Kawasaki – The ExhaustNotes Blog

My Vintage Bike Wish List

By Joe Berk

Like most of you, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I’d park in my garage if I had the money and the space for a motorcycle collection. At various times in my life I’ve owned several motorcycles at the same time and I’ve sort of realized the dream I describe here (at least in terms of how many motorcycles I owned), but this blog describes something different. The bikes I owned in the past came about as the result of having the time and the money when something cool caught my fancy. This time, I’d start from scratch and define what would go into my ideal collection. Gresh and I have theorized and fantasized and written about this in the past (see our Dream Bikes page). Here, I’m starting from scratch and I’m limiting myself to six motorcycles (just because I think that should be the right number of bikes). You might be surprised at some of my choices.

1965 Triumph Bonneville

When I was a kid in high school, one of the seniors (a fellow named Walt Skok) bought a new Triumph Bonneville. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I wanted one. Later in life, I bought, rode, and sold several Triumph Bonnevilles, but I never scratched that itch for a ’65 model. Someday…

To me, everything about the 1965 Triumph Bonneville was perfect: The colors, the exhaust system, the exhaust notes, the tank parcel grid, the design symmetry, the little decal recognizing Triumph’s world speed record, and more. I always wanted one and I still do.

1965 Harley-Davidson Electra-Glide

I’ve owned a couple of Harley full dressers, but the one I always wanted was the 1965 Electra-Glide. That year was the first year Harley offered electric starting and it was the last year of the panhead engine (which I think is the best-looking big twin engine Harley ever made).

The ’65 Electra-Glide is another bike that, in my opinion, was styled perfectly. I like the tank contours, the 1965 paint design, the panhead engine’s look, the fishtail mufflers, the saddlebag contours, the potato-potato-potato exhaust note, and more. Apparently, my thoughts about this motorcycle’s intrinsic beauty are also shared by the U.S. Post Office (see the above postage stamp). The ’65 Electra-Glide is the bike I used to think about as a teenager when I rode around on my Schwinn bicycle, imagining that my Schwin was a Harley.

Cycle Garden 1974 Moto Guzzi El Dorado

Ah, a Cycle Garden Guzzi. This is one I tumbled to only recently. I’ve been writing a series of articles for Motorcycle Classics magazine, and one of the shops that’s been helping me is Moe Moore’s Cycle Garden in Indio, California. I always thought the mid-1970s Moto Guzzi were stunning in their stock and restored configurations. Then, during one Cycle Garden visit, I saw a custom bike that Moe and his crew had assembled for a client.

The bike was a 1974 police motorcycle, but it painted in a breathtaking battleship gray and metallic blue paint theme. I could see myself riding it, rumbling through the open roads and magnificent landscapes of Baja. It is a motorcycle that is firmly on my list.

1983 Harley XR-1000

I wrote a Dream Bike piece about this during the first year of the ExhaustNotes.us blog’s existence, and the thing that struck me about it was that Joe Gresh told me I’d beat him to it…he was thinking about doing a Dream Bike piece on the same motorcycle.

I’ve never owned or ridden an XR-1000. Come to think of it, I never heard one run. I could have bought an XR-1000 new for around $8K when they were new, but I didn’t have a spare $8K laying around in those days. It’s another one of those motorcycles bikes for which I think the visual and visceral appeal is perfect. Maybe someday I’ll get to scratch that itch.

2006 Kawasaki KLR 650

To me, this is an interesting choice with which some might take issue. I don’t care. I loved my KLR 650. Lifelong good buddy Baja John had one, too. That’s Baja John and yours truly somewhere in Baja in the photo below.

The KLR 650 is one of my all time favorite motorcycles. Mine was a first-gen KLR, and I think those are more desirable than the second gen bikes. My KLR was perfect for exploring Baja, and I did a lot of that on it. It had just the right amount of power, it was simple (except for the shim-and-bucket valve adjustments), it was a very comfortable motorcycle (the ergos were perfect), and it was inexpensive. I bought it new in 2006. It was one of the best motor vehicles (of any kind) I ever owned. If you’re wondering why I sold it, so am I.

2015 CSC RX3

The CSC RX3 motorcycle is another bike that I thought was just perfect for me. I covered a lot of miles in Baja and elsewhere in the world on it.

I think a 250 is the perfect size for a motorcycle (you can read why here). I traveled through a lot of the world on one: Through the American West, Mexico, the Andes Mountains in Colombia, and China (with Joe Gresh; Joe and I are in the photo above auditioning for a Chinese gladiator movie). All those trips and all those miles were awesome, and the RX3 didn’t miss a beat on any of them. I almost cried when I learned Zongshen discontinued the RX3, and if they were to bring it back (which they should), I would no doubt be riding the world and blogging the RX3’s virtues again.

There you have it. It was fun thinking about this, writing this blog, imagining the above six motorcycles parked in my garage, and riding them in different parts of the world. A quick mental tally tells me I could make the above wish list a reality for something around $120K in today’s dollars. Hmmmm…I don’t have a spare $120K laying around, but maybe if a few of you hit that donate below…

What about you? What would be the ideal collection you’d like to see in your garage? Let us know in the comments below.

