One of my very earliest childhood memories is of me sitting on the living room floor in the tiny two-bedroom house that I lived in with my folks, my brother, and three sisters. I had a green texta and a piece of paper which I'd torn out from the back of a book, and made a lousy attempt at drawing a Kawasaki Ninja. I liked Kawas because they were green, and that was my favourite colour when I was 4 or 5 years old. This woulda been around 1989 or '90.
Jumping 22 years into the future, we arrive at the present moment. I've had four bikes; three Jappers and one Euro, but no Kwakas. How could this have happened in 10 years of owning bikes? I fuckin LOVED Kwakas when I was a kid. So the opportunity recently arose to buy a heap of junk to sit alongside my other heap of junk in my messy-as-hell garage and finally ride the Kawasaki of my dreams. But the dream has changed slightly - firstly I'm not so enamoured with the colour green, and sportsbikes are no longer the centre of my motorcycling universe.
Today was a significant day in my life. Not only did I experience my first full 24 hour period of Kawasaki ownership, and feel all the pride that went with it, but I also decided to have a second crack at building a streetfighter. And this time I'm going to fight it right and fight til the end.
Here's where today's episode begins:
I bought one very ugly bike, but the registration was renewed only a week ago which means that it somehow passed a roadworthy exam. The assessor may or may not have been on drugs at the time...
So I have some streetfighter essentials to go onto the bike (none of which are pictured as I'm too lazy with the camera).
First up is a set of fatbars and risers. Secondly I have a set of dominator headlights. And thirdly I've got a digital dash.
To start with I drained the brake fluid using my super-neato-brake-fluid-draining-kit (TM). Then I disconnected the brake hose that runs from the master cylinder to the splitter on the lower fork clamp. I measured the length that I reckon I'll need for a new brake hose to reach my super-duper imitation Protaper. Then I added 20mm to that measurement and wrote it down.
Next up I discovered that Kawasaki's robot engineers need a round of thanks for not bolting anything together too tightly. It made the next step rather easy - I only skinned one knuckle and there was no blood so it probably doesn't even count. To get to the point, I junked the front subframe, headlight, mirrors, and gauges.
Now I thought that I was a dodgy fabricator. Time for an aside - I found this bike for sale by searching for "streetfighter" on an Aussie bike classifieds website. Then I sorted the results by price, starting with the cheapest first. The first bike was from the green team (Yay!), was only about 20km away (some places in Aus are over 6000km away, so this was pretty lucky), and was being advertised with rego (major mechanical headache and financial heartache sorted!). I took the bike for a ride, waited a month for my biggest payday of the year, drove a bargain, then handed over the cash. The "streetfighter" part of the bike I can only assume was the general level of roadrash on most parts of the bike, i.e. it had been in a fight with the street and somehow lost its clothes (which is fine, I like my asian bitches to be naked).
The resultant customisation was something to behold. The front turn signals pointed at the ground, the windshield was attached by two pieces of chicken wire, and the brackets for the mirrors were made from a rough-sawn piece of bent steel. Then there's the paint. Rattle can was the method of choice for one of the PO's, and rattle cans are cheap. But it looks like the painter cheaped out further by using only one can for the entire bike. The coverage is so thin and patchy that you can see that underneath the blue rattle paint is the factory blue paintjob! Why paint a blue thing blue and do a worse job than what you started with?
Meanwhile, back at the bike, I finished the night like this:
Tomorrow I'm taking my fatbars into town to have the ends bored out so that I can fit my bar end mirrors. I'm also going to a local shop to have a Venhill brake line made to measure (and if it's affordable enough I'll get the rest of the hoses done). And I've got a few other bits and pieces to pick up so that I can get some proper momentum on this project. I feel much more confident DW on this bike compared to the Suzuki I was stuffing around with, but that might be because it was not a pretty bike to start with (unlike the zuk which was just shy of immaculate) and I've started from the easy end rather than trying to 'fighter the bike from the middle.
Apologies for the excess verbosity and the dearth of photographic documentation of my progress. I'll restore the balance next update, I promise!
- Cooky
Jumping 22 years into the future, we arrive at the present moment. I've had four bikes; three Jappers and one Euro, but no Kwakas. How could this have happened in 10 years of owning bikes? I fuckin LOVED Kwakas when I was a kid. So the opportunity recently arose to buy a heap of junk to sit alongside my other heap of junk in my messy-as-hell garage and finally ride the Kawasaki of my dreams. But the dream has changed slightly - firstly I'm not so enamoured with the colour green, and sportsbikes are no longer the centre of my motorcycling universe.
Today was a significant day in my life. Not only did I experience my first full 24 hour period of Kawasaki ownership, and feel all the pride that went with it, but I also decided to have a second crack at building a streetfighter. And this time I'm going to fight it right and fight til the end.
Here's where today's episode begins:
I bought one very ugly bike, but the registration was renewed only a week ago which means that it somehow passed a roadworthy exam. The assessor may or may not have been on drugs at the time...
So I have some streetfighter essentials to go onto the bike (none of which are pictured as I'm too lazy with the camera).
First up is a set of fatbars and risers. Secondly I have a set of dominator headlights. And thirdly I've got a digital dash.
To start with I drained the brake fluid using my super-neato-brake-fluid-draining-kit (TM). Then I disconnected the brake hose that runs from the master cylinder to the splitter on the lower fork clamp. I measured the length that I reckon I'll need for a new brake hose to reach my super-duper imitation Protaper. Then I added 20mm to that measurement and wrote it down.
Next up I discovered that Kawasaki's robot engineers need a round of thanks for not bolting anything together too tightly. It made the next step rather easy - I only skinned one knuckle and there was no blood so it probably doesn't even count. To get to the point, I junked the front subframe, headlight, mirrors, and gauges.
Now I thought that I was a dodgy fabricator. Time for an aside - I found this bike for sale by searching for "streetfighter" on an Aussie bike classifieds website. Then I sorted the results by price, starting with the cheapest first. The first bike was from the green team (Yay!), was only about 20km away (some places in Aus are over 6000km away, so this was pretty lucky), and was being advertised with rego (major mechanical headache and financial heartache sorted!). I took the bike for a ride, waited a month for my biggest payday of the year, drove a bargain, then handed over the cash. The "streetfighter" part of the bike I can only assume was the general level of roadrash on most parts of the bike, i.e. it had been in a fight with the street and somehow lost its clothes (which is fine, I like my asian bitches to be naked).
The resultant customisation was something to behold. The front turn signals pointed at the ground, the windshield was attached by two pieces of chicken wire, and the brackets for the mirrors were made from a rough-sawn piece of bent steel. Then there's the paint. Rattle can was the method of choice for one of the PO's, and rattle cans are cheap. But it looks like the painter cheaped out further by using only one can for the entire bike. The coverage is so thin and patchy that you can see that underneath the blue rattle paint is the factory blue paintjob! Why paint a blue thing blue and do a worse job than what you started with?
Meanwhile, back at the bike, I finished the night like this:
Tomorrow I'm taking my fatbars into town to have the ends bored out so that I can fit my bar end mirrors. I'm also going to a local shop to have a Venhill brake line made to measure (and if it's affordable enough I'll get the rest of the hoses done). And I've got a few other bits and pieces to pick up so that I can get some proper momentum on this project. I feel much more confident DW on this bike compared to the Suzuki I was stuffing around with, but that might be because it was not a pretty bike to start with (unlike the zuk which was just shy of immaculate) and I've started from the easy end rather than trying to 'fighter the bike from the middle.
Apologies for the excess verbosity and the dearth of photographic documentation of my progress. I'll restore the balance next update, I promise!
- Cooky