Kawasaki Z750S (ZR750K1 apparently)

[James Deuce]

Yeah I know they were constant rate. As soon as I saw them once they were out of the bike I knew the Kawasaki literature was lying.

Forks aren't adjustable at all on the Z750, hence the new springs. It's weird that the Traxxion springs feel firmer to me than the stock ones, when they're about 0.1kg lighter.

I hope it all goes well man!

[James Deuce]

I've got this week off and I finally got to go for a recreational ride for the first time since doing up the suspension and putting the Avon Vipers on.

I beetled up the Hutt motorway, went off at the Wallacville exit and up the Whiteman's Valley road past Wallaceville house. At the first right hander, which is noticeably off-camber, my boot was firmly welded to the road. Oops. That was a bit aggressive. Rapid steering duly noted, I moved the ball of my foot back onto the peg.

When I last went up this road, the super stiff standard suspension would push the bike all over the road, large bumps feeding back through the rider as steering input. With shock and fork springs well and truly bedded in, the suspension has that supple but controlled feel that I love. I'm no Jimbo600 (I get to ride my bike ALL the way home) but I do like to boogie sometimes, and managed a couple of footpeg scrape to footpeg scrape flicks through corners on the way up the takas today.

The Avon's looked noticeably less stressed than the OEM Bridgestones, and the level of feel is a revelation when right over.

Can't wait for Summer.

[erik]

Good to hear.

I tried the Z750S springs in the bandit, but I think they are too hard and the original springs aren't too bad, so I've gone back to those. No worries though, I'll keep 'em and maybe find a use in the future.
The gsxr1100 rear shock is working much better than the stock one though, no more bottoming out.

Appologies for the slight thread hijack...

[rogson]

........The rear shock is a revelation.......

Yep, I put Ohlins on my road bike. Cost a fortune, but oh the difference - worth the money IMO.

I remember an interview of Eddie Lawson where he said if you don't notice your back-end the shock is doing its job. Thats what the Ohlins are like - no matter what type of riding or surface. Magic!

[James Deuce]

Put the Micron on today.

It's about 4 inches shorter and 4kg lighter.

The deep growl it made with the standard pipe is even deeper and growlier without being obnoxiously loud, even though it says "race use only". Somehow the whole bike looks lighter. Haven't been for a ride yet. I'll let you know how it goes.

The last photo shows what the stock pipe looks like.

[Hitcher]

I look forward to observing your aural enhancement! It looks very nice.

[stevedee]

The pipe is cool but may I suggest getting rid of the snow shovel ?
http://www.hamicad.co.uk/ZX6R.html no offence mate.

spd:-)

[frogfeaturesFZR]

That exhaust really suits your bike, bet it sounds heaps better than stock

[Hitcher]

Well, yesterday (Saturday 1 July, or FJR1300T Day) I got to do more than listen to Jim2's ride, I got to ride it. From Masterton to Eketahuna (Wear the fox hat).

The Z750 in its native state would have to go dangerously close to being the best value-for-money motorcycle on the planet. Jim2's enhancements take what is a very tidy package to being something quite outstanding.

The bike is a great looker, in that funky Kawasaki way. The metallic tangerine colour is a personal favourite. Folk who have met me can vouch that I am a not an unsmall gent. Yet the Z fits nicely. I'm not sure how my arse would stand up to a day in the saddle, but that can be fixed (the saddle, not my custom-fitted arse). Nice wide bars in a "natural" position. Pegs, levers and other acoutrements all nicely located and visible.

My biggest surprise was the effectiveness of the screen in creating a nice bubble of quiet air for the rider to sit in.

For a bike to impress me, it has to do three things well: go, stop and handle. The Z750's engine is derived from the magnificent Z1000 and its heritage shows. It's a wonderfully balanced donk that breathes like its on carburettors, so good is the fuel-injected throttle response. And through a Micron it sounds hornier than a horny thing. The six-speed box is nicely matched to the engine.

The brakes are well sorted, efficient and predictable.

As for the handling, Jim2 has made an investment on front and rear suspension to replace the standard fare, and has a nice set of Avons for the bit where the rubber meets the road. You'd need to be spending more than $17,000 on a stock new bike that handles as well. The ride is firm, but not jarringly hard, and it tracks like it's on rails.

Nice. Very nice. All you young dudes who pant breathlessly after some cranked-over sprotsbike should have a look at the Z750. I hope Kawasaki sells thousands of these. They're wonderful.

