{"id":2687,"date":"2019-02-07T06:48:40","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T14:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=2687"},"modified":"2019-02-07T06:48:40","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T14:48:40","slug":"zeds-not-dead-part-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/02\/07\/zeds-not-dead-part-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Zed\u2019s Not Dead: Part 15"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Zed\u2019s forward progress has come to a temporary halt. Not due to any complications on the Kawasaki\u2019s part, although the project has exceeded my initial estimate by double and I\u2019m not done yet. No, Pitiful Man has to strike a balance between work and play. He must strive to appease the gods and their fickle ways while angering none. It\u2019s a fine line we walk and sometimes we have to dance atop a vibrating string.<\/p>\n

A quick trip to Florida was in order as the Love Shack, our singlewide trailer in the Ocala Forest, was showing signs of neglect. CT and I freshened the grey floor paint and installed new back porch pavers, eliminating the sad little stoop that had served us poorly for 14 years. While we were at it some new window shades, new screen doors and a lick of paint on the Lido Deck were in the cards. Another project I started 14 years ago, installing sliding closet doors, was finally brought to a conclusion. When we were finished the place looked like a hundred bucks.<\/p>\n

Back at Tinfiny Ranch in New Mexico another, larger project had to be tackled: a twenty-foot by thirty-foot concrete floor in the tin shed. I\u2019ve decided to tackle the shed floor in stages, like the International Six Days Trial. Stage one will be Bay Number 1 (a little confusing because an additional bay, Bay Zero, was added to the shed after the other three bays had been named). This stage consists of 16 individually poured slabs of which I have 9 complete as of this writing. After the slabs are in place a shear wall will be built to add strength to the flimsy metal shed and also divide the space into a Bay 2 and 3 dirt floor, rat-accessible side, and a Bay 1 concrete, non-rat accessible side.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Those faithful Zed\u2019s Not Dead readers that have not deserted me will recall Part One where I describe Zed\u2019s crooked path back and home. After we bought Tinfiny Ranch I discovered a trove of paperwork from Zed\u2019s previous owner. Several motorcycle magazines from the era featuring Zed were in a box along with a possible explanation for the Zed\u2019s wiring issues described elsewhere in this series.<\/p>\n

\"\"This letter dated August 3rd 1994 from Ken Rogers representing Dyna III ignitions (I\u2019m guessing not the singer) explains to the previous owner how they have thoroughly tested the electronic ignition he sent back and have proclaimed it fit as a fiddle. Zed\u2019s burned-up wiring harness may have been due to a faulty Dyna ignition installation. This would also account for the wiring to the coils being cut as those short bits were spliced into the Dyna module. I never found any of the Dyna stuff in my initial clean up but I haven\u2019t gone through all the old guy\u2019s junk.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Along with the Dyna stuff there was a lot of Yoshimura brochures and price lists. After seeing the damage to the wiring harness on Zed I\u2019m torn between hoping my bike has some nice performance parts installed and fearing that my bike has some nice performance parts installed. I should be able to measure the cams to see if they have additional lift but I\u2019m not sure how to check displacement without winning an AMA national road race. I suspect the Yoshi stuff was bench dreaming because the bike runs too well to be hot rodded.<\/p>\n

\"\"Finally here\u2019s a nice photo from Dale-Starr of David Aldana winning the Daytona superbike race with a half-lap lead over the guy in second place. Apparently this caused protests that required Aldana\u2019s bike to be disassembled twice! The bike was found legal and Aldana\u2019s win stood. I met Aldana at Barberville one year. I was so excited to meet him I started doing the \u201cWe\u2019re not worthy!\u201d Wayne\u2019s World bowing thing and Aldena told me to knock it off.<\/p>\n

While no real work has been done to Zed in Part 15 I\u2019ve enjoyed digging through Zed\u2019s past. Reading the old magazine reviews reinforces just how spectacular the Kawasaki Z1 900 was when it came out in 1973.\u00a0 And how spectacular a motorcycle it still is.<\/p>\n

\n

Want to catch the rest of the Zed story? \u00a0 Hey, just click right here<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zed\u2019s forward progress has come to a temporary halt. Not due to any complications on the Kawasaki\u2019s part, although the project has exceeded my initial estimate by double and I\u2019m not done yet. No, Pitiful Man has to strike a balance between work and play. He must strive to appease the gods and their fickle … Continue reading “Zed\u2019s Not Dead: Part 15”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[235,66,140],"tags":[214,342,366,355,341],"class_list":["post-2687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazon","category-joe-gresh","category-vintage-motorcycle","tag-kawasaki","tag-kawasaki-900","tag-kawasaki-restoration","tag-zed","tag-zeds-not-dead"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2687"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2698,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions\/2698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}