the low rate of knots I was doing the front wheel felt imprecise. If the steering was easy the stability was quirky, tending to follow the contour of bumps and whitelines with a fidelity that was more reminiscent of a lightweight 250 than a middleweight four. My shaking hands were amplified by the bars into a disturbing twitch that in my state of mind convinced me that the front wheel was about to fall off or at the very least was dented.
Once home I hid the bike away in the garage, not wanting to admit to the wife that I'd had an accident within an hour of buying the machine. The next day, when I'd recovered, the bike rode much steadier and I began to think that 16 inch wheels were, after all, a bit of alright. I soon changed my mind when coming home I almost slid off when the rain started hitting the streets. The front tyre was an almost worn out Metz with suicidal tendencies every time I banked over.
I didn't like the feedback from the tyres in the rain at all. A set of Michelin radials (120/80x16 & 160/80x16) all but totally transformed the feel of the bike in the wet and took away a lot of the twitchiness in the dry. The only time it really threatened to let loose was when a large bump was hit at over 80mph. Then the bars would try to tear my wrists off the end of my arms. It soon died down but was violent enough to stain underpants.
Once I'd become used to the bike, a whole group of us, on 600 fours, went for a Continental blast. This consisted of mostly German autobahns where we played silly buggers, cruising at 100 to120mph for hours on end. Really crazy to be able to behave like total lunatics without fear of licence confiscation. Autobahn surfaces were very smooth, the GPZ not even showing signs of the mildest of weaves. I had great fun playing with the throttle for brief bursts of top speed testing - 145mph was the most I extracted. Fuel hovered around 30mpg, although UK riding turned in a much more reasonable 50mpg.
Apart from some high frequency vibration, the engine was not worried by the frenzied riding; if anything the harder it was revved the better it felt. The chassis was not quite so invincible, with a couple of bolts rattling loose and the brakes became so hot I'm sure they'd glow deep red in the dark; the headlamp wasn't up to more than 70mph so I never got the chance to find out.
Those high frequency vibes would get to my hands after about four hours. That was tolerable but not when the buzzing also took out the CDI unit 50 miles outside Berlin. My mates took turns towing me, not something that I'd want to repeat. We were all out of our minds when we got to Berlin, which was our excuse for getting drunk out of our heads and gorging ourselves on the nightlife. A mate in the UK was telephoned and dispatched to a breaker to buy a replacement, only took a day to get to us. CDI units are a bit notorious for blowing, the best solution is to carry a spare one at all times!
One thing had I noticed, that though the bike could be swung into single bends with aplomb, taking a series of S-bends was much harder work and the only alternative to slowing down was wasting most of the one's life working out to gain extra muscle. I could only think that the suspension was becoming coil-bound, producing a change in geometry that turned a light steering bike into a heavy old wheelbarrow. Or, perhaps, I just haven't developed the correct technique.
I always used to come out of the last bend in second gear, with the revs touching 10,000 and the front wheel pawing the air. By then my friends had disappeared down the road and I had to pump my way through the excellent gearbox with the throttle held wide open. Clutchless changes made only a minor amount of lurching in the transmission and hardly any crunching noises.
It may have been this abuse that led to a noisy clutch with 38000 miles on the clock. I tore the engine case off to find that the plate flanges were burred and everything felt very loose. The clutches aren't really up to continuous full power abuse and are quite rare in breakers. It took me about twenty calls to track one down. Whilst I was down amongst the engine I'd found one of the water hoses was leaking, the coolant a murky colour. Probably hadn't been changes from new, so I stopped the leak and put in some new fluid.
It didn't help with the starting, which had always been a tentative business with much juggling of the choke lever to help the engine catch as it churned over on the starter. I found a new set of spark plugs every 5000 miles helped a lot. Once or twice, on really cold winter days I had to resort to a bump start.
Winter blitzed the finish, corroded the calipers and showed all the plastic up as giving sod all protection. I'd have been better off on a naked bike. The exhaust was showing signs of going wafer thin in places as 43000 miles were clocked up. Blown baffles made slight hesitations in the carburation the norm rather than the exception, the bike being a real bugger until warmed up. As most of my commuting was in town I found myself changing the oil every 500 miles to stop it going murky white.
The front forks joined in with the jerkiness when the anti-dive decided to misbehave, but it was much easier to remove it than it was to get the wheels all polished up and looking nice again. Just about every fastener had come out in a rash of rust and by the time the first glimmer of spring came the silencers were dragging along the ground. Luckily, the breaker came up with decent replacements; the rest dealt with by elbow grease and Solvol.