[James Deuce]

What makes someone chose a particular motorcycle over the plethora of models and niches now available to motorcyclists? Does the large number of motorcycle types actually provide a better purchasing and ownership experience?

Over the last five years since I returned to riding bikes after a self imposed exile of ten years, I’ve struggled to find a bike that satisfied both the urge to have fun, as well as having a reliable mode of cost efficient transport. An old CBR600 revived my biking mojo, then a TRX850 cemented my resurrected motorcycle obsession. A brief period of “Banana Bike” ownership convinced me I wasn’t quite ready for pipe and slipper motorcycling. Not that there’s anything wrong with Suzuki’s GSXF range, it’s just that a bright yellow GSX600F made me the victim of rather more derision than I felt comfortable with.

Yes, I’m shallow.

In early 2005 a red and black Yamaha R6 caught my eye, and thanks to some heavy discounting at the time, a rather spectacular R6 hit my garage. I had many memorable rides, some in particular with a friend who is no longer with us. But. With a capital B. The R6 was so uncomfortable in city traffic that I ended up with a diaphragmatic hernia. A combination of a wristy riding position and a need for constant head turning put stresses on my middle aged frame that actually hurt me quite badly.

So I bought a Honda CB400FII for commuting. Fantastic riding position for commuting, really comfortable seat, but limited ground clearance and weather protection, and nothing like the urge of the R6 on the open road had me thinking again. In late 2005 Kawasaki released the Z750S and the rest, as they say, is history.

I sat on the Zed in the shop, and the next day listed the CB400 for sale and traded the R6 on the Z750S. In Pearl Magma Red. The CB400 sold the same day I traded, so I had some spare cash for a change. Spare cash for turning the Z750 into a bit of a project.

Riding the Z750 home that day made me realise that I had indeed made the right decision, but I also had some scope for making it better, making it MY bike. The first 5000km were racked up pretty rapidly. I like to explore a bike’s potential as quickly as possible and found that the Z750 went round corners brilliantly and thanks to similar horsepower to the R6, and a fatter mid range, the Z750 was quicker on the road than the R6 from point to point. So long as the roads were race track smooth.

Anyone who has ridden on New Zealand roads over the last decade will know that the roads are anything but smooth. In fact our race tracks aren’t all that smooth. So the suspension had to be dealt to first. A couple of emails to Shaun Harris (the TT winner) of Moto-Dynamix and I had an Ohlins shock and Traxxion Dynamix fork springs and fork oil on the way.

Talk about making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I know that the Z750 is supposed to be a “budget” bike, but I believe the two most important safety features of a motorcycle are the suspension and engine characteristics. The Z750’s throttle response is magic, fuel injection that feels like a bank of well set up CV carburettors, and an almost linear relationship to throttle position and engine speed. Except for that damn emissions flat spot all bikes seem to be growing these days. No off idle jerkiness, and without that horrible feeling that the engine just shut off when you throttle right off.

If the engine is the Z750’s high spot the stock suspension is most definitely its limiting factor. Bugger all rebound damping front and rear, no damping or preload adjustment for the front, and rebound adjustment for the rear that does nothing. Add to the mix progressive springs front and rear that bind and lock solid about half way through their travel and you’ve got a relatively quick bike that bangs and bounces from pothole to bump and back again.

The Ohlins and Traxxion Dynamics kit gave me a firmly suspended but well controlled bike. Just like my R6 had been, except the rear shock doesn’t fade when pushed for a couple of hours. Braking distances dropped, I could get on the throttle earlier, and change line at will. The improved handling capacity highlighted the limitations of the brakes, so braided lines were installed, vastly improving power and feel. The new lines vastly improved the looks too, as the installation removed that great ugly link pipe between the front callipers. A quick visit to an automotive supplies outlet and I had a cut down panel pin blanking the hole left in the front guard.

My desire to “improve” on Kawasaki’s product had now been well and truly fanned. I am aware that adding “stuff” to a bike does nothing to add to its value or offset depreciation, but by golly it is fun to make changes and actually improve a bike. Most motorcycles come off the production line so good, that it’s hard to know where to start. Problem is I may be starting to over capitalise!

I’ve added and added to this bike, taking a budget bike aimed at Born Again Bikers and turning into a sporty Sports Tourer, with decent luggage capacity, excellent handling, and a bit of “attitude”, thanks to a Micron Pipe and Stebel Nautilus horn. The Micron is great because cruising around town and commuting means you’re generally using the mid range to haul yourself around, and in this respect the Micron sounds like the stock pipe. Tap the top third of the rev counter and it sounds like a race bike, screaming to redline and raising hairs on the back of your neck. At least it still does for me. The Stebel horn makes iPod deaf or cellphone blind pedestrians leap at least 10 feet vertically and 20 feet backwards meaning I don’t even need to slow down to avoid them.

Just to give you an idea of what I’ve done, here is a list of mods:
Ohlins Rear Shock
Traxxion Dynamics Constant rate fork springs.
Micron Muffler and link pipe
Oggy Knob Crash Bungs
Braided Brake Lines
Oxford Race Stand Spools
Swanman Rear Race Stand
Ventura Pack Rack System and Expandable Rally bag (make sure you buy the grab rail for when you have the pack rack off the bike)
Ventura Headlight protector
Stebel Nautilus Horn (all bikes should come with one as standard)
’04 ZX-6R Rear Hugger, slightly modified.
Metal Gear front brake discs (because I somehow warped the front left stock disc)
Strip of rubber beneath the instrument cluster to kill the vibration noise from there.

The stock tyres are really nice, the front is a Bridgestone BT019, and the rear is a BT012R both of which seem to be specially made for the Z750. Replacement time saw them rejected though, thanks to being 3 months away and 50% more expensive than the average price for a 120/70x17-180/55x17 tyre combo. Good excuse to try some Avon Vipers out. How good are the Vipers? I’m on my second set.

What glorious headlights! Their angular shape actually gives some view of the road ahead when cornering at night, and their range and penetration are excellent in stock trim. Something like an HID kit could only make them better. Hmmm, another potential modification.

Fuel consumption has been brilliant, averaging out at around 16 km/l. Actual consumption figures vary tremendously between fuel retailers for some reason, dropping to 14 km/l for Shell fuel, and rising to 17 km/l for Caltex. All I can put that down to is the some manufacturers adding ethanol to the standard fuel blend in greater or lesser amounts.

Actually fuel consumption brings me to the one major gripe I have with the Z750S. The seat. That thing is a torture rack. After an hour, the seat foam compresses and you are sitting on the plastic seat base. I sometimes go looking for Shell fuel stations so I drop my range from 3 hours to 2.5 hours. I have plans though. The next change I’m making to the Zed is a Rider seat from McDonald Motor Trimmers in Tauranga (http://www.trimit.co.nz). Then a double bubble screen, then some flash levers, then some rear sets – aaaargh, make it stop!

I still smile when I look at MY bike in the garage, I look forward to riding to and from work every day, and I love to get out in the countryside with my mates on their much sportier tackle. The great thing is I don’t have to make excuses if I feel like taking it easy, and they have to make excuses if I arrive somewhere first.

Kawasaki, do us all a favour. I know you’ve got a new model coming out. Do something about that seat, and fit suspension that does something other than hold the bike up off the ground. I’ll still change stuff, but at least this brilliant semi-faired motorcycle won’t be almost dangerously compromised right from the word go. I chose this bike because it looked great, the engine ticked the right boxes, and there was plenty of scope to make it “mine”. The only niche it belongs to is “motorcycle”, just like all bikes used to, and thanks to a great basic package, you get to chose which end of the road biased motorcycle spectrum you’re aiming for.

[Storm]

Beauty writeup Jim- keep us posted on your ever changing bike

[Hitcher]

Hmmm. Bling. Nice.

[Krayy]

Exactly the argument that I'll be using when I hit up the wife for the Buell for the 40th in October...if I get a budget bike (Hornet or similar), then I'll spend so much doing mods that it'll end up costing the same as the Buell anyway!

BTW, if you have a mid-life crisis at 21, does that mean I've only got a couple of years left?

[Crisis management]

Good write up, Jim. Similarily I have issues of old age and decreptitude with sports bikes and am struggling to find a worthy sports/tourer, I will have to add Z750 to my short (bloody short) list.
It seems there is a real lack of all rounder type bikes now, the marketing driven specialisation of bikes has led to such a narrow focus that we need a plethora of bikes to fulfill all our riding styles, and I'm too broke to be able to afford a garage full!

[bistard]

Nice write up Jim & those mods,although not individually huge,have transformed the bike into a all round useable tool,not out of place commuting or scratching over the Tukas,well done that man!!
I dont know what you mean about R6s being uncomfortable,by the way,mine is fine!!