BUZZWORKZ
Dave Ennis used to fettle Concordes for a living. But he works on different high-speed transport nowadays… Welcome to Buzzworkz!
Alan Dowds continues our ‘specials’ theme with a look at this fine firm!
It was George Orwell who said that, by the age of 50, everyone has the face they deserve. Which is bad news for your scribe (and his editor), who are hurtling towards the half-century as we speak. But as I stand in a slick home-workshop in South West London, chatting with Kawasaki specialist Dave Ennis, it’s a quote which pops into my mind. Why? Because here’s a man who (at a bit over 50) has definitely ended up with the job he deserves. Dave’s a man steeped in aircraft engineering and motorbikes, who trained as a British Airways apprentice, straight from school, then moved on to an aircraft engineering firm that took him all around the world. He’s worked on Boeing 747 jumbo jets and Apache helicopters, SAAB Gripens, BAE Harriers, Panavia Tornados and even BAC Concordes, no less.
“I left school at 16,” said Dave, “and started an apprenticeship at BA, working on Hawker-siddeley Tridents, Vickers Viscounts and Vanguards, Lockheed Tristars and Boeing 737s – as well as the VC10 and Concorde. After BA I worked for a firm called Page Aerospace, doing all the away jobs, including work on Apaches during Desert Storm
in 1991.” Meanwhile, in his spare time he was spending his weekends racing and building bikes in the thriving drag race scene of the 1970s and 80s.
“My first bike was a Yamaha FS1-E in 1974, which I rode to school, before it got nicked at Brands Hatch in 1975. Then I moved on to a Suzuki GT250M, and I started to modify it straight away with expansion chambers, clip-ons and a fairing.”
But bigger stuff was on the horizon. Dave moved on to Kawasaki’s big Z range early doors, buying his first Z1B in 1977, aged 18. “There were about a dozen of us that ended up with Z1s all from around Twickenham, and we used to hang out at the Zippy Bar. I started modifying that after about six months, fitting a 1015cc big bore kit, sending the cylinder head off to Phil Manzano, fitting a four-into-one exhaust, etc. I first went to Santa Pod in 1976 to watch, then about 1978 I started doing RWYB (Run What You Brung) at the Pod. I did that up to 1980, but after I got a two-year driving ban, I decided to convert my Z1B into a drag bike. I also got a Z1A and decided to put a turbo on it for drag racing.”
Here, Dave’s job paid off in spades. “I was flying to the USA regularly through work, so I could buy all the tuning stuff out there half price! That's when I started doing everything myself. I got my licence back in 1982, passed my car test and got a van for bike transport as the Ultimate Street Bike (USB) series had just started. I did USB up until 1990 on my Z1B, which was by then a 1425cc with nitrousoxide injection, and ran 9.50 seconds at 150mph.”
Dave was already tasting success, too. “I won the nitrous class a couple of times and always made it into the top 16 elimination at the end of year finals, but I was never the overall winner, it was always Suzuki turbos that won (my turbo kept destroying gearboxes!). I’ve always stuck with Kawasaki since, as they look better than the others. I reckon old
Kawasakis are desired by most bikers too, they have almost a cult status.”
And here we are, 40 years later, surrounded by gorgeous big Zeds, and the various parts and machinery needed to fettle them to the highest levels. The attention to detail, Ocd-level fastidiousness, and artisan-style handiwork on show seem extreme, but once I find out the roots of Dave’s methods, it all becomes clear. The guys who fix highend civil and military jets have no choice other than to work like that, and four decades of ingrained practice shows in every corner of this workshop.
Dave’s got four or five project bikes on the go at the moment. He’s actually only been working on bike builds full time for the past year, after being made redundant from his job in the aircraft industry. But the workshop looks extremely well established already – only the shiny, recently purchased l athe and milling machine and gleaming enginebuilding room suggests anything novel or new about the operation.
What strikes me about the project bikes I see here is the unusual mix of retro concours restoration and modern upgrading going on here. Most folk either go for one or the other in my experience – high-end, obsessive renovation to the original factory spec, or performance-enhancing overhauls, using the original
bike merely as a base, with little concern for matching original paint, fasteners, switches, clocks and the like. Here though, we’re getting a lovely blend of both: original Z1 paint schemes, switches, tail units, matched to top-end chassis kit and highly tuned motors.
The engines are all heavy metal. Dave’s speciality is making the most of Kawasaki’s classic two-valve air-cooled inline-four litre bike range. So I see plenty of GPZ1100 cylinder heads – the factory part with the most potential to extract maximum power from the Z lump – and banks of gorgeous carburettors, both renovated round-slide originals and brand new flat-slide performance parts.
Those heads are ported, new valve guides and seats fitted for big valves, and high-output cams perfectly timed into place. The bottom end is beefed up, with new pistons, high-capacity re-bores and stronger clutch and transmission parts. I don’t see any turbos or nitrous kits today, but I’m sure Dave could lay his hands on any of that type of contraband you might fancy with one or two phone calls… But then, these beefy, tuned-up lumps are treated to some very high-level restoration techniques. Dave has specialists who can gently blast old cases, barrels and heads back to the alloy, then add modern coatings, which match the original finish perfectly. So your fire-breathing new inlinefour lump will look every bit as good as it goes.
Like all the best bike builders, Dave knows his limitations. He’s more than happy to take on cylinder head refurbs and upgrades, engine builds, electronic wor and light fabrication – his new lathe and milling machine are quickly pressed into action if he needs a spacer, or a set of caliper mounting plates. And as you’d expect from an aircraft man, his lock-wiring would put many a full-time race tech to shame. He shows me an incredibly neat electrical junction box, on a quickly detachable mounting plate, complete with aircraft-spec connectors. And then we’re on to period switchgear – you can get Chinese pattern replacement switches for early bikes, but if you have the time and cash, Dave will strip tired original parts down, completely replace the wiring and contacts, and renovate the outer metal shell to as-new condition. He sticks with high-end aircraft-spec wiring for much of his work. It’s pricier, but the
performance and reliability from top-quality cables is worth it to Dave.
So, he has a wide range of crucial bike re-building skills. But when it comes to things like paintwork, frame welding, powder coating and the like, Dave switches into project manager mode. He’s got a contacts book crammed with specialists, and shows me their work spread around the workshop. The luscious lime-green paintwork on the Z1000 fuel tank, deep, gleaming powder coat on the bare frames, and the slick ‘Buzzworkz’ logo stitched into a bespoke quilted leather Z900 seat – they’re all delivered by Dave’s network of moto-artists from around the country. Incidentally, the ‘Buzzworkz’ company moniker comes from Dave’s nickname – he was dubbed ‘Buzzard’ by his riding mates back in the 1970s, a gently ribbing reference to the aerodynamic beak on his fizzog…
The old-school Zed engines are a solid enough base to work on, and you can easily get ample power and torque out of them with a few tweaks. But the 1970s chassis tech is a different matter. The original Z1 dates back to a time where frames flexed, suspension sagged, and disc brakes only worked in the dry (and even then, they were pretty poor). So some serious work is definitely needed to get things up to scratch. The bikes here show one of Dave’s innovations: a re-purposed ZX-636R B1 swingarm, converted from the original rising-rate monoshock to twin shocks. Kawasaki used box-section alloy swingarms quite early on, of course: the GPZ Unitrak models of the early