KZ900 Streetfighter

I know I haven't been around here for a long time; a lot of things have happened. I've been in school since summer 2014 and the kz got finished as fast as I could before the semester started. I'll upload some pics of it from that summer. But I never really got to ride it that year, not until last summer was I able to address a lingering issue that folks have encountered with these fork conversions. The ride height tends to drop a lot and when moving, header scrapes are constantly in-mind. I machined a beautiful set of slip-on fork extenders that added 2 inches to the front. I don't think I ever machined anything that precise before. Anyway, it reduced the dragging a significant amount and I could have softened up the rear preload some but I left it alone. I feel this plays a big part in what happened after I began riding the bike at school at the end of last year. It was a joy to cruise around, and I made a few trips into the surrounding countryside; it felt solid and very controllable, high speed stability felt on point and I was thrilled with it. One night while returning home from a friend's place, I was twisting through an S turn and on the way out I suddenly lost traction at the rear wheel. I went down on my right side and messed my shoulder up. The bike and I survived, although we were both a little beat up. It was a dry night, and after looking over the scene, there was no apparent reason for the loss of traction - no oil slick, no water, no debris from the roadside. My brother and I concluded that the suspension being so tight coupled with a steep bank angle and hard tire led to the suspension loading up to the point that the slightest tire slip was enough to overcome tire to pavement friction. I guess that is the risk of playing with your suspension or buying cheap tires. But that is the story of the street fighter project up to now; currently, I'm collecting parts for the rebuild and I'm excited to hear it run again in a few months. Sorry for the super long hiatus, guys.

Dude, that looks frighten sweet!

Very nice.
Steve

I like it !!!!
Dave

Looks great! Awesome attention to detail!

Devin

really cool build!


leon

Very nice

you did a great job, sorry to hear about the crash. Do you have pictures of the fork extensions you made? I have the same issue with my GSXR 750 forks. I have purchased a set of GSXR1100 forks to replace them. That coupled with a custom 40mm drop.

Just want to say thanks to everyone's encouragement throughout his build and thank you all for the replies; they've kept me going on this build.

Thanks Kaw-a-holic, I can snap some pics of the extensions for you later on today. I won't be able to take pics of the inside though, since I'd have to tear the whole front end off, but I think I can describe them to you enough to understand coupled with the photos.

Kaw-a-holic, I took a few pics of the extensions; I'm sorry about the quality, I had to use my cell since my regular camera was in-op. I tried to get a shot down inside to represent the step the strut rests on. In my research on these, I was surprised to find that they weren't clamped on, just machined to a barely slip over the top of the tube. I would like to have made them another inch taller, but the longest I saw was about three inches of rise, so I felt that it would be safer to stay with that dimension. For mine, I used a length of heavy wall tubing (2.5" OD X 1.5" ID, I think) and machined the step to be an inch deep, leaving the rest of the inside diameter at 1.5". After installing them, I found that I had to drop the headlight down some, which worked out for me since I wanted to drop the dash also - the gauge bracket is between the headlight and head tube.








After looking at your build thread, holy smokes! The way your bike turned out is awesome! Excellent work!

Edit: no sure why the pics are rotated on here, they are right-side up on my computer...

DoubleZed wrote: Kaw-a-holic, I took a few pics of the extensions; I'm sorry about the quality, I had to use my cell since my regular camera was in-op. I tried to get a shot down inside to represent the step the strut rests on. In my research on these, I was surprised to find that they weren't clamped on, just machined to a barely slip over the top of the tube. I would like to have made them another inch taller, but the longest I saw was about three inches of rise, so I felt that it would be safer to stay with that dimension. For mine, I used a length of heavy wall tubing (2.5" OD X 1.5" ID, I think) and machined the step to be an inch deep, leaving the rest of the inside diameter at 1.5". After installing them, I found that I had to drop the headlight down some, which worked out for me since I wanted to drop the dash also - the gauge bracket is between the headlight and head tube.

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After looking at your build thread, holy smokes! The way your bike turned out is awesome! Excellent work!

Edit: no sure why the pics are rotated on here, they are right-side up on my computer...

Thanks for the pics and the compliments, you have a nice build as well.. I was curious as I was going to make some and decided to go with a longer 1100 GSXR USD forks and a drop triple. Everyone gave me crazy eyes when I said I wanted to make fork extenders.

Very nice!

I have to say I really like the tail light.