I wasn't that impressed by the way it was falling apart before my eyes with less than 50,000 miles clocked up. A mate was selling his CBR600 and I wanted it something rotten. I sold the GPZ for what I paid for it originally so it was a pretty good deal.
John Cullasy
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I knew the history of the 1988 GPZ900 very well indeed and shouldn't really have bought it! It had been owned by two cousins, both the kind of manic DR's who weren't happy unless they had the front wheel way up in the air and whose idea of maintenance was topping up the oil once a week. That all added up to 18 months and 96000 miles of abuse and neglect.
The GPZ hadn't survived unscathed. Two camchains had gone west and a used cylinder head was fitted at 45000 miles, all jobs done by a back street mechanic with gorilla hands and brute force mentality but he was cheap and quick, both necessities as far as DR work goes.
I'm not a despatch rider, intending to use the Kawasaki as a long distance tourer. Typically, all the consumables were just about to expire, it desperately needed a respray and all the alloy was too far gone to ever bother trying to reclaim. Why bother? Well it was very cheap. Enough said.
Being as mean as I am astute, I rushed around the breakers collecting a great pile of parts; not just consumables but also a newish petrol tank, guards and front forks, which had become so soggy that every time I touched the front brake lever it felt just like an old C50 (which still occupies space in my garage) with worn out front linkages - in other words an accident looking for somewhere to happen.
With the C50 such madness doesn't really matter because it's so light and low powered, but with the big Kawasaki any weakness in the suspension is amplified way out of proportion by its 500lbs and 115 horses. My cousins reckoned they could ride through all the madness and come out at the end of the day with a big pay check - they quickly forgot to mention the ten's of times they had fallen off.
After fitting all the new bits, persuading a friend to wave a spray gun over the cycle parts (gloss black) and paying out silly money for third party insurance, I was all ready for a bit of speed testing. The engine seemed reluctant to join in the fun, with an excess of stuttering and surging at 8000 revs in the taller two ratios. The transmission sort of gurgled and vibrated at higher revs and the secondary buzzing was much stronger than I'd expect from a modern watercooled four cylinder mill.
I suspected the decidedly non-standard four into one exhaust system, devoid as it was of both chrome and baffles but the cause consisted of worn out carbs which were impossible to balance. Absent was any sign of the excess of tubing needed to avoid carb icing. Another visit to the breaker was in order but that had to wait two months before I had some spare cash; not that problematic because it would still do more than the ton; only the 25 to 30mpg lack of frugality limited my enjoyment of the GPZ900 experience.
The newish set of carbs proved fiendishly difficult to fit but a couple of days spent hitting, tugging and swearing at them had the plot together once again. Silly Billy. The whole experience had to be repeated again when I realised I'd need to swap the jets over, as the stock set-up would not run above 5000 revs with the almost open exhaust system.
Even with everything set up to perfection, top speed was a disappointing 135mph, although given the way it weaved and wobbled it was perhaps better that I didn't break through the magic 150mph barrier. By then the motor had done a credible mileage, in excess of a 100,000! That probably explains why cruising at 120mph for an hour reduced the fairing to several separate pieces that threatened to splatter all over the road. I got home in one piece but any easy repair was beyond my resources and a used replacement in the wrong colour was fitted.
I shouldn't have bothered, a week later one of my cousins borrowed the GPZ for his despatching chores, fell off three times before returning the bruised heap. The fairing had three large cracks but I managed to repair them with GRP and got the cousin to pay to have it painted gloss black.
To my mind, the GPZ's rather too heavy and wide to hurtle through town at a decent clip, but they are tough old beasts that can take the odd clash with a cage without falling apart. Acceleration's blistering with a bit of gearbox and throttle abuse and braking's in stoppies' country. Given the mileage, the gearchange action's okay, although it's been through three sets of clutch plates in its time.
One of the best and worst things about motorcycling is riding around in a pack. The downside is that I often end up riding a little faster than I'd really like....which brings us to the mega thrash up the M1 at 135mph for most of the time. It took about 90 minutes of this abuse for the engine to seize solid!
Until the chain snapped the bike went into an almighty slide and wobble that melted half the back tyre, almost broke my arms and left my gang of fellow miscreants dazed and disbelieving. I was still shaking with the shock of coming out of it in one piece and not dropping the thing - it later did my credibility in pub yarns no harm whatsoever!
