Wayne Gardner tribute {not replica}

Well, I've never done this before, been around here a while, but usually just reading, researching or giving a little help.  I've never been a photo type person, coming from a meagre beginnings, camera's were a luxury, just never picked up the habit. I was born in the early 1960's in case anyone was wondering.
So, a couple of years back I bought a GPZ750 R1, it was a "20 foot bike", looked great in pictures but up close it needed some work, the good was that it came with spare gaskets and a brand new Mac exhaust, which now resides on my sons Z650. 
 

The front fairing was cracked from a spill, the fairing mounts bent, the tank had been repainted poorly , it needed pulling apart and completely going over, virtually every black part needed repainting.  Lots to do.
I had a shed/shop full of Honda 4 stuff I'd collected over about a 20 year period, every time i got some new parts i'd find another frame or engine and buy it, I became overwhelmed with the sheer amount of stuff I had in parts, about enough to almost build 5 or 6 bikes, instead of focussing on one i just ended up with piles of everything, I looked at the only complete bike i had, which happened to be the GPZ,  and made the decision to just sell all the Honda stuff and focus on one bike.

Of all the stuff I'd bought I had a GSX1100, GS1100 to you US guys, and a 45mm Showa front end off a 2002 Triumph speed triple, I also had two sets of KZ1000 18 x 2.5 rear wheels and a pair of Z1300 18 X 2.15 fronts. I've always loved the 70's. early 80's superbikes and had planned on using these parts on a hot Honda but the change of plans now had me looking at putting these parts on the Kawasaki, especially after seeing how easy it was to fit the GS arm to the Kawasaki's, Thanks forum...!!
I found the Triumph front end complete, brakes, lines, levers, calipers and triples on Ebay US for 100USD, apparently the guy couldn't set it up correctly, had too much money and bought a complete Ohlins front end. I was lucky enough to be looking through Ebay late at night, as you do, and refreshed the page and the front end was at the top of my search. I messaged him to see if he'd ship to Australia and I bought it.   This is what turned up...
 

I'd hit the jackpot..!!

Now since this was going on the Kawasaki I would need to have fork extensions made, the forks were 700mm long, I needed 800mm.  After talking to a few people I was going to have new 100mm extensions made, after having them hard chromes it was going to be quite expensive, so I hesitated.  I was browsing ebay {there's a pattern starting to form here}, and came across a Chinese business selling new fork tubes, I went through his list and found the Triumph fork tubes, again these would be too short, so on a whim I messaged the seller to see if it were at all possible to have a longer set made up, I woke up in the morning to a reply saying YES, for an extra 20 dollars, so for around 200 dollars I had a brand new set of 100mm longer fork tubes in hand. {sorry for the lack of pics but I will get some}. The quality was excellent, I had a friend that knows his stuff, he's a mechanical engineer and he was amazed at the quality. 

Now, Once I'd received the new fork legs and fitted new fork and tube bushes, I pulled apart the forks, it took about 5 seconds to work out why he couldn't get the suspension to work, The forks had brand new Race Tech springs in them, the thing is, race tech springs are quite a bit shorter than the stock spring but he's tried using them with the stock spring spacer, so there was no way to preload the spring, in fact, it was just floating around inside the fork...!!!   Some people have more money than sense.... Oh well, his loss, my gain. Now it was time to source some bearings to see if I could make the Z1300 18 inch wheel work, I happened to pick one of about a 2 year run where Triumph used a 25mm hollow front axle so finding bearings was a bit of a search. I'm not big on All Balls Chinese bearings so I was chasing Japanese ones, I couldn't get 14mm wide bearings so I bought 12mm wide and have ordered a few spring steel 1mm shims in the correct sizes, problem solved. My friend has an old 1950's lathe that cam in handy for making up the spacers to centre the wheel. Seeings though the front end arrived brakes and all, did I mention braided lines as well, even the levers are fully adjustable.....!!   Now for discs.....
I rang Metalgear to get a price on custom front rotors and nearly fell over when quoted over 400 dollars a disc ..   That was out of my budget so I was talking to my mate and he said "see if the will sell you blanks"...... Anyway I called them straight away and was surprised to find that they had 320mm blanks for 90 dollars each, on my mates account i got them slightly cheaper, bingo....   This is where the fun started....
I have used a lathe, making spacers and a few little brass screw on thingies that we needn't go into {it was a while ago}, but nothing out of stainless and nothing this big, also the chuck I had to use was a 4 claw chuck so the discs had to be indexed on the lathe or i'd end up with wobbly discs. It took all day just to machine the centres out to the correct diameter, the 320mm blanks had a 50 id centre hole, so I had to take out a lot to allow the Z1300 disc carriers to fit, one tiny pass after another....

Next was to paint strip the wheels and put a few coats of Gold paint and a couple of coats of satin clear, they were then baked in an oven  and this is what we ended up[ with, again I apologise for the lack of pics, I didn't think I was going to do a build thread and I don't use a smart phone, so I have to remember to get the wife's camera, which is a bit foreign to me, anyway...

 

So, here we are, I better put up a picture of the bike I'm building the tribute to. Gardner raced a late 1970's Z1R MKII but it had the bigger tank, the Z1000 MKII tail and modified seat, this is the bike..
   

And this is where mine sits at the moment with the front end fitted and the GS swingarm and my wheels and brakes....

 

I probably should have spread these posts out over a few days/weeks as I have to travel about 80 mile {120 Kilometers} round trip just to work on it ....

Well you 100% have my interest on this build, goin to get my popcorn out and subscribe.

Subscribed

Awesome. Looking forward to your build progress!

I like others look forward to following your project.  Moriwaki did indeed make some interesting machines just like many others did back in the day. 

I’m in, heck I’ll even donate the 200 mph tape to aid in replicating the seat. 

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I’m in, heck I’ll even donate the 200 mph tape to aid in replicating the seat. 

The seat is a bit of a head scratcher at the moment, I have a Japanese Z1000MKII seat with the front scooped out a bit, It looks good but its way longer than the R1 seat, It seems the Z1000 MKII/Z1R's were longer than the R1, and the R1's frame rails are closer together at the front of the seat, so I'm now thinking about modifying the R1 seat. I'll mock it up tomorrow and see how it all goes, I think I'll skip the tape..!!   Thanks for the offer....

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That reverse motion linkage on the rear brake pedal is pretty unusual.  I guess they really wanted the master cylinder to be up and out of the way.