You know you want it. Go ahead.

ExhaustNotes Review: Kemimoto Heated Grips

By Joe Gresh

Old Man Winter is taking his sweet time here in New Mexico. It is late December, 70 degrees and the frozen old git still hasn’t made much of a dent. But he will arrive and I’ll be ready with my new Kemimoto heated grips.

I’ve set up the Kawasaki ZRX as my cold weather bike with a 12-volt receptacle for an Aerostitch heated vest and these grips will complete my preparations for the cold. If it ever gets here.

Installation would normally be simple as the wiring connects directly to the host bike’s battery. The main problem with this setup is if you accidentally leave the grips on and drain your battery. In the cold.

I couldn’t find an unused, switched power connection on the factory harness so I rigged a cube-type relay under the headlight faring that energizes from the instrument light circuit. This ensures the grips are off when the key is off. Power for the grips comes from the Areostitch vest power lead and runs up to the relay.

The heating elements just wrap around your existing grips and a 3-power level switch needs to go somewhere. I used a fairing mount bolt to secure the included switch bracket on the right side of the gauge cluster. It’s not a great location but it was easy.

Heat-wise these grips crank it out. On high you can feel the burn. This setting would be good for freezing weather. Low was still too hot during my 60-degree test ride so it should be good for average New Mexico winter conditions.

That wrap around heating element never really gets very tight on the grips so you’ll need to reset its position as it slowly creeps around the throttle. Or squeeze tighter.

The on-off switch is dimly lit so in sunlight it’s hard to tell what power level the thing is set at (red=high, blue=medium, green=low) I had to stop and cup my hand over the switch to see the illumination.

While I haven’t tested the grips in truly cold weather I’m sure they will help. It’s nice to pop the switch on when the elevation climbs over 7000 feet. Cuddly and warm best describes the feeling.

How long the grips will last is anyone’s guess but they’re easily unwrapped, unplugged and stored for the 10 months a year they are unnecessary in sunny, warm New Mexico. The harness, relay and switch remain on the bike full time.

I’m satisfied with the Kemimoto heated grips and give them a solid 3-star rating, a rating that could be improved if they fit the grips tighter and the switch was brighter. Maybe a section of elastic would help hold the grips better but what do I know. Now if Old Man Winter would get off his butt I could try them out in proper conditions.

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¿Quantos Pistones? (The Sevens)

By Joe Berk

I thought I could skip this one in our ¿Quantos Pistones? series. After all, who ever thought there could be a 7-cylinder motorcycle?

But I was wrong. Much to my surprise, there are actually at least a couple of 7-cylinder motorcycles out there. I’ve never seen one, but they exist. One is comparable to the 5-cylinder machine based on the Kawasaki two-stroke engines; the other is an aircraft radial-engined affair.

The JRL Cycles Lucky 7 used an engine originally intended to be a replacement engine for aircraft that used a radial engine. They only built four of these (one prototype and three production bikes). It’s an interesting footnote in any discussion of motorcycle powerplants, I guess. But the thing looks goofy to me, and its chopperesque ergonomics pretty much guarantee it would be unrideable. You can read more about it here: JRL Cycles Lucky 7 – A Radial Engined Production Motorcycle

The other motorcycle I found online with a 7-cylinder engine is the aforementioned Kawasaki. Here’s a video that does a good job describing it:

The real treat in the above video arrives in the last minute or two, when you can hear it run. It’s worth watching.

So what’s next? Have much milk is left in the cow? Have we exhausted all possible motorcycle engine configurations in our ¿Quantos Pistones? series? Nope. Stay tuned…the Eights are coming up!

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¿Quantos Pistones? (The Sixes)

By Joe Berk

As the Sixes go, there have been a few: The Honda CBX, the Kawasaki KZ1300, the Honda Gold Wing, the Honda Valkyrie, the Benelli Sei, and the BMW K1600. This doesn’t include any custom engined bikes, and there have been a few. This blog is long enough already, so I’m leaving out things like bikes with three Triumph 650 Twin engines. All the bikes included here were factory offerings.

Honda CBX

The year was 1979, and I was riding a Triumph 750 Bonneville I bought new in Fort Worth, Texas. We had a Honda dealer in town that had a demo CBX, and I went over there as soon as I knew the dealer had the CBX in stock.

In those days, dealers of all kinds of bikes allowed unsupervised test rides. Very few dealers, if any, do that today, and for good reason. There are guys out there that will ride the snot out of them. I was one of them back in 1979. I picked up the CBX (a beautiful silver one that was essentially a naked bike; this was before Honda put the big fairing and bags on the CBX in 1981), and I headed out to Loop 820. Loop 820 (as the name implied) looped around Fort Worth. I lived on the west side of town out near the General Dynamics plant where I was an engineer on the F-16.

Loop 820 in those days way out on the west side of Fort Worth was a traffic-devoid area, and that made it a favored spot for top speed testing. My ’78 Bonneville would top out at an indicated 109 mph on Loop 820 (I think I’m past the statute of limitations on that moving violation, which is why I’m sharing this with you). Naturally, it was where I took the CBX. The bike had something like 6 miles on the odometer, but I didn’t care. The magic number? 131 mph. Yep. I was a speed demon back in the day.

When I brought the bike back to the dealer, I put it on the sidestand with the engine still running. It squirted oil arterially out the left side of the forward cam cover. It squirted in spurts, like it had a heart pumping it out. “How’d you like it?” the enthusiastic sales guy asked, and then he saw the oil orgasming out the top end.

“I didn’t,” I said. “I mean, look at it. It leaks worse than my Triumph…”

So I didn’t buy that CBX, but I never abandoned the idea of owning one.

My 1982 Honda CBX. Bone stock. Impressive. Fun to ride.

Maybe 20 years later I stopped at Bert’s, a huge local Honda/Suzuki/Yamaha/Kawasaki (and maybe a few other makes I can’t remember) dealer. He had a 1982 CBX on the floor. It was a used bike with just 4500 miles on the odometer, and he wanted $4,000 for it. It was beautiful. Completely stock, it was pearlescent white with turquoise and black accents. I stopped twice but couldn’t quite bring myself to pull the trigger. Then I stopped in a third time and it was gone. Rats. Missed it. He who hesitates is lost, and I had hesitated.

I asked about the bike and was told some rich guy from Japan had bought, and Bert’s was putting new seals in the forks, installing a new air filter, cleaning the carbs, and doing a general servicing on it. Lucky guy, I thought.

Then I stopped in a fourth time and the bike was back on the floor. The sales guy on duty in Bert’s used bike department was a nice old guy who told me he won the Daytona 200 in 1956. Did he really? Hell, I don’t know. We didn’t have the Internet yet. But none of that mattered. The ’82 CBX was back on the floor and it was now $4500. I could get my checkbook out fast enough.

Six pipes, six cylinders, six carbs, 24 valves, double overhead cams.

I had a lot of fun with the CBX, riding all over California, Nevada, and Arizona with it. I put 20,000 miles on the bike. I even road to the Laughlin River Run one year, where it drew more stares than any of the cookie-cutter wannabe rebel yuppie EVO-engined Harleys.

On the road near Bagdad. Bagdad, Arizona, that is. That’s my buddy Louis and his Gold Wing. Louis went into witness protection and has since taken to wearing a shirt.

I loved the bike, but I decided it was time to sell it a few years later. A friend offered me $4500, which is what I had paid for it and about what they were going for in those days, and I sold it. I wish I still had it.

The Honda Gold Wing

Somewhere in its history (actually, it was way back in 1988, which surprised me), the Honda Gold Wing became a flat six displacing 1520cc. I think they are up to something like 1800cc or maybe a million cubic centimeters by now. I never rode a Gold Wing Six and I never had a desire to own a Gold Wing (one short ride on Louis’ Wing, a Four, convinced me that Wings are crafted of boredominium).

A Wing Ding Six. I think there’s a bathroom with a shower somewhere in there.

None of the Wings in any denomination ever appealed to me. I know that modern Gold Wings are impressive and fast and handle well (for a battleship) and all that. The whole Wing thing just never appealed to me. Never has, and never will.

The Honda Valkyrie

The Honda Valkyrie used the Gold Wing engine and it was, I think, supposed to sort of compete with Harley. I liked the idea, and I thought I wanted one, so I went back to Bert’s and looked at one on the showroom floor. Fortunately for me and my wallet, I rode my ’92 Harley Heritage Softail there. The Valkyrie looked good, I thought, until I went back out to the parking lot and saw a new Valkyrie that someone had parked right next to my Softail. Both bikes had windshields and saddlebags, so it was a good side-by-side comparison.

That visual comparison is what drove a silver stake through the Valkyrie’s heart for me. I couldn’t believe how big, porky, and bloated the Valkyrie looked next to my Softail (and the Softail was not a small machine). The Heritage Softail just looked way more svelte, nimble, and sexy. That killed it for me. No Valkyrie would ever live in my garage.

Like the Gold Wing, there were two iterations of the Valkyrie – a 1520cc initial offering and then later an 1832cc version. The Valkyries were known for their atrocious fuel economy, although I can’t imagine anyone who bought one worried about that. They were huge bikes.

The Kawasaki KZ1300

Shortly after Honda introduced the CBX, Kawasaki introduced a 1300cc, water-cooled monster they called the KZ1300 (I think that’s what they called it). Unlike the Honda CBX (whose production run lasted only from 1979 to 1982), the KZ1300 stayed in the Kawasaki lineup for several years. I don’t know why.

The KZ1300 fell from the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

The Honda CBX (even though it was a Six displacing 1050cc) looked nimble, lean, and mean. The Kawasaki looked like a bus or maybe a dump truck to me. There was nothing elegant or graceful about it. I wanted no part of it. I’ve never ridden one.

Benelli Sei

Benelli jumped on the air-cooled inline 6 theme with their Sei models. They were good looking bikes, but they looked (at least to me) like a copy of the Honda CBX. As copies go, the CBX wasn’t a bad thing to use as a starting point, but to me, the CBX was a far more attractive motorcycle.

