Building new drag chassis on a budget

[img] hey, im new here so this is my first post.

ill give a little background first. MY fiances dad runs a 73' kz900 with a 1197 kit, 33's, paul gast head, and a bunch of other little goodies.

he let me run the bike a few times and has me hooked. i ditched my cbr and have purchased a frame and bottom end from him. he's also setting me up with a lot more parts. i wanna build a decent bike on a budget for my first bike.

anyways, my questions are:

1- what frame mods are beneficial?

2- what wheels from other bikes are good donors? looking for some lighter aluminum but dont wanna spend like 2000.

3- what front forks are good donors? ive heard h2's are a good swap but im finding them hard to find.

all help would be greatly appreciated.

what frame/chassis and motor are you starting with,what do you expect the bike to do?differant frames need differant mods for differant amounts of power and uses.street/dragbike,full time dragbike ??????????

frames a 73 kz 900, engines a 74 with welded crank and 1000 block.

bikes gonna be strictly a bracket racer drag bike, no street, just strip. im looking to run low 11's high 10's for now.

You really should worry more about adding gussets more than shedding weight. The 73 frames are built by Twizzler and get really sloppy on the top end. There are a couple of companies that make kits but if you have a welder or know someone with a welder you can make your own. If I were you I would blast and repaint the 73 frame, sell it on ebay and buy a 77-78 frame. You should get good money for the 73 and the 77-78 frames are way cheaper and better.

a 73 kz900 frame would be really rare,one of a kind even if you sould find one!:laugh: late 72-7 900s were called z1s on this side of the ocean,kz 900s came out in 76.if that is an actual 73 frame (check serial number)with a title stick it in a corner and save it for a resto project.if you can find one id suggest a 79-80 ltd frame,theyre a lot stouter to begin with and allready have a little more rake built into them stock.the older tank and bodywork can be used on them with minor work andyour motor will drop right in

sorry, my mistake. im still new to the kawis so gimme a break lol!

i guess its a z1 frame, nothing special bout it to him and hes a kawi nut so ijm sure he'd know if it was sumthing special.

anyways, im thinking of running a newer model crotch rocket front end and wheels for it, im wondering if anybody has any suggestions as to what makes or models to look for in particular. i know he's planning on us raking the front, he's going to build me a swing arm as well.

any suggestions will be muchly appreciated!

id say use the stock frontend.give it a good rebuild and maybe some slugs to lower/stiffen it up.see if you can find a 650-750-1000 front wheel that takes the 4 bolt brake rotor which will make it easy to find parts.for the rear id use a 750-1000 wheel with disc brake laced to a 3.5" aluminum rim to keep it cheap and simple.youll have plenty of time to upgrade things as your skill level progresses,i would suggest starting with a mild smaller motor and spend some time getting the chassis and your timing at the lights sorted out,its a lot easier to do when you dont have a monster motor overpowering you and the chassis(dont ask me how i know this!:blush: :woohoo: )

we were planning on a 1075 with 12:1, 29mm smoothbores, welded crank, head done by fast by gast, air shift.

as for the front end we kinda wanna do the crotch rocket swap just for a project, he loves to get his hands on any kind of different challenge. so what kind of suggestions would u have for a crotch rocket front end? id like to use the whole wheel and brake set up as well

well im a big wire wheel fan incase you havent noticed!:laugh: but anyway id to aim for something on the smaller end of the sportbike scale like an ex 500 or something like that.reason being that most of the sportbike stuff is going to be sized/engineered for bikes being layed into corners at insanely high speeds under serious loads which is why they use such beefy oversized parts which in turn adds a lot of weight which is the exact oppisite of what you want to achieve whith a dragbike.we used to run spindly lightweight dirtbike frontends back in the good ol days because we couldnt afford the high end lightweight stuff from kosman when i was young and wild!:lol:

well i guess maybe i should do the wire wheels then, cuz the father in law is pushing them hard too! you guys have been doin this a lot longer then me lol.

so what bike should i look at for a donor then?

also wut bout the front end?

find a kz 650 front end to use and an 18" front wheel off like a 200-- thats a lot easier than doing the sportbike front end--- are you going with a small tire bike or a big tire bike-- We have a nice swingarm and you can run a 5.5/6" rim off a new sportbike with a 7" slick-- we got all that stuff here---

Don't worry about all these people talking about gussets and shit-- if your running 11's and high10's its kinda overkill-- put a stabilizer on and go -- my old bike had 0 gussets on it and would run 5 teens/ 5.20's all day long-- my streetbike runs 8.90's and doesn't have a single gusset. maybe were stupid for that but we have raced kz's for 30 years?

smclem wrote:

find a kz 650 front end to use and an 18" front wheel off like a 200-- thats a lot easier than doing the sportbike front end--- are you going with a small tire bike or a big tire bike-- We have a nice swingarm and you can run a 5.5/6" rim off a new sportbike with a 7" slick-- we got all that stuff here---

Don't worry about all these people talking about gussets and shit-- if your running 11's and high10's its kinda overkill-- put a stabilizer on and go -- my old bike had 0 gussets on it and would run 5 teens/ 5.20's all day long-- my streetbike runs 8.90's and doesn't have a single gusset. maybe were stupid for that but we have raced kz's for 30 years?

the kz frames arent nearly as flimsy as the z1 frames,it does make it a whole hell of a lot easier to concentrate on racing when the power is going to the ground instead of being wasted twisting the frame making you wrestle it down the track.:laugh: