If you are planning on riding the bike hard, I would install some type of steering dampner.

I would not ride any motorcycle without a steering dampner. I broke one of my outer sparkplug caps with my knee one time when my KZ1000 went into a big wobble coming out of a corner on some slightly rippled pavement!!!

I have both an oil cooler and steering dampner on my KZ1000. It took some planning, and a fancy bracket on the frame and lower tree to get it to clear my oil cooler. You can get by with using the copy of the original Kawasaki steering dampners like what came on the old triples.

I would go with the tapered bearing in the steering stem, better rear shocks, bronze bushings, or needle bearings in the swing arm, and a steering dampner to start with on your KZ1000.

And your probably right. I haven't even yet pulled the swing arm off yet to even look at it. Just trying to do a little homework before. In the past I've used bronze swing arm bushings on my H2 and RD. Seemed to work well. Do they offer these bushings for the KZ or is the needle bearing kit all that's out there? What about steering head bearings?

Just obtaining information of handling improvements for my 77' KZ1000A. It's still far from running but getting a little closer. I've looked at a few universal steering stabilizers on ebay, but how would they mount to the KZ? I have an original Lockhart 4-row oil cooler on the bike, that I may not even use because it looks like it would interfere with out locating it. What are you guys using?

Also, Steering head bearings and swing arm bushings. What are you using as well? Any help would appreciated again!

Like to convert my 77' KZ1000A over to a GS1100E swing arm. I know it's probably been talked over frequently, but what is all needed in the conversion: axles, spacers, etc.?

Ahhhh your 636 should be a countersproket sensor then. Man I would not even know how to start on that.

The Gixxer is mechanical, and I have to check wheel circumference from the 17" Gixxer to the 19" (stock KZ) front wheel but I will be close, and can mentally adjust as needed. Even the original KZ 900 speedometer and wheel all stock was notorious for less than accurate speedo. A gixxer cable plugs right into the KZ speedo, but is too short, so I ordered a Bandit speedo cable in the hopes it will be long enough. The KZ speedo cable plugs right into the gixxer wheel. The cables are identical, but I need a longer one.

I spent the day with my neighbor Fred soldering all the wires to the rear tail/brake and signal lights. The back end is all buttoned up. This is good feeling.

We then roughed out a bracket to hang the gages on to the Gixxer top clamp. After sawing off the ignition switch boss on the gixxer top clamp, I cut a small 3/8" aluminum plate to support the gages using two threaded bosses on the underside of the top clamp. the gages look like they were meant to be there. Now I found that the oil cooler interferes with the tach cable, so I have to move the cooler up 1 inch.

After I get this all lined up I will take the bracket and top clamp off, and massage them to look nice, and probably powder coat the two items.

Lotta lotta work !!!! It seems so close, but each step is brand new, there is no instruction manual, and no factory built this so everything is engineered as I go. That is one reason I put so much detail into this thread, so as others run into issues, maybe I have already solved a few for them.

If you are reading this and thinking of a build...its ten times harder than it looks, but well worth it.

Just an update on this.......and the stupidity of PO's

After checking everything I had confirmed that all the proper wheel spacers were there and in the correct order, but there was still extra space inside the swingarm, so I continued to ride after rearranging the ones I added to tighten things up. I failed to notice in my frustration with the general care and maintenance of this bike ( as well as my NEED to ride it) that I had burned off the entire right side brake pad in the caliper. Once I discovered that I parked the bike for a bit till I could get new brakes.

New brakes came in and I pulled the wheel to install them and discovered that the right side wheel bearing had run out of the inner race.

Turns out the simple things get you....Seems the PO had screwed up his axel bolt (probably beating it with his head or some other blunt object) and put in another one from a different year/model bike. It is about 1" longer.
he put said bolt in and tightened it till the nut ran out of threads and rode it...with no compensation for the added length. This caused 2 things: My swingarm has spread itself to the width of the longer bolt, and the left side bearing walked out of its position a little bit. When I put in the shims to tighten things up it forced the inner race of the right side bearing to run out instead of pulling the left side bearing back into place (no surprise there).

New bearings and seals will be here this week, and hopefully I will get this back together correctly next weekend.

And if I ever meet the PO that f@#%ed this bike up in such STUPID ways.....well, hopefully the jury will be you guys.

is the 89 GSXR front end a mechanical speedo? Same gearing etc?
What are your plans for that?
My new front end (2004 Kawasaki 636) is not mechanical, so I have having some problems figuring that part out.

I'd be very interested to see how the modern gsxr engine sits in that frame with the throttle bodies on it.

I contemplated doing something similar with my bike with a zx10 engine.