The Sei was offered at first as a 750 and later as a 900. The Benellis were made from 1973 to 1978. I think I may have seen one or two Benelli Sei motorcycles, but I can’t remember where. I never rode one and I had no desire to. The CBX spoiled me.

My Benelli B76 pistol. The story on it is here.

As an interesting aside, Benelli is one of those interesting companies that made both guns and motorcycles. I have a rare Benelli 9mm handgun, a pistol that didn’t make it commercially but is delightfully complex and fun to shoot. Benelli also makes rifles and shotguns. Motorcycles marketed under the Benelli name are today manufactured in China.

BMW K1600

The BMW K1600 series of luxo-barges are (as the name implies) 1600cc motorcycles. They have inline (across the frame) six-cylinder engines, with the pistons at a steep forward angle.

There’s a K1600 GT and a K1600 GTL. I think the L stands for luxury. Or maybe it stands for loaded (which is what I’ve have to be to ever purchase one of these 750-pound land yachts). Like most BMW products, the K1600s are outrageously priced, a situation made worse by tariffs.

These bikes, I think, are unnecessarily laden with electronics and other silly features. A few years ago when the K1600 first hit the market, I was in a BMW dealer chatting with the marketing manager. He was multitasking during our conversation. The other thing he was doing? He was trying to figure out how to use a K1600’s electronic ignition key for a bike he had just sold. BMW North America was on the phone, and the guy on the other end was similarly perplexed. That made four of us who couldn’t break the code on how to use the key (BMW NA, the dealer’s sales manager, the bike’s new owner, and me). I was the only one of the four who didn’t care, as I wasn’t going to ride the bike. Ah, the good old days…when a key was just a piece of mechanically-notched steel that you stuck in the bike’s ignition lock and turned.

So there you have it: My take on the Sixes. So is this it? We’ve done singles, twins, triples, fours, Fives, and Sixes. Surely there can’t be more.

Hey, don’t call me Shirley. Stay tuned. Yep, there are 7-cylinder, 8-cylinder, 9-cylinder, and more cylinders coming up. Stay tuned.

Missed our other ¿Quantos Pistones? stories? Here they are:

¿Quantos Pistones? (The Fives)
¿Quantos Pistones? (The Fours)
¿Quantos Pistones? (The Triples)
¿Quantos Pistones? (The Twins)
¿Quantos Pistones? (The Singles)

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Zed’s Not Dead: We Get It Right The Tenth Time

By Joe Gresh

I like to think of myself as handy with a wrench. I try to fix most things even if I have no clue and oftentimes succeed. This Kawasaki 900 though, this Zed has been giving me fits. It almost makes me question my do-it-yourself mantra. Almost…

After initially getting Zed running a few years ago I enjoyed 4000 relatively trouble-ree miles. Zed had a slight hitch in its giddy-up right off idle but otherwise it ran fine. Then the bike started fouling spark plugs and missing. Occasionally gasoline would pour out the carb overflow tubes and a sharp rap with a screwdriver handle was needed to stop the flow.

So my first line of attack was the float needles because they were original and came out of corroded carbs. I went online and bought some cheap carb kits that included needles and seats.

Setting float height on carbs using plastic hose screwed into float bowl drain.

On a 1975 Z1 Kawasaki the carbs sit up high off the engine block so you can do a lot of tinkering without removing the carb bank. I changed all the needles and set the float height using the clear tube tool that screws into the carb bowl drain.

This didn’t really cure anything. Plugs were still fouling. I started to suspect an ignition problem. After messing with the points and several test runs I was getting nowhere so I purchased a new, aftermarket ignition system. They’re cheap, like $90 or so.

Carbs removed from Zed. A scene I got accustomed to. After the 4th round trip I decided to look elsewhere.

The new system came complete with new coils and wires. This was nice as the old coils were butchered by the previous owner. I installed the new ignition system and the bike still ran terrible and fouled plugs.

I rechecked the aftermarket floats and upon examination I found the needle seats miss-punched with what looked like lettering for the needle size. This caused a wrinkle in the exact spot the needle needed to seat.

.030 tool for setting baseline carb slide height.

Next, I bought new Mikuni needles and seats. I put the Mikuni stuff in and re-set the float levels. The bike ran like crap and foiled the plugs. At least I knew the ignition system was ok.

I was at my limit of understanding, my attention went back to the carburetors. I pulled the carbs, dismantled them and cleaned everything.

Zeds carbs sat like this for 2 years. I was befuddled, vexed, stressed right the “F” out.

I bought another, more expensive carb kit and new Mikuni enrichener plungers. The carbs were in a million pieces on my bench and I lost interest. Other things were happening, concrete need pouring and the carbs gathered dust for two years.

A few months ago I decided to get Zed running for the Motorado vintage motorcycle show up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Buckling down, I reassembled the carbs and using new rubber manifolds (the others had dry rotted in only a few years!) I slid the carbs back into Zed and the bike ran like crap, still fouling plugs.

I couldn’t get the bike running well enough to sync the carbs. A bad condenser was messing up two cylinders.

