1981 KZ1000 front fork bushing kit?

Regarding the fork bushings: I had to overhaul 2 36mm forks for my KZ 750E and the bushings were shot. They are not available trough Kawasaki and have no parts number. However, there is a UK supplier selling fork seals and bushings: Pyramidparts (please google it, i don't want to use a link here). They have inner and outer bushings and good quality seals (double lipped) for a lot of different bikes and forks.

Nice, thanks for the info, I will look them up!  The 'new' forks I ordered will be delivered Monday or Tuesday and it's anybody's guess what kind of condition they will be in.  I figured I would just throw them on the bike and see how they feel riding around town before deciding how deep I want to get into them.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to figure out how to carry lunch and a jacket when I start riding to work again.  I found some medium-sized canvas saddle bags on Amazon -- cheap, but I don't need much and thought I'd take a chance.  They arrived today, and yeah they're a really good fit on the bike.  I'll have to grab some scotch-guard to treat the canvas but they're big enough to stuff my heavier coat in, which surprised me.  There's not way given to tie down the bottom of the bags though so I'll have to figure out something there.  Overall I'm happy, once I get the front forks solved this means I'm all set to ride again after the rain stops.

A former member of this site used to carry a purse on his bike.

hardrockminer wrote:

A former member of this site used to carry a purse on his bike.

 

Did i smell some kind of sarcasm in your kind of words???

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

"THEY'RE NOT CALLED PURCES ANYMORE"

Much like the stereotypical ladies bag, if I were to try and pack all my stuff into something slung over my shoulder I would be lying flat on the highway the first time I tried to look behind me.

Which reminds me... does anyone else have issues feeling scrunched up on a KZ1000?  I'm just under 6' tall, I don't feel like I should be having this issue, but if I turn wrong I get a major cramp in my hip (I have the stepped seat like in SWest's pic).  I guess if I ever rebuild it as a single-seater I'll just have to move the seat back a little more.

He was using it to hide a missing side cover.   I like the riding position I have now. Keeps me from sliding back on the seat at WOT.   The King/Queen seat had me scrunched up on the tank. I hated it.   You could get a seat cover to make a Z1 style seat but yours is stepped so that would take some doing.
Steve
z1parts.net/seat-cover-z1-900/

I'm actually going to have to re-do my seat soon anyway.  All this working on it, I noticed that the vinyl is started to crack all over.  I could certainly re-shape the foam at that point.  Might be worth looking into to, see what's available that would give me more room to slide back.

Woo, back on the road again!  I just threw the new forks on the bike in case there were any problems, but all seems good so once the rain clears up I can pull them again, sandblast, and get some paint on the lowers.  And now I can start working on adjustments (like tightening the chain) to get it ready before I try hitting the highway.  I rode it around town for about 45 minutes though without any trouble.

And maybe now that it's not blowing fork oil everywhere, all that greasy gunk on the front brakes will dry out.  They've still got some grip, but I know they should be better.  I'll give it a little time but I might have to replace the pads.

Did you check the fluid levels?