Introduction

Hello everyone! I'm looking forward to sharing information here. I love motorcycles. I got my first bike in 1972, it was a Honda trail 70. From there I've had a '73 Yamaha AT3, 74 Honda Elsinore 125, 76 YZ 100. In 77 I bought my first street bike which was a 76 Suzuki GS550. I only kept it 3 months thanks to someone almost running over me on a country road one morning. I started college about that time and was out of motorcycles for quite a while. I started amateur car racing in the '90s running Mazda RX7s in scca events. In 1996 I bought a Honda CBR 900RR. What a rocket ship compared to the GS550. I kept it a year or two before I sold it. It was a get through a divorce bike. Got back into the car racing doing endurance races in miatas and rx7s for a few years and sold all of that around covid time. In August of 2023 I bought my first Kawasaki a 1977 KZ 1000 pictured in my avatar for restoration. I rode it for about 300 mi before I actually started doing the restoration and my quandary was that I knew this bike would be down for quite some time and I enjoyed riding again so much that the bike behind the kz1000 I purchased a month later so I would have something to ride while I was working on the KZ. As I'm sure you can recognize, it's a 2021 Z900 RS. The picture posted below is of 77 before the facelift. After completing the restoration, I started looking for my next project bike. I ended up buying a used motorcycle dealers old inventory of Z1 and KZ parts. Now I have projects for months and or years. Fun fun fun! 

Welcome from the UK

Welcome to KZR! Where are you located?  Nice score on the parts cache of old Kawasaki parts.

I'm in Mississippi 

Welcome, how about some pictures of your 77' KZ 1000?

Sounds like you've developed the same addiction we have.  Welcome to the fun!

Thanks Wookie, We just watched the 1st Star wars movie last night. It had been years since we last watched it. Loved it again.

Here are some before and after pics 

I think I have, motorcycles are so much easier to work on than cars 

sf4t7 wrote:

Sounds like you've developed the same addiction we have.  Welcome to the fun!

 

Welcome to our little interwebs corner of Motorcycle Madness, Coyote!  Nice bikes!  Rest assured, you're among friends now.

Yet another soul infected with The Dreaded Z-Bug has joined our aZylum.

The of symptoms of Z-Bug Motorcycle Madness are unique, and the mechanisms driving the symptoms are very poorly understood.  The international medical community has studiously ignored this behavior for decades, so we're left to our own devices. 

Those so inflicted generally attempt to self-medicate by applying more Z-bikes and, in advanced cases, even individual Z-bike parts!  In chronic, severe cases there are even vintage used parts that may be found squirreled away in the sufferer's parts stash.  We see that's already occurred.  There also seems to be an infrequent symptom in some individuals that manifests by traveling long distances to hot, dusty & primitive encampments where parts pushers openly display their wares.  There, they spend untold hours wandering among large collections of mostly irrelevant items searching through disorganized collections of grimy parts for that one (just one..., just one..., just one...) item that might bring temporary relief.  Mid-Ohio & Barber come to mind.

But here's the thing, (there's always a thing...) it's really The Dreaded Z-Bug that compels the individual to acquire additional Z-bikes, parts, arcane knowledge & such.  It does so by subtly altering the cognitive processes to make it seem as if it's their idea.  Mind control, in other words.  It's a Z-Bug defense mechanism to ensure it's survival.

There is no known cure.

It's been a long time since we've written about The Dreaded Z-Bug.  It doesn't like it's secrets to be revealed, and there's usually a price to be paid in maintenance.  We've tried hiding our revelations within irrelevant threads, but to no avail.  There's this sudden urge to eschew breakfast, go to the shop & turn wrenches, clean and.........................................

Good Ridin'
slmjim & Z1BEBE

Yep, that describes me to a T. I did a quick blood test this morning and test showed that I'm definitely positive for the z-bug. I've had a version of it for a long long time now and it seems to mutate. I had the two-stroke dirt bike bug which turned into Mazda RX-7 bug and now has mutated into my first experience with the z bug strain. I think it's airborne but wearing a mask doesn't seem to help. I think some folks are just predisposed.