I took the carbs off the bike and went through them again making sure everything was spotless. And the bike ran like crap. Again, I took the carbs apart racking my brain over the flooding issue. And the bike ran like crap. I changed jets, I changed float heights, I swapped pilot air jets, I swapped emulsion tubes. The third time I took the carbs apart and triple checked everything the bike still ran terrible.

I was in the weeds bad-like and decided to think hard on the situation. I told myself that carbs aren’t all that complicated and that even if I didn’t get them perfect it should still run. And that the bike ran fine for 4000 miles with those carbs. That was when I decided to go back to the new ignition system.

One of the new points had a whitish coating. I thought maybe the bike sat so long the points corroded. Then inspiration hit me: the condensers! I checked the condensers with an ohm meter and found one of the two condensers bad.

I had started with one problem: fouling plugs and by using aftermarket needles I installed a worse set of needles. By removing the original ignition system I installed an entirely new problem with the bad condenser.

These two errors were compounded by my inability to believe that the new parts were bad out of the box so I kept rebuilding the carbs over and over.

The condensers on the old ignition system tested ok and I swapped them into the new plate. And the bike ran. Not perfectly because I had all the jets wrong in my attempts to make the bike run.

I walked the carbs back to their original settings. First the old slide needles and emulsion tubes went back in. Then the main jets, then the pilot jets until finally everything was back to where I started from two years ago.

Zed was running pretty good so I took a little 300 mile test loop. No fouled plugs. Stupid hurts and I was so damn stupid chasing gremlins that I was creating even as I was installing new gremlins.

Home built replica of the official Kawasaki carb sync tool.

Next up is a good carb sync and since parts are so crappy now I will try an electronic ignition system just for fun because I haven’t screwed things up enough yet. Stay tuned.

New electronic ignition. Only $68 on Amazon. Cheaper than points! What could go wrong?

Want to follow the initial resurrection of Zed? It’s right here!

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ExNotes Long Term Test: Oxilam LED Headlight Bulb

By Joe Gresh

As you’ll recall from the Oxilam headlight review we published on ExhaustNotes a while back, I loved the thing. It gave a much brighter view at night and the light source was positioned in the correct spot for the reflector on the ZRX1100 Lawsonsaki. Low beam was wide and had a sharp cutoff so as to not blind oncoming drivers, and high beam lit up the dark New Mexico roads nicely.

Unfortunately. the bulb burned out on my bike after only 3000 miles. Considering the original halogen bulb lasted 35,000 miles, 24 years, and was still going strong, I was disappointed.

Taking the bulb apart revealed a neatly constructed circuit board, a cooling fan, heat transferring grease to the large aluminum heat sink, and broken solder connections at the main board/plug connector junction.

The board connections are tiny and I may try to re-solder the connections (there are four of them broken: two on either side of the circuit board) but I don’t hold out much hope.

The Oxilam kit came with two bulbs, and I’ll pop the other one in to see if my failure was just a fluke. I do like the quantity of light produced and riding with a plain old halogen seems dark now.

My new, revised rating on the Oxilam LED headlights is: Don’t buy them just yet. Wait until the second Oxilam has proved itself for 24 years. I’ll be sure to report back here if I’m still alive.

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ExNotes Moto-mods: Kawasaki ZRX1100 Petcock

By Joe Gresh

I should have listened to the guys who knew. They told me the vacuum operated fuel petcock on the ZRX1100 was a source of problems and that I should convert it to a standard on-off-reserve manually operated type. In my defense the new vacuum petcock lasted six months or so before the ZRX became hard to start after sitting idle for longish periods of time.

The vacuum petcock stopped sealing and the ZRX’s last line of defense was the float needle in the carburetors. In an ideal world these needles should stop the flow of gas and you wouldn’t even need a fuel shut off valve. We don’t live in an ideal world, however.

I tested my bad-petcock theory by removing the fuel line. A steady stream of fuel poured out of the hose. There is no “Off” position on the standard Kawasaki petcock so I drained the gas tank and set about converting the petcock to manual.

In practical terms the bike was starting hard because it was flooded. Constant velocity carbs, like the ones fitted to the ZRX, are a little harder to clear a flooded condition. Normally you’d hold the throttle wide open to get a lot of air flowing through the cylinder, thus blowing out the excess fuel. With CV type carbs opening the throttle only opens a set of butterfly valves. The actual throttle slides are independent of the twist grip and require engine vacuum to operate. Add low-vacuum cranking speed that struggles to raise the throttle slides and a flooded engine that doesn’t want to start and you’ve got a sticky wicket.

I bought this generic fuel petcock on Amazon for around $10 and figured if it didn’t work I wasn’t out much money. The hole centers lined up and the valve bolted into the Kawasaki tank without issue.

The new petcock came with these tiny plastic fuel filters fitted to the main tank standpipe and the reserve opening at the bottom of the tank. I got rid of these as they looked sort of restrictive and I planned on installing an inline filter on the bike to simplify the hose connections.

