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And since only recently I finished working on these two first tails, I couldn’t wait to receive ready seats and  take a first look at my embodied idea: first bolt-on cafe-racer kit installed on Kawasaki Zephyr 400-550.

 

 

 

July 31, 2021

Hurray! First two seats for Kawasaki ZR400/ZR550 Zephyr cafe-racer kits are ready. My idea was to make the 400/550 seat look like a brother to Zephyr 750 seat even as their fiberglass bases have a little in common. looks like this goal was 100% achieved.   To my delight, one of the seats  was ordered in brown while another – in black. Each of them looks great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And to give you idea how far seats of my design stand from original Zephyr 400-550 seats here are a couple of photos:

 

 

Absolutely gorgeous.

Your skills on metal and fiber fabrications are impressive!!!
Did you planing any kind of a Giuliari seat style replica in the future?

 

Beautiful work.
Would these fit the 99-03 zr7 / zr7S? 

Thank you pals!

Your skills on metal and fiber fabrications are impressive!!!
Did you planing any kind of a Giuliari seat style replica in the future?

These days I don't make long term plans. Only short term plans. Ongoing plan is to share  some knowledge here (and maybe later on my website). Russians retreated from the Kyiv leaving ruins and corpses of civilian people behind , but it is clear as day that they will strike again and war is far from its end. If at the end I will be still able to work on projects, I'll gladly  expand the range of my products. Maybe at that time Ukraine will even become a part of the European Union which will simplify things with custom duties.

I know fiberglass technology and materials (gel coats, raisin, fiber) to the extent that allows me to make sure the work is done at appropriate level, but I prefer to subcontract fiberglass works. This work  if done properly, requires a space and some special equipment, like vacuum machine and oven to bake moulds and ready parts. Not mentioning special protection gear.  We still have a bunch of really good specialists that make parts for small aircrafts and water things (canoes and those fancy radio controlled  boats for competitions).

Also all models for parts are designed and made by me. By design I mean not only how they look, but how they function: they have to fit each other and standard parts of the motorcycle (frame and tank) and be compatible with the seat lock system and be optimized for fiberglass manufacturing. And so on and so forth. And sure, I process every fiberglass blank on my own.  

I could think out a lot of things and I could do quite a lot of things with my hands. But indeed, I cannot do all kinds of work. So, having no serious investments in my small business I worked out a system of subcontractors. Therefore, moulds (made from my models), and parts from those molds are made by the best fiberglass specialists I could find locally. Same with seat cushioning and upholstering.  The guy who does the seats for me is my oldest subcontractor. He sewed the first seat for me in 2014. Since then every seat I sold with kits or ordered for my own project was cushioned and upholstered by him.  We became kind of friends from that time. Same with priming and painting. It is still possible to find a good artisan with paint equipment here who will do a job for you for a price. Sure, the better the result you wish, the higher the price.

Would these fit the 99-03 zr7 / zr7S? 

So far I designed two bolt-on cafe-racer kits, for the Kawasaki Zephyr 750 and Zephyr 550.  ZR7 has a subframe completely different to those of Zephyr 750 and Zephyr 550, so, unfortunately, both my kits are incompatible with ZR7.
 

Meanwhile, next date is August 2, 2021

Sure, as soon as I had a ready seat at my disposal I started preparing the Kawasaki Zephyr 400/550 for its installation. It occurred to me that only installing a kit wouldn’t be sufficient. So in the course of adding light brush strokes to the mostly finished painting, I add some clip-ons, reroute cables and wiring, installed fork gaiters and on top of all added to setup “Eight Ball” cafe-racer mirror.

This was the first installation of real parts on a motorcycle so it was  tad exciting.  However, since I did my job making parts models, all real parts fit neat and tight. Zephyr 400/550 with a cafe-racer kit installed already looks great, even if the kit’ tail is not painted.

With so significant change of design caused by our kit, one may be the master – artist of his/her own right and go further  making his/her own masterpiece: clip-ons, headlight unit, gauges, handlebars, turn lights, mirrors, custom paintwork  and so on and so forth. What might be better?  Even, having experience of completely custom motorcycle builds myself, I have an itch to go further with this Zephyr. Gosh, I even already know what kind of paintwork I am ready to put on the bike!


 

 

 

And they are retreating but the pricks are leaving mines in their wake. Sad.