Resurrection of A Superbike

Resurrection of a Superbike

LEANINGS

PETER EGAN

WHEN THE PICKUP PULLED INTO OUR driveway, there was a large, mysterious oblong object in the back, wrapped in blue plastic tarps held together with bungee cords. My first thought was that it might be a stolen surface-to-air missile, but then I realized the driver was my Colorado buddy Mike Mosiman, and he’s too nice a guy to be dealing in rogue weapons. Also, there are almost no recorded instances of terrorist activity among avid motorcyclists.

Why? Because we have hobbies and are therefore too busy and sociable to participate in the dark and brooding cruelties that always accompany ideological purity. Still, Mike was a missile technician in the Air Force... But that was a long time ago, and in the past 4.2 decades, he’s shown absolutely no interest in anything but the 60-plus motorcycles he’s owned since his reasonably honorable discharge.

And now, he had another one. Mike jumped out of the pickup to reveal that the carefully wrapped lump in the pickup was his newly acquired 1976 Kawasaki KZ900. Yes, a classic four-cylinder Universal Japanese Motorcycle from the Seventies and the immediate successor to the mighty Zl, which was launched in 1973. And predecessor to the 1980 KZ1000 Mk. III once owned.

Mike bought this bike about four months ago from its original owner in Monroe, Wisconsin, which is only about 30 miles from my home, and he drove all the way back here from Colorado to pick it up. Before returning home, he stopped by for a visit on a very cold day in late October, and, of course, we had to unload the KZ so we could inspect it in the heated comfort of my workshop.

After the oil uncongealed itself, Mike actually took the bike for a ride in 3 5-degree weather. He wore his classic openface helmet with sunglasses and came back with his face so red and wind-burned he looked like he’d been shaving with a blowtorch. To my eternal shame, I turned down a chance to ride it myself, but then I don’t go SCUBA diving through a hole in the ice with the Polar Bear Club on New Year’s Day, either. I have my standards, and they all involve temperatures above 50 degrees.

The KZ, with 25K on the odometer, was in very nice shape, but showing a few signs of age. A couple of nicks in the dark green paint on the tank, light corrosion on bolts here and there, and a little surface rust on the Kerker 4-into-1 header that had, at some point, replaced the original 4-into-4 factory system. A good rider, with a great exhaust sound, just as it was.

And when Mike got home to Fort Collins, he did ride the thing. Like all the time. I got almost daily reports of riding ecstasy, detailing the joys of a perfect riding position, comfortable seat, killer motor, rugged character, nice handling, etc. And when it finally snowed in Colorado, he took the bike off the road and decided to put Big Bucks into restoring the KZ back to showroom condition.

He sent the gas tank, sidecovers and tailsection to a painter named Mike Kukura in British Columbia, and they came back stunningly redone in the original dark green, with hand-painted bright green and yellow pinstripes. The fork went out to Race Tech for new springs and cartridge emulators, and an original 4-into-4 factory exhaust system ($1600!) was ordered from the supplier in Japan.

And when he stopped by our place with that big blue lump in the back of his pickup, he was on his way to Skokie, Illinois, to drop the bike off at a shop called Redline Cycle, where they specialize in Zls, KZ900s and Zl-Rs. There, they checked his engine over and said no rebuilding was necessary, just a new timing chain and carb cleaning. The valves, compression and bottom end were all good.

It’s interesting to me that Mike, who has spent so many years refurbishing mainly European bikes—older BMWs and Ducatis, mostly, with a few British bikes thrown in—is going full tilt on this Kawasaki restoration. But then all of us who go to bike shows have, in recent years, noticed a strong resurgence of interest in the great UJMs of the Seventies and early Eighties. These are the bikes guys like Mike and I actually rode during that period, and they’re the bikes a slightly younger generation lusted after in high school.

And they were really good motorcycles. Still are, if they haven’t been beaten to death. Especially the old Kawasaki Fours, whose soulful, straightforward ruggedness and bulletproof bottom ends are legendary. That 1980 KZ1000 Mk. II I mentioned was my only streetbike for about six years (before I added another Norton to the garage) when we lived in California. I strolled into Champion Kawasaki in Costa Mesa one fine day, intending to buy this black and gold beauty, and found a SOLD tag hanging on the handlebars. Turned out, Barb had bought it for my birthday—a fact I only discovered when a set of Kawasaki keys showed up in the melting ice cream next to my birthday cake.

We rode this bike everywhere—up the Coast Highway to the USGP at Laguna Seca every year, on vacations through the Gold Country and on Sunday morning rides over the Ortega Highway. I also commuted with it much of the time. After we moved back to Wisconsin in 1990, I eventually sold it to help pay for a new Ducati 900SS—another great bike, certainly. But so was the KZ1000. It went to a Japanese UW student who took it home with him. Gone, far across the sea.

Do I miss this bike?

Yes. One of the four or five I truly do. Given a chance to rewind the videotape of life, I’d never sell it again.

For better or worse, I admitted this to Mike, and he—The All-Knowing Master of eBay and Craigslist Who Misses Nothing—has started sending me listings of bikes for sale, particularly the black 1980 Zl-Rs to which I am vulnerable. These things aren’t particularly cheap anymore, so it wouldn’t be a casual purchase, and I have to ask myself if I really need to spend that money when I have a couple of other perfectly good bikes to ride.

Perhaps I should ponder the very advice I recently emailed to my guitar-playing buddy Doug Harper in Pittsburgh, who, like me, turned 65 this week. He told me he’s always wanted to buy a Gibson ES 335 electric guitar but doesn’t know if he should spend the money. I sent back a simple reply: “What are you waiting for? After you’re dead is no time to take action.” □