The original style vacuum petcock had a 3/8” hose barb that mated to a 5/16” barb on the carburetors. This mismatch required the factory to specify an unusual molded hose that was 3/8” on one end and 5/16” on the other. The new, manual petcock had a ¼” hose barb. These universal inline filters have both ¼” and 5/16” barbs to fit a wider range of machines. I trimmed off the 1/4″ barb on one side of the filter and had a nifty filter that fit both the petcock size and the carburetor size.

I know what you’re thinking, which is that the new petcock at ¼” won’t pass enough fuel. Maybe you’d be right if I drag raced or rode extended periods at high speed. At 50 miles per gallon the thrifty ZRX1100 gets plenty of fuel through the smaller line. I did a few full-throttle passes at an undisclosed test location and the bike did not want for fuel.

The new petcock hose barb exited 90 degrees rearward compared to the stock petcock, which exited down. This orientation required the fuel hose to run straight back and over the carburetor before turning down and routing under the bank of four carbs. The extra length made for kind of a loose hose so I used a couple rubber-covered clamps to secure the hose and tuck it in out of the way.

The new petcock makes starting easier but the Kawasaki ZRX is still reluctant to cold start. Which is odd because the bike always started on the first push. Maybe it’s just the fact that winter is here at the ranch and I’m starting the ex-Florida bike colder than usual. This is the first New Mexico winter for the ZRX and it takes three or four pushes on the button to get the bike to light off, a great improvement over the 25 or so with the old, leaky petcock. I never got around to adjusting the ZRX carbs; I just cleaned them and stuck them back on the bike as I had a long trip planned and wanted to get some shakedown miles on the bike. Maybe a carb sync is in order.

I’ll try adjusting my starting ritual to see if I can come up with a protocol that will save some wear and tear on the Kawasaki starter motor. Keep your eyes glued to ExhaustNotes.us for important updates as they become available.

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ZRX RX: An ExNotes Resurrextion, Part 6

By Joe Gresh

I probably shouldn’t badmouth them because they seem to have the business model sewn up and are industry giants, but Partzilla sucks. I’ve ordered quite a few ZRX parts from them and several things they do annoy me. First, I get CT to order everything because it just works out better. Next, many parts you take the time to look up on their parts diagrams are not priced unless you go through the hassle of signing in to their website. Comparison shopping is difficult. The worst is when the page shows the part as available and in reality they don’t have it. This happened to me with the reed valve gaskets. The site said available (which is not the same thing as in stock) but I’ve been waiting about 3 weeks. CT emailed Partzilla about the situation and got a semi-snarky email in return. Is it better to lose a sale or lose a customer?

I get my Kawasaki parts from Southwest Suzuki Kawasaki in Alamogordo now. It’s actually faster than Partzilla and they give me a little discount if the part is outrageous (like those float needles). I go see Dave or Taylor at Southwest with part numbers I get off the Internet and the stuff is there within a week. Maybe the massive vertical integration of the ‘Zilla monster has reached an evolutionary dead end. I’m done with them, no matter that they’ve bought the first three pages of results on Google.

Rant over.

My Chinese petcock showed up and it looks exactly like the original Kawasaki petcock and fit perfectly. Unfortunately, when I tried to connect the old fuel line it had a pinhole leak right where the line expands from 5/16-inch to 3/8-inch. I don’t know why Kawasaki went with the oddball molded fuel line. A 5/16-inch line will provide plenty of fuel to the 1100cc Kawasaki engine.

This is horrible but there are reasons why it is horrible. First, the OEM Kawasaki fuel line would need to be ordered and I don’t want to wait for it. Second, The original line connects to a plastic T-fitting between the No. 2 and No. 3 carburetors. Knowing my luck with old plastic fittings, I feared that replacing the hose entirely would lead to a broken T-fitting, which would mean pulling those damn carbs again. Then there’s the wait for a new T-fitting. I decided to let sleeping T-fittings lie and added a 3/8-inch to 5/16-inch hose barb adaptor complete with an ugly pipe connection between the two. Then I ran a new 3/8-inch line to the petcock. I mean to fix this mess later on but it works and doesn’t leak.

I gave up on getting the gaskets for the reed valves and made two block-off plates to seal the air intake to the exhaust ports. Then I spun up a little aluminum plug to seal the hole in the airbox where the reeds connected. I didn’t take photos of this part because I was in a hurry to hear the bike run.

I installed the rest of the radiator plumbing and started to fill the Kawasaki radiator with coolant and found the slippery green stuff running out the bottom as fast as I put it in. The front log manifold was pissing coolant, which was odd because I had replaced the four O-rings with new Kawasaki parts. This log manifold is behind the header pipes and not easy to access. Off came the pipe and the O-rings looked like they were deformed a bit.

My mistake was lubing the O-rings on the pipe manifold. This made them too slippery and when the pipe was pushed into position the rings slid out of the pipe O-ring grooves. I gave the rings a through examination and decided to clean all traces of lube from the pipe and O-rings. I shoved the thing back together, reconnected the hoses and it leaked as much as it did last time.

I pulled the log manifold for the third time and cussing up a storm. I tossed the new Kawasaki O-rings and dug some Harbor Freight O-rings out of an assorted kit I bought years ago. I was so frustrated I managed to cross thread one of the bolts that hold the manifold onto the engine block. Back off comes the manifold. For the fourth time. Remember, I’m doing all this behind the header pipes and I can barely get my fingers between the pipes.

I managed to get a tap started into the cross-threaded hole and using the tip of a finger to hold the tap and needle nose pliers to turn it, I ran the tap into the hole and straightened out the cross-threaded bit. Amazingly, the hole holds tension and I got the manifold back in place and the hoses connected. The manifold didn’t leak.

With the radiator full of coolant I started the bike. It smoked quite a bit but after a few minutes the smoke eased off. I had set the idle screws at 1-1/2 turns out but the bike seemed rich. The idle mixture screws are accessible with the carbs on the bike but you need a special, shorty screwdriver to turn them. I made one out of bits and pieces. Make sure you have some sort of identifier so you can count the turns by feel. I used a small screw as my tactile-pointer and reset the screws to 1 turn out.

I tossed the seat on the bike and went for celebratory tacos at the Alomar Diner in Tularosa. The bike ran fair if a little rich. After I ate the tacos the bike wouldn’t start. What with everything having been messed with in the preceding weeks I wasn’t sure where to begin. So I kept cranking. And Cranking. And cranking.

Then I started smelling gas so I held the throttle wide open and cranked some more. The bike started making sounds like it wanted to start. I kept cranking. The Kawasaki sputtered to life stinking of fuel. I rode the bike home and it was running rich. I calculated my fuel mileage as 36 miles to a gallon. The ZRX1100 fuel tank vent was whistling like a teapot on boil and gave a gush of pressure when I opened the gas cap. This led me to believe there was a problem with venting.

Inside the ZRX gas cap is some sort of check valve assembly. It consists of two little red rubber valves and I couldn’t figure out how tank pressure was supposed to vent out. The ZRX has a vacuum operated petcock and with only a little pressure the shutoff diaphragm can be overridden. It’s a fine line. Naturally, removing the source of the problem is easier than making it work as intended so I removed the check valves and the bike whistled no more.

The bike was running much better and if anything was now lean-ish off idle. I did a 200-mile test loop through the mountains and the old ZRX1100 returned 53 miles to a gallon.

The Rex is running pretty well right now. I hate to do it but I’m going to buy four more Kawasaki O-rings for that coolant manifold and try again. Even though they aren’t leaking I don’t trust the Harbor Freight O-rings for longevity. I’ll order a new OEM fuel hose and I might take a stab at installing it. I also want a new fan switch O-ring for the radiator. I’m also going to set the idle mixture screws to 1-1/4 turns to see if it helps the off-idle lean spot, The ZRX stumbles a bit off the start. Once all this is sorted, watch for a ride report on the ZRX1100 in a future ExNotes blog.

See the earlier ZRX stories (and other Resurrection stories) here.

The Wayback Machine: Zed’s Not Dead

Our latest Resurrection story about Joe Gresh’s ZRX is not our first big Kawi resurrection story. Going back a few years, we previously ran a 20-blog series on a Z1 Kawasaki. This Wayback Machine piece was the culmination of that story, with a link at the end that will take you to the entire series. Those big Kawis are cool, and the Z1 is unquestionably the coolest of them all.

By Joe Gresh

You may recall from Zed 19 I had to re-soak Zed’s gas tank as 10 days were not enough to dissolve the rust. I drained, dried and reloaded the tank with apple cider vinegar and let it sit for 4 more days. This is what it looked like originally:

The second session really knocked most of the rust out. After rinsing I dumped a large box of baking soda into the tank and added clean rainwater sloshing it as I filled to mix thoroughly. I don’t know the chemical reaction that takes place but the baking soda neutralizes the acid, turning the metal a dull grey, almost white color. This treated metal does not flash rust and I’ve been going 3-4 years on another tank I cleaned like this without rust reappearing. It’s like the metal turns passive and stops reacting to oxygen.

If I wasn’t so hell-bent on riding this bike I think I would flush and cider the tank one more time but it looks good enough and I’ve got to ride! I connected a small hose to my shop vac and played it all over inside the tank. I can hear nothing when I shake the tank so at least there are no big chunks loose inside.

Proving that even the simplest life forms can learn I bought an entire new petcock for $23 rather than the rebuild kit for $8. This is real growth on my part. Usually I buy the kit, mess with it for hours then put it on only to have it leak. Only then will I buy the new one. Kawasaki uses a turnbuckle-type left-hand/right-hand thread on the Z1 petcock. It took about 145 tries to get it to tighten up facing the correct direction.

The new petcock has screens inside the tank and a bowl filter but with 40% of Zed’s tank out of my view-field I can only assume the entire tank is as clean as the places I can see. Inline fuel filters, one for each set of two carbs will hopefully catch any debris still in Zed’s tank.

An update on the Z1 Enterprises regulator/rectifier: It works. The battery charges @ 14.8 volts which is still a tad high but much better than the 17 volts Kawasaki’s setup was doing.

