TOPIC:

Hello All. Anyone recognise/ used these for a conversion? owner says zx9r- 1997, but 1998 was first year of 'right side up' forks her in Australia market at least. On paper a better fork?
They are 1000 miles away so can't really go for a look.
Very cheap and the top clamp already has billet mounts for flat bars (not shown).

I have a set from a 2001 ZX9 I purchased a while back.....I was told they are really good stout forks, the real problem with them on the KZ 1000 project I will be building is that they are a lot shorter than stock which would require a drop triple to work well. I will measure them exctly tomorrow morning when I am back in my shop and post here. I personally do not like the dropped triple look so I will be selling them soon.

Looks like early ZX9R. I used the same on my build.Like Bluezbike says,they are a lot shorter than the original Z forks and you might have ground clearance issues but,from what I understand,they are the longest upsydupsy jap forks available.
You can go with a dropped triple but I think thats the most expensive option.You can also go for tube extensions which is cheaper,though some people dont trust them. I also saw someone on this site reworked the internals to extend the forks.A very nice solution.(It might be Zed1015 but Im not sure.If its not,his build thread is worth reading through anyway!)

Make sure the chrome is good though!

So my original 79 KZ 1000 LTD forks are 30.75" long....the 2001 ZX9 forks I have are 28.5" long from top of forks to center-line of axle in both cases. When you factor in the difference in wheel size from the 19"on my Ltd to most modern wheels that are 17"......you end up with a loss of 3.25" in ground clearance if all you did was to drop those forks with a modern wheel on a stock big KZ. I liked them because they were standard cartridge style forks which I personally prefer, the stanchions are also very beefy at 46 mm. diameter. I believe it was Zed 1015 who outlined an internal extension set-up for forks as Davido said. I just do not know enough about suspension internals to take that on but I may just have do dig in and learn.

edit: All fork measurements were taken at an unloaded state.

some strange damage around the fork seal area on one leg...not crash damage more crush. will keep looking.

the boss on the bottom of most zx9 upper triples can typically be machined off and a piece of aluminum welded back in and remachined to fit the kz stem and gain about 7/8's of an inch.











it's a jag of work but sometime's an extra 7/8's is worth it.

leon

another thing is the older welded in kz stems once removed from the lower triple are typically a press fit for the inside of the zx stem.
so this allows the zx stem to be cut off and machined flush with the lower triple.
sometimes you have to hone the id of the zx stem a little.
then you can press the kz stem into the zx stem that is left thus using the zx stem as the conversion bushing.then reach down inside and weld the two together.


leon

When converting to the ZX9 forks can you still use the stock front wheel and do the discs line up ok?

no

So how do people get around this problem?

Chamber66 wrote: So how do people get around this problem?

Generally they don't, they fit the zx9 wheel and brakes as well but anything can be made to fit anything else if you have access to a lathe and mill.

Yes I have a lathe. Is it a case of using ZX9 discs and spacing them out?