The craziest guy in our bunch started to attach a rope between the GPZ and his hot-rod XS1100, looking mildly annoyed to find me rolling on the floor, gibbering and begging for mercy, chanting the AA, the AA. A compromise was reached, I'd subject myself to being towed to the nearest services where we'd wait for the rescue vehicle. The longest six miles in my life - thank god and the road planners that there weren't any bends!
A newish engine was obviously needed, once safely back home. A motor of the same vintage but out of a crashed bike with a mere 9000 miles on the clock was secured and fitted with a surprising speed and ease. Immediately, I went off for a bit of speed testing - 155mph but some quite vile weaves that had me backing off quickly.
Tyres were always a problem with the GPZ. Not that there wasn't a wide choice of quality rubber but that less than 5000, sometimes as little as 3000, miles had them down to 1mm, such lack of tread making the bike impossible to ride above 90mph. The newer engine was doing 40 to 45mpg under a less than fanatical right wrist, which given its size and power was almost acceptable.
Comfort on long rides was reasonable, taking about 250 miles before I started swearing. A mixture of secondary vibes and a seat turning rock hard were the main limitations rather than the riding position which was quite good. For six months of the year, when the weather was good, I rather enjoyed myself on the GPZ but when it started getting cold and wet I became pissed off with the lack of protection from the fairing and the willingness of the back tyre to slide all over the place. The camchain had also begun to rattle, a fairly constant chore on GPZ900s.
The bike, being resprayed, didn't look half bad and I had no trouble, despite the slight rattle, off-loading it at a reasonable price. I had plenty of kicks from riding the Kawasaki, it was fairly versatile and apart from the seizure never let me down on the open road. The engine's not the toughest in the world, especially in earlier incarnations, but there are plenty of low mileage examples in breakers. The GPZ isn't a natural first choice but its combinations of qualities makes it viable in any number of guises.
Donald Osborne
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In theory I had no chance against my mates on CBR, ZZR and FZR 600's. I was down on top speed by at least 10mph, acceleration wasn't anywhere near as mind blurring and handling was way inferior. But where there's a will there's a way. Effectively, this meant riding like a lunatic, stringing the watercooled, four cylinder mill along at maximum revs.
Neither the clutch nor the gearbox were too happy about my throttle to the stop changes, though the latter always crunched home. Just as well, as a missed change would've had the revs soaring to 15 thou and the engine internals exploding. An example of what I got away with - on one Continental outing, I slip-streamed the CBR600 and with the aid of a following gale and downhill stretch put 150mph on the (somewhat optimistic) clock. The secondary vibes had the bars trying to leap out of my hands and the tank thrumming away like some vile old piledriver of a British twin.
When we pulled in for some fuel, shuffling around like bent old men with eyes out on stalks and hands shaking like amphetamine addicts (is that why they call it speed?), the normally civilised and reliable GPZ mill stopped with an ominous clang, the temperature gauge going off the dial! My mates laughed at the vision of me pushing the thing the 1500 miles home, reassured that spending twice the money on their steeds was, indeed, money well spent. They were disappointed when she started up after fifteen minutes of cooling and prayers.
This kind of madness went on for nearly 20,000 miles. With 36k on the clock, there was a symphony of ringing noises, diagnosed as everything from shot main bearings to a disintegrating camchain tensioner; various dealers trying to get the bike cheap so they could bodge it and sell on at a large profit. I hoped it was just the clutch which was slipping at high revs and making the thing impossible to run below 3000rpm.
On examination, the drum's bearing was shagged, the plates warped and there was a lot of slop in the clutch mechanism. I annoyed a couple of breakers until one handed over a complete drum and mechanism for £30. I'd been quoted £125, so hanging out for the good deal obviously pays.
Unfortunately, the engine still clattered and rung away like there was no tomorrow. Yep, it was the good old camchain and tensioner duet...no point buying old or pattern stuff, so I handed over £200 to the local Kawasaki dealer for parts and labour.
The motor rustled rather than rattled, the rate at which the tacho spun around the dial well wicked. Only problem was when I changed the oil 2000 miles later, there was half a link sitting in the sump plug! I went back to the dealer, ranted and raved in front of some well off customers. The mechanic reckoned part of the old one must've come off before he got his hands on it! That sent me ballistic, the dealer only got rid of me by crossing my palm with five tenners. It pays to make a lot of noise!
