My friend Evan dropped this GPZ out to the workshop last
week. He picked it up a few months ago in Cork as a non-runner. He did some
work to it and got it running again but it didn’t run very well so he
asked me to take a look at the electrics.
So the wiring loom is
a complete mess. It still has the bulk of the original wiring but it’s been
hacked and bodged and is a bit melty in places! The loom has a single fuse and
dozens of scotch-locks and all the redundant wiring (idiot lights, right-hand
switch gear and most of the stuff going to the headlights) is rolled into a
ball and abandoned to its fate.
I surgically removed all the dodgy wiring and in the end,
all that was left were the electrical components – no wiring left at all! I’ve
fitted a proper fuse box and begun wiring it all back up again. I hope to get
it finished over the Easter weekend.
When I saw the bike, I thought it looked familiar – I had an
idea that I’d seen it in a magazine back in the 90’s. So the other night I was
in the workshop looking at the GPZ and wondering about this. I had an Idea it
was probably in Streetfighters Magazine but which one?
I’ve hundreds of magazines in the workshop and to go through
all of them would take hours. But I didn’t feel much like doing any real work
so I started at the beginning and after only a couple of minutes I found it –
Streetfighters Issue 12 April/May 1994.
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Streetfighters Issue 12 April/May 1994
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The bike has changed somewhat over the last 19 years. The
bodywork is undoubtedly the same but the tasty GSXR 1100 upside-down front end
has been replaced with a less tasty front end off a Honda. Likewise, the ZXR 750 rear wheel and swingarm.
According to the Streetfighters article, the bike had some
kind of flatslide carbs – these are now gone too, replaced with CV carbs off
God-knows-what. I suspect that these carbs are going to cause problems
later - not least because there are no
vacuum take-offs on the carbs or on the inlet rubbers so there’s no way to hook
up a carb balancer.
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CV Carbs - Hopefully actually off a GPZ 1100
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The original 4:1 V&H pipe has been replaced by what
looks like a very unusual 4:2 Harris. Mercifully, the two square headlights in
their aluminium bezel are also gone.
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Streetfighters Issue 12 April/May 1994
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| Streetfighters Centerfold - April/May 1994 |
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Presumably a reference to the unusual square headlights.
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AP Lockheed twin-piston calipers. The bleed nipples are inboard so the calipers have to be removed to bleed the brakes. WTF ?
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AP Lockheed master cylinder - Very rare. Cast from molten B-17 bombers back in the 1850s. True fact!
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#GPZ1100 #KawasakiGPZ #StreetfightersMagazine #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage
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