Rare KZ400 LTD sissy bar?

I just bought a 79 KZ400 LTD that has a sissy bar on it. the guy that sold me it said that the sissy bar is really rare because kawasaki made it for only one year. The reason for that is that the symbol on it looks almost exactly like a harleydavidson symboly with wings coming out of the top of it and instead of saying harly davidson it says Kawasaki motor club. He then proceeded to tell me about how Kawasaki got sued by harley for using their symbol and had to stop using it. Normally I wouldn't question what someone else says but since he was selling a perfectly good KZ400 for $150 I was already questioning his sanity. If anyone knows anything about this part or the real back story I would love to here it.

Well I'm not sure about any lawsuit arising over them but yes Kawasaki sold them through their accessory catalog for a while. You could get them for quite a few different bikes you just ordered the correct sideplates for whatever you were going to put it on. They were well made in that they were sturdy and used solid square stock steel as opposed to thin tubing that was just plated. They still pop up every now and then and usually fetch pretty decent money. IIRC they sold for about $100.00 when they were new. Here is a pic of one that is on my 650 CSR.


BTW nice score on the 400 LTD.

I really don't know about the sissy bar being rare but the cast Eagle is fairly scarce. I found mine on Ebay and paid a whopping $32 for it shipped. It was an NOS piece which came to me complete in the original factory packaging with bolts !!! The Eagle is Kawasaki part number ... K53033-003.

I just recently completed a custom sissy bar project and incorporated the eagle into the design.

That one actually looks quite a bit different then mine. Mine looks like the the harley davidson shield emblem only with the words Kawasaki Motor club in the place of the words harley davidson. Its also cast into the upright bars that go around it and they made of a solid steel or something too. If you can kind of see it on the picture above thats what it looks like. I think that the gringo has the exact same one as me. anyway I doubt if it really is rare or that there really was a lawsuit I just thought that it would be interesting if it were true. Oh well it still looks pretty sweet so I don't plan on getting rid of it any time soon.