The engine didn't appear to suffer any trauma, regularly being caned along at 140mph. Cut and thrust riding at this speed brought in some brake fade from the triple discs, which ended up hot enough to fry eggs and used to have steam pouring off them in the wet. On Metz tyres it felt really secure in the wet, encouraging me to keep the pace up, though when the front tyre went down to 3mm it became very twitchy. It was never less than fast turning, which kept the more modern replicas worried.
It was, however, in the wet that I first came off. Wet? It was blizzard conditions, a veritable snowstorm with the odd patch of black ice obscured by the terrible conditions. That's my excuse, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. I'm riding along at a moderate 50mph on the motorway, when the front end threw a massive wobbly. Instinctively, I grappled with the bars but was too slow, the front wheel seemed to dig in and off I went.
Luckily, I was in the slow lane at the time and my somersault happened on the hard shoulder. I caught a few glimpses of the Kawa tearing into the tarmac, but it wasn't until I came to a painful halt that I realised it'd had bumped into a couple of cages which in turn had spun on the ice-rink like surface, causing a mini pile-up. Only the lightness of the traffic stopped it turning into front page news.
I was winded and bruised, my leathers ripped and torn (which was better than having my flesh go the same way), whilst the Kawa had left a trail of broken plastic, scarred metal and shattered indicators. Out of nowhere, cop cars and ambulances turned up, I was frogmarched into the latter until I told them there was no way I was going to pay for being rescued. I was turfed out pronto, my space taken by a couple of shocked, crying cagers. Seemed like a good day's work to me.
I rode around on the Kawasaki without its plastic for a while, but it wasn't an attractive device naked and battered, worth sod all. Again, breakers were visited, front end traumas common enough to have a large supply of broken, scarred plastic. I found something I could repair for fifty quid plus newish bars, silencers and indicators for £45. A DIY spray job in green came out okay save that the shade made people stick fingers down their throat and go into various convolutions every time I parked up in town. No taste, some people!
With about sixty thou on the clock performance did a runner. I traced this to the carbs, which was a relief as I thought the engine might be worn out. They were full of a horrible brown gunge, probably from the unleaded petrol. Whatever it was it'd be ideal as a coating for space craft as nothing I tried shifted it. Eighty quid acquired a newish set of carbs which could actually be balanced properly.
Less vibration, the former zap reinstated and fuel improved from 35 to 50mpg, so they paid for themselves. Only hassle was that I almost destroyed the airfilter box fitting them. Also, they needed a balance every 800 miles. Rather an intrusion as I left the valves for 10,000 miles at a time without anything going down. I put on a new O-ring chain and sprocket set every 15000 miles (if I ignored the sprockets the chain would die in less than 5000 miles). Tyres were needed every 6000 to 7000 miles. It added up to the same kind of running costs as the more modern replicas - ie, it was better not to think about it too much, just enjoy!
In two years I ran the motor up to 80,000 miles. Towards the end of my tenure, I kept falling off! Silly stuff, coming off in town on dodgy surfaces and whacking into cars which suddenly went berserk in heavy traffic. My paint job and a lot of the plastic was heavily bruised. What really threw me, though, was heavy chattering from the front end and an excess of clunking when I braked heavily...the alloy wheel was cracking up around the hub! I knew I shouldn't have run straight across a roundabout!
Front wheels are somewhat rare. One happy breaker/bodger offered to wave his magic wand at the wheel but I don't think he was up to the art of alloy welding. Fill with plastic metal, paint and off-load on the local dealer had its appeal (he had a mint CBR600 on offer at 3k). As the forks were shot as well, I succumbed to his offer of a complete front for £150 off a GPZ900, which he'd fit for free.
What I didn't realise was that this would result in a subtle change in steering geometry. Subtle in so far as it looked the same to me but not in the least obscure about the way the front wheel wanted to tuck in on corners. At least the wheel wasn't likely to explode into a million of pieces.
I'd had enough, anyway, and got £1600 against the CBR, which I thought was pretty good. The dealer shifted the GPZ for £2250 but only after clocking it back to 19 thou and doing a quick respray. Alas, I soon realised he'd done a similar trick to my CBR, it wasn't anywhere near as fast as my mate's, wasn't much better than the GPZ. Still, I sold it for £2800 and bought a ZXR-7 for £3300. I was finally ahead of the game.
D.L.
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It is easy to get carried away on devices like the Kawasaki GPZ900. Carried away in an ambulance sometimes! I was charging along the motorway on a ten year old sample that sported 92000 miles on the clock. The actual mileage was more because I knew one owner who wrote off the front end some six years ago. The Fen community's small and little escapes scrutiny. So the speedo was only six years old.
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, 135mph on the M1, going for a bit more speed to get past a lumbering Merc 500. I reassured myself that such Teutonic monsters were far too expensive for our cash strapped police force. At that kind of speed the GPZ's quite stable but tingles a bit through the bars and pegs. Pushing through the 140mph mark, head down, two things happened at once. The handlebars began a gentle, minor, oscillation and a heavy vibration assaulted me at all points of contact. All speed merchants know how to deal with weaves, speed through them! Ignoring the vibration, I tried to slam the throttle open only to find that it was already against the stop.
Coming level with the Merc I then found my speed was falling off. Couldn't have that, could we? Dropped down a gear with the throttle to the stop. That was when the motor protested by locking up solid. Remember, that the front bars were still oscillating. Now I had the back end locked up solid, skidding all over the place. Brown trouser time! As a cure for constipation it was brilliant. I calmed the back end down by hitting on the clutch lever and fought back against the bars whilst slamming on the brakes. The bike viciously slewed sideways.
Fortunately, the Merc driver had the good sense to clear off pronto and the bike veered towards the hard shoulder not the armco barrier. The Gods smiled on me! Well, sort of. I was a 120 miles from home with a pile of noxious muck in my underwear and a seized solid GPZ900 that actually seemed warped, leaking both coolant and oil all over her majesty's pristine highway. Dump the underwear first then hike it to the telephone and plead with the AA to get there pronto. I didn't feel at all well, my body battered after the fight with chassis and smelling like an Arab shithouse didn't help much. Hard to explain to the lady over the phone who was muttering about single ladies coming first and macho motorcyclists having to wait their turn. 25 minutes wasn't bad going, I suppose.
A week or so later I finally felt up to hauling the big, watercooled four cylinder motor out of its spine frame. A two man job unless you want to ruin your back. The cylinder head gave the first clue as to the engine's demise, as in bent valves and broken springs. Not to mention odd looking camshaft lobes. The pistons and bores were similarly dead. The gearbox always gave the impression of having been crafted by Russians (ex-Ur(in)al workers) with a grudge, so there was very little in the engine that could be salvaged.
Not to worry, six hundred sovs acquired a shiny three year old motor that was heard running. Putting a prime bit of engineering into a relatively worn out chassis might not be to everyone's taste, but I was soon exulting in the new power unit. I'd long taught myself to ignore intimations of calamity - if it didn't actually stop forward progress then it wasn't worth worrying over. Was it?
The new engine was good for 160mph on the clock. The mileometer and speedo shocked by this unheard of velocity promptly died a death on me. That was how I came to have a 130,000 miler with just 8000 miles up, thanks again to the local breaker who had an excess of GPZ cycle parts he didn't really want. Handling and braking were a bit on the vicious side but nothing a real biker couldn't hustle.
The GPZ was rated as brilliant when it first came out but was soon downgraded to tourer status when lighter and faster rivals made an appearance. It is heavy at 500lbs but seems to carry the weight a lot easier than the older style, air cooled multi's. I'm not sure, though, what any tourers are doing riding a 115hp motorcycle that likes a bit of snappiness on the throttle and goes through fuel and consumables like there's no tomorrow.
Three weeks after putting the GPZ900 back on the road another disaster struck. I was rapidly running out of clean underwear. Gliding through the Fens at my normal moderate velocity of 90 to 100mph, able to see for miles ahead, I was one with the world, full of joy and happiness. Up my rear a GSXR1100 hurtled at unbelievable velocity, at least 150mph on its clock. Of course I had to give chase. Whilst concentrating on his back light I missed a car careering along a right-hand side road.
I saw him pulling out in front of me at the final moment. My speedo, at the last glance, showed 135mph, and accelerating! Hit the bastard at that kind of speed, it'd cut his cage in half and kill me dead into the bargain. I had to whack the Kawasaki to the left and try to weave around him. If I tried to brake it would've just left more car in the way to hit. At one point, I thought I was actually going to make it but, no, the GPZ starts to dance its handlebars, which in turn makes the front wheel hit the grass verge. Charging off the road at 140mph is not something you want to do!
As a trail bike the GPZ's a waste of space. The soft ground and my panic braking dissipated a lot of the velocity but the bike was all over the place like some bellowing, dying buffalo. I hung on for as long as possible but in the end didn't fancy breaking all my limbs just to save the old bastard. I rolled off the bike as it started to go sideways, kicked myself clear. The ground was soft and I rolled with the fall. Survived except for a layer of mud and more muck in me undies.
The bike looked like it had fallen off the side of a cliff into a den of enraged gorillas who proceeded to beat the shit out of it with the largest rocks to hand. Despite all the cycle parts being ruined the wheels, forks and frame were still straight. In fact, I was able to ride it the fifteen miles home! As it was my only valuable possession in the whole world, I couldn't easily abandon it, could I? Patched and filled what I could, replaced the other parts from the breaker, who always asked me, for some reason, what had I done now!
Not being entirely thick, despite what you might think, I decided that it was time to move on. Pushing the GPZ900 to the limit revealed a rather less laudatory bike than what the glossies reckoned. On the good side, they aren't too expensive, there's loads of cheap used bits to keep them running and they will give even modern replicas a run for their money - if you're got a bit of craziness running deep within your veins. I ended up with a stripped down GSXR1100 that likes to loop the loop and generally scares the shit out of me. More underwear, mum!
Lance Driscol
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Sing, baby, sing. The particular melody of desire was the GPZ coming on cam in third gear, throttle hammered to the stop, and crazy, crazy, seemingly limitless, acceleration. We have take off! 120 horses hide under the somewhat dated and heavy chassis, and do they make mincemeat out of UK roads! The GPZ's thoroughly illegal, irresponsible and pretty nasty. 100mph, the thing's just ticking over in top, not really into the heavy power. 150mph cruising's entirely possible, with an ultimate top speed of 165mph. For a 1988 machine that only cost two grand this is pretty neat stuff.
'Course, it ain't all roses. Never is, is it? Below six grand, particularly between 4000 and 6000rpm, there's a lot of stuttering and muttering from the motor, especially if unleaded's used, but in its way this makes the outrageous surge of power all the more prominent. Yes, officer, I really did need to scream through town at ten thousand revs in first gear, it was the only way to make the bike run smoothly. What? That's five hundred quid in fines and a written off licence. Oh dear, it was just as well I didn't stop, then, wasn't it?
As mentioned, the old Sumo wrestler weighs in at 530lbs, and a lot of that weight is high up, making it, at best, an awkward old dowager at the lower end of the speed range, and pretty nasty when going fast if run on anything other than perfect bearings, suspension and rubber.
Even when everything is set up to perfection, it's easy to lose the back end under the sheer excess of available power and the front can either tuck in when least expected or go so light under acceleration that the front bars shake back and forth just like those old H1's of legend. It's definitely the kind of bike that throws wimps off at the first difficult bend, but using muscle and low cunning can be dominated to the extent that little else can get past. Even if it's only because the buckling bastard's so huge it'll grind anything into dust that gets in the way.
Having got used to the bike in the dry, hot summer of '95, when the rain finally came it was a bit of a shock to the system. To say the least. This is a f..king nasty piece of shit to ride in the wet. That's how I felt on my first bit of damp road. It wasn't just that any silliness on the throttle had the bike going sideways as the back wheel lost it under the power onslaught. That was bad but controllable to an extent, and quite an impressive sight for onlookers who must've been convinced that I was going to fall off. No, what got to me was the quick slide front wheel, that would go off on its own trajectory without any warning whatsoever. Not just that, which was bloody dangerous in its own right, but the front discs were so powerful and insensitive at the same time, that hitting on them in the wet was a sure fire trip to the nearest hospital or morgue.
So wet weather progress was a horrible affair in fifth or sixth with the engine sounding like it was going to cut out at low revs. And what about the bastard who designed the ignition system that was incredibly sensitive to damp weather, not only cutting out a cylinder or two just when I needed the engine to be at its most calm and controlled, but also making it a total sod to start from both cold and hot.
One time I stalled it in traffic because I was trying to ride in fifth at 10mph in the pouring rain. And would it start again? Of course it wouldn't. I'm short of leg and the Kawa's fairly tall of seat, so I looked pretty ridiculous trying to waddle the massive cunt into the curb, not just its incredible bulk but three dragging discs and a clanging chain on its last legs. It's dead easy to drop the GPZ but just knowing that I would never be able to pick it up again meant that I'd literally go as far as breaking a leg to stop it going over, which nearly happened several times.
