Chris Daniels
Owner of The Motorcycle Restoration Company
The donor bike, a 1977 Z1000A with a Z900 A4 engine was bought from BAT Motorcycles as a non-runner in need of repair or restoration etc. I spent some time on the bike getting it to a roadworthy point without tackling any cosmetic work as I had a plan to rebuild the bike to a specification that was in my head, which is pretty much where the bike is now apart from the colour. The hubs were aluminium and were to be vapour blasted, but there was a chromed pressed steel spoke flange on the rear that was rusty and could not be left as it was. No one in the Zed community knew how to get it off. The MRC deduced it would more than likely be pressed so I took the wheel to an engineering company to press the flange off. Tooling had to be made; one tool was made to press off and one to press on. It went and the whole lot cost £500 but we now have the tooling to undertake the job at a fraction of the cost.