CMM MARKETPLACE

Can a special made from a classic make money? Only one man to ask: Paul Jayson from The Motorcycle Broker checks out customised Kawasaki Zeds

What do Zed specials go for in the marketplace?

There’s something beautiful and rewarding about finding an incomplete, iconic classic motorcycle and deciding to make something unique out of it, realising a vision and creating a thing of great beauty. Unlike a restoration, you don’t have to look out for impossible to find parts or be outbid on a part which hinders the build.

If the part you’re after is snatched out from under your nose, then find something else that looks as good, or maybe even better than your original idea. It’s evolving and constantly changing. I built plenty of custom bikes when I had the time as a youth, but haven’t got enough time to do so now and I miss it.

One of my favourite bikes I owned, and which I always regret selling, was a custom Kawasaki Z900 A4. I bought it completed, putting about 10,000 miles on it. It had standard body work in Z1 900B Candy Tone Blue metallic in Z1B colours. In fact, it didn’t look too dissimilar from the one on the front cover of this edition. Exhausts were a German 4-into-4 fairly standard looking system. It had an Italian two-four styed saddle, K&N filters and a Metmachex ally swingarm. The wheels were spoked with ally rims, but they were smaller than stock, with much wider ally wrims, gearing was changed to accommodate and it looked squat and mean. Forks and brakes were GPZ1100 items so it stopped very well and it had cut-down chrome mudguards. That bike went like stink, stopped superbly and handled really, really well. I loved it. However, in the wet it ran really badly due the K&NS letting water into the carbs.

All of the Kawasaki Z motors from the 650 through to 1100cc are bombproof so you can, if you want, tune the living daylights out of them and they’ll still be reliable. The Z900 is still my favourite, it’s just so torquey and it’s just iconic. Using the basic shapes Kawasaki gifted us with, their bodywork is a great place to start, because they did a fantastic job of styling those bikes. When you get past the curvaceous early Z1000, Kawasakis started to get very box like, something went weird in the world of design at that time. Austin Allegros had rectangular steering wheels, XS1100S had rectangular headlights and Kawasaki Zeds became… rectangular. Clearly their designers had never taken inspiration from the female form. Perhaps British Leyland, Yamaha and Kawasaki design teams were all deluded by a practical joker into believing that rectangular shapes were modern, or something strange like that. Maybe none of those particular design teams had ever dated a woman or seen a porno mag in a hedge, or under their friends’ dad’s beds,

who knows? Whatever the reason, everything went rectangular in the late 1980s, which makes for great, cheap donor bikes – unless you’re thinking of butchering a Z1000R, which will make a very expensive donor bike.

Some good value bikes to butcher are Z1100AS. They’re fairly easy and cheap to pick up and it’s fairly straightforward to make them look like an Eddie Lawson race bike for not too much. Z650s are pretty cheap and good value, and look fantastic. A great area to look for a donor bike, which offers incredible value, is the US Custom version of the Z900. These are very cheap and you have a budget-priced engine and rolling chassis that you can go to town on.

Although the curvy earlier Z650, 900 and 1000s aren’t cheap, when you’re buying absolutely spot on investment grade examples, they are very affordable if the wheel rims are incorrect and the standard exhausts and shock absorbers, etc., are missing. So finding a donor bike is pretty simple, especiallyy if you opt for the later, more rectangular Z1000SZ and 1100s.

Customising a classic is always rewarding and there are some incredible butchered classics out thhere. One of my favourite pastimes when I was younger building up custom bikess, was to find an abandoned project with somes expensive and trick bits already included. You can bag great bargains this way, but whenever I’ve bought an abandonedd project I’ve always stripped every singgle item back, especially engines as it’s been proven to be the right course of action every time. There was a reason they abandoned it. Take nothing for granted.

Standard Zeds are really well put together and designed motorcycles. There’s plenty of room to work on them and they are seriously over-engineered. They look good lowered and they don’t handle as badly as their reputation would lead you to believe, especially with modern tyres.

Mucking around with wheel rim sizes will open up a choice of tyres over the standard wheel sizes, which will enhance the handling even more. They are very handsome machines indeed and it’s great to see the creativity of anyone who dares get the hacksaw out. The more you do it, the better you get and it certainly does make those long, cold, winter nights just fly by. My one word of advice is just don’t don t do anything stupid like putting tti a Honda Cub motor into a Z1000 frame or go for a rectangular headlight.

Customised Zeds can fetch strong money if they make the majority of people’s pulse quicken. Every part must be perfectly finished and in proportion to everything that surrounds it. There’s great value to be had when finding donor bikes and the only limit in what you build is your own imagination.