Pissed me off no end of times, did this wet weather business, so much so that I could be seen commuting, to my eternal shame and damnation, on a CG125 through the worst months of winter. And know what? The little Honda was a damn sight faster through traffic, across town, because of its lightness, narrowness and bicycle-like manoeuvrability. The only trouble was that the local urchins threw bits of masonry at me and made out like I was some kind of OAP wanker. I grin and bore the abuse because if I got started on them, the carnage would be so great that I'd be locked away for a long time - something else that pissed me off no end.
In the Spring of '96, the GPZ re-emerged from its home in my hallway (another story, hefting all that mass up into the house...), and seemed to be from another planet with regards to its stellar performance. It really is so fast that cages keep getting in the way and have absolutely no concept of how fast I'm eating up the space between us. Someone similarly impatient had already fitted the loudest imaginable siren, which I'd hit from time to time - the poor old cagers went into a blind panic, like an alien spaceship was blasting them.
The idea that the whole world was against us soon took a grip when I had a couple of cop cars on my tail. Luckily, the traffic was hugely dense and I just blasted the Kawasaki through the mess, hand on siren (and heart), with a few prayers to St Christopher. One blind, deaf and stupid driver was so confused by the wailing sirens (of bike and pigs) that he tried to turn off the road just as I was blasting through the inside of him. My heart almost stopped, as I instinctively twitched my buttocks to make the RX shake like a snake through the gap. The back tyre rumbled into the gutter, sending the thing into a frenzy of wobbles but we missed the cage. And the police missed me. Hee, hee.
Of course, in the normal course of events this isn't, dear reader, something you should try at home. But my circumstances were such that I had nothing to lose. For the next week or so, I pretended to be an innocent commuter on the CG, until I decided that the heat had died out of the chase.
Again and again, I was surprised at how well the massive old thing reacted when circumstances turned dire. When put to the test, maximum throttle and muscle didn't cause the thing to float off the road in suicide mode, instead a switch seemed to throw in my brain that let me ride the bike at ten-tenths. But not in the wet. No way.
As the summer drew to a close I decided I didn't want to keep the bike over another winter. Also 30mpg, 3000 mile tyre life and short-lived chains and pads were killing me financially. So I sold her for what I paid a year earlier. Richer and wiser for the experience? Er, well, I bought a tuned ZX-9R!
Eric W.
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There's an art to buying a bike for the minimum of dosh and making it last as long as possible without spending out any serious money. One element is to buy a bike that's past its prime, no longer considered to be on the pace. There's no point trying to hustle a deal on a bike that everyone wants to buy. On the other hand, there's not much point buying something that's so out of the game that plonkers in cages can take you out on the open road.
A 27000 mile GPZ600 at £1250 seemed like a good deal. It would soon need a new set of consumables but the motor was happy to rev into the red without any noise or vibration. Handling was as twitchy as an overloaded shopping trolley at the front but I could live with it. Didn't know any better, really.
The first ride, I pulled a stonking wheelie that nearly looped the loop. Did it in the centre of Leeds, which had the pointy headed ones going all rash on their radios. With both wheels back on terra firma I gave a cop a cheery wave. Knew I'd made his day by the expression on his face. Two miles later I had a blast of reality, haw-haw-haw went the plod mobile. I looked behind to see some Metro horror all done out in police colours. Thought, you gotta be kidding mate, you couldn't catch me on a 125 in that pile of shite.
Throttle madness followed. Oh, it was fun to think about their angst as they ate my exhaust. We live in a democracy, after all, and I wasn't doing no harm. I saw them in the mirrors a few times as I hammered the Kawasaki through the countryside, but they hadn't a hope.
As soon as they were out of sight I swung off the main road, heading down some narrow back lanes that I'd spent my youth exploring. No way, short of a couple of helicopters, that they could find me. Once upon a time, the GPZ was state of the art, could still be lumbered through the tight curves, just as long as the twitches from the front wheel were ignored. I made good time down the country to Nottingham.
That evening I went to turn the lights on, only to find that the front was down to the pilot. No hassle, I thought, I was only going across town. Halfway through the journey a cop stuck his head out of his jam-sandwich, screamed something about bloody lights. I swerved round him, gave him the finger and the throttle some stick. Blind fool. My escape velocity would've meant instant licence confiscation but I didn't stop.
