A tasty smorgasbord of Kawasonda

Scenario: you’ve got a VFR 400 Honda single sided swingarm lying around, and your mate just happens to have a 1970s Z900 Kawasaki rolling wreck…

For Alex and Kerry in Perth, Western Australia, the obvious answer was to combine the two items and create the absolute visual stunner you see here.

The bike actually belongs to Kerry, although the two friends quickly realised that in addition to building a virtual gob-smacker, they could create a mobile business advertisement for their respective workshops, namely Roo Racing and K & D Chrome.

Alex, the proprietor of Roo Racing, got the project under way by stripping the original Z900 back to the bare chassis. Although an excellent motorcycle engineer in his own right, and manufacturer of high quality carbon fibre mufflers, Alex figured it’d be best to bring in another expert for the actual mating of Z900 chassis to NSR swingarm.

He began by sleeving the Honda swingarm so that it would accept the original Kawasaki through-bolt and completed the job by manufacturing numerous distance pieces and bearing bushes to accommodate all the differences in design and measurement.

Perhaps the biggest single task in mating the Honda Pro-Arm to the Z chassis though, was attaching a mono shock swingarm to an old twin shock chassis.

This was achieved by a custom made triangulated tubular steel upper shock assembly welded to the rear of the Kwaka’ frame and which supports the upper end of an RGV 250cc Suzuki shock absorber.

The VFR 400 suspension linkage which came with the swingarm has been utilised too, and is attached to the frame by brackets which have been welded to an already existing lower frame member that runs across the rear of the Z 900 chassis. These brackets were then supplemented with additional box section, which was also applied to several adjoining original seams on the Kawasaki frame.

The old Z tubes were significantly braced in other areas too - such as around the head stem and spine, as well as at the front and rear of the engine cradle.

Up at the pointy end, Recycle Wreckers (more mates!) supplied 43mm GSX-R750 forks, deliberately chosen for the fact that they’re not upside downies.

True, an inverted set could have been used, but they would have been more expensive and would have deviated too much from the other intended aim, which was to keep some resemblance of the original Z (and despite all the mods, more than a subtle hint of the Z remains intact.)

The GSX-R’s triple clamps have been attached to the frame by a Kawasaki top bearing, sleeved step nut, some bits from a taper bearing kit for Zs and a miscellaneous Yamaha bottom bearing.

The front wheel is a highly polished 17" NSR 250 Honda item, slotted in between the Suzuki forks thanks to custom spacers from the above mentioned Murray.

The brakes continue the smorgasbord approach, combining CBR 400RR discs, with Yamaha FZR 1000 callipers mounted on polished custom calliper mounts. Other really nice touches on the front end include ultra light Goodridge Kevlar brake lines and custom anodised disc rotor buttons. (These buttons are yet another of the items Alex’s Roo Racing enterprise manufactures.)

Goodridge lines are also featured on the tail-end, where the VFR 400 rear brake assembly is employed as well as the VFR wheel.

The frame, fully nickel plated, is a work of art. Various frame associated components, including alex’s hand made engine mounting plates, footpeg brackets, front callipers etc, were also polished, chromed or nickel plated and the result is breath taking.

APE stainless steel valves and a couple of hard faced Ivan Tighe 340c cams were included, the valves standard size on the inlet and just a little oversize on the outlet.

Surprisingly, but probably for cost reasons, it was decided not to touch the gearbox, although a Barnett kevlar clutch was installed.

Internals aside, the exterior of this powerplant has been altered significantly too. Thanks to a bloke known as ‘Scottish Graham’, hand made billet engine covers reduce the engines width by 25mm on the alternator side and by 15mm on the points side. A revelation though, is that a VT 250 Honda alternator is now in charge of battery refilling!!

The carbies are 34mm GSX-R units, running with K+N filters and attached to Z 1000J inlet manifolds that have been painstakingly matched to the re-angled (i.e straightened ) inlet ports on the head.

On the exhaust side, Peter Lawson of Legends Exhausts performed pure magic.There’s certainly a hint of 916 in the system, but it’s the pairing of the cylinders that makes these pipes different.

Essentially, there are two separate exhaust systems on the bike, cylinders 1 and 2 running into a single pipe and then muffler, with the same arrangement for cylinders 3 and 4. Naturally, Alex Heal’s own Roo Racing carbon fibre mufflers finish off both systems.

The wheelbase is actually shorter than the original Z900, while the bike weighs just 184kg (incl. 4 litres of fuel), biased 55% to the front wheel.

And as this story was being completed, Alex and Kerry came up with another set of clothes for their creation.

The wheels are once again NSR Honda items, but with distinctive yellow powder coating mixed with polishing work. There’s also now a second one-piece bodywork structure and front mudguard, perhaps giving the impression that there are in fact two bikes here.

It’s really all about development, and undoubtedly Alex and Kerry have a few more ideas to try. So what about nitrous oxide then, fellas?

Nuts`n’Bolts – Kawasonda smorgasbord