From the top Zed looks pretty well sorted. I took it for a ride and it ran really well for off the bench carb settings. It might be a little rich at idle or it might just be our 6000-foot elevation. I’m not going to tinker with it for now. I’d rather get some miles on the bike.

I don’t know what this bracket is for. Located on the right side down tube near the tach drive, it’d too light for a steering damper mount. Anyway, there’s enough stuff on the bike as is so I’m not going to worry about it.

I took Zed to my secret proving grounds and she ran through all 5 gears smoothly. The bike hit 90 MPH without even trying. I’ll need a better front tire to do any high-speed work. The brakes work ok. When you ride a SMR 510 Husqvarna all other motorcycle brakes seem like crap. After 33 miles there are small oil leaks at the tach drive and countershaft area. Maybe the clutch pushrod seal or sprocket seal is the culprit. That stuff is easy to fix.

The patina on Zed is excessive, bordering on shabby. The bike sat outside for years and paint wise there’s nothing left to polish or wax. The finish is just not there. The pin striping is cracked and missing sections. I’m not sure what to do about that. On the one hand a ratty bike may be less attractive to thieves and old Z1’s are getting fairly expensive. On the other hand it does look pretty bad. I’ve seen my Enduro buddy Mr. French do some amazing work with rattle cans. Maybe I’ll give it a go. The paint can’t look any worse.

That’s it: from Dead to Zed in 20 easy sessions. Don’t worry, this won’t be the last you’ll hear of Zed. I’ll be doing some long trips on this bike, maybe Mexico, maybe ride to a few flat track races. I’ll update the blog if I do any more major work on the bike. The story of Zed’s resurrection may be ending but the story of Zed is just beginning.

And there you have it. If you’d like to run through the gears (i.e., the previous 19 installments of Zed’s Not Dead), you can do so here!

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ZRX RX: An ExNotes Resurrextion, Part 2

By Joe Gresh

This ZRX1100 resurrextion started out kind of leisurely. We don’t like stress at ExhaustNotes.us because we are at peace with our surroundings. ExhaustNotes staff have a firm grasp of our place in the universe and see all matter as insignificant much like we see ourselves. There was no big rush, you know? However, things change in life and the ZRX resurrextion timeline has sped up due to the Mud Chuckers wanting to attend the road races July 7-9 at Laguna Seca in California, now known as Polident Speedway. From my house to Laguna Seca is 1150 miles the fast way and we never take the fast way. We might end up doing 2500 or more miles round trip. Thus, the urgency to get the road burner running as none of my other motorcycles are exactly suited to the job.

The first thing I did to the ZRX was to remove as much bodywork as possible to prevent the odd dropped wrench or spilled brake fluid from damaging Rex’s somewhat pristine original paintwork.

Kawasaki ZRX1100 bits and pieces have been trickling into the shed at Tinfiny Ranch and we will soon see some progress on the abandoned, neglected motorcycle.

Starting with the coolant leak from under the engine, I have determined the water pump or the O-rings on the pipes connecting to the pump were the culprit. Seeing as the pump is 24 years old I sprung for a new pump on eBay. I imagine I could buy just the mechanical seal and rebuild the water pump but I’m getting lazy.

The coolant pipes are slightly rusty so I’ll have to clean them up and give them a shot of paint. The paint on the front down tubes is chipped from road debris so I’ll touch up those areas also.

I also bought some new silicone hoses for the pipes. These hoses live directly behind the exhaust headers and while they seemed flexible and in good condition, they are also 24 years old. A lot of stuff on the Rex is 24 years old, because the bike is 24 years old. Funny, it seems like a new model to me. I can remember buying it only a few years old not a long time ago. Is this how aging works? Does time compress making distant events seem close?

The ZRX1100 comes standard with a ground skimming, low-slung exhaust system. The header pipe collector joins under the engine making my motorcycle lift too tall to fit between the pipe and the ground. Even if the jack fit under the bike you’d have to make some spacer blocks to prevent the pipe from hitting the lift. I went with jack stands on both front frame rails and one stand on a cross pipe behind the engine. With this tripod set up the bike feels pretty stable.

Once jacked up I could remove both wheels for new tires. I also removed the clutch slave cylinder that is leaking and then could access the leaking water pump.

The calipers on the front brakes are stuck. My caliper rebuild kits came in the mail so I’ll have plenty of piston swapping to keep me busy. This is one of the chores I dread.

The chain is pretty much worn out. The rollers are loose on the pins and the thing has 25,000 miles on it. Kawasaki used an endless type chain so I cut it off with a 4-inch abrasive cutting wheel. The rear sprocket looks unworn, which I find amazing, and the front sprocket has just the slightest bit of hooking. Most aftermarket junk won’t last as long as an old, used Kawasaki sprocket. I’ll get a new front sprocket and chain for the bike.

My initial goal with the Kawasaki is to fix the brakes, fork seals and tires. That will upgrade the ZRX to roller status, then I’ll be able to push it outside the shed for a much-needed bath. There is a long way to go to undo the damage 9 years of storage has done to this motorcycle so don’t get ants in your pants. Part 3 to follow, unless I skip to Part 5.