Oh, forgot to mention, the bike didn't have MOT, tax disc or insurance. There was no way I was going to pull over for the law. It was do or die. Urban warfare. Later, I did go to the extreme expense of fitting a new front light bulb but the bugger had a tendency to blow every week. Might've had something to do with the way I took the bike into the red through each and every gear. The resulting secondary vibes were out of all proportion to its engine capacity.
A week or two later, one of the exhaust cans started dragging along the tarmac. I caught it before it fell off. A crack almost all the way around its circumference. All the excuse I needed to get a six-pack. After drowning my sorrows I cut up a couple of cans into sheet metal and then used jubilee-clips to secure them around the can. Amazingly, the repair was sturdy and stopped any gases escaping. Two months later the other can went the same way and was similarly repaired. Painting the whole thing in heat resistant matt black paint made it look less ratty. Not that I cared.
The next little problem was with the front calipers. All gummed up, reluctant to work and dead easy to go head over heels when they snagged on in the wet. A bloody disgrace, if you ask me. It's amazing what these Jap engineers can get away with. With a nice bit of hammer work they sprung apart to reveal shot seals and dead pads. Oh well, I always did like getting covered in dog shit in breakers.
In between these minor problems, the GPZ shot around at highly illegal velocities, pissing off any number of expensively mounted CBR and FZR riders when I whiplashed the wee beastie into gaps they left in the corners. I hadn't yet replaced the tyres, the near slicks squirming around vividly, the whole bike shuddering but it'd pull through if you ignored it all and kept her on line with a little bit of muscle.
Most of the time, anyway. There were a couple of times when the Kawa went completely out of control. Everything hanging around that devilish front wheel. One time I was thrown right off and the bike exploded its plastic all along the tarmac. I righted myself, shaking from the suddenness of the impact but soon found that I was largely unscathed. Just the usual scratches and bruises.
The Kawasaki was as deeply damaged as you could get without actually bending any of the major components. It was out with the GRP kit, filler and matt black paint. The rolling wreck that resulted was a magnet to the police - one swine was seen trying to wipe off a couple of months accumulated crud on the numberplate. A brick through a bank's window caused a sufficient diversion to have him running around like a jerk whilst I sneaked off on the Kawasaki. Many such near escapes kept me on my toes.
After about six months I was riding around at high speed on what essentially was a rolling wreck. It was amazing, really, how rapidly a bit of Japanese engineering could go off, aided along by massive neglect and the odd crash. Top speed was still around the 140mph mark, but now it was accompanied by heavy wobbles, wild vibration and dangerous braking. It was kind of fun. It was getting away with murder against all the odds.
At times it was very irritating. Like when one of the carbs started leaking fuel and I ignored it until a small fireball tried to set my thigh alight. Or when the engine cut out because I hadn't repaired the front guard, which split and cracked provided little protection in the wet. Or when the chain broke, taking out its guard and half the back of the crankcase (that Plastic Metal is wonderful). And many more minor incidents that added up to a catalogue of disasters save that they were far enough apart not to create total annoyance.
The engine needed regular maintenance but didn't get it. If it still ran it was left well enough alone. The only real intrusion was the gearbox clanging away when the oil turned to sludge - every 3000 miles or so. Carbs went in and out of balance to a whim all of their own. Valves were never checked as the engine was always willing to rev into the red.
Most of my friends expected the end to come from an exploding engine. It sort of enlivened their day, the idea that a cheapskate was going to get his comeuppance. Serve him right for not signing up for six grand's worth of HP. How I laughed as time went by. Sure, the bike was 20mph down on the top end compared to the hot 600's but for most of the time it was right in there with the pack. Interesting times, indeed.
Until the speed wobbles came in with a vengeance. Nothing seemed any more loose than previously. 53000 miles of much abuse and neglect had resulted in the rear wheel cracking up. Or it may've been the times we'd slewed loudly into the pedestrian precinct, thumping over the obstacle course. No problem finding a replacement wheel as they are shared with a number of other models and GPZ600's, themselves, are usually written off at the front end.
I did clean it up a little, enough to get an offer off a neighbour which left me with three hundred quid in profit. Nice going. Its replacement was an early £2000 GSXR750 Streetfighter. A bloody wicked monster for which the relatively tame GPZ proved to be good training.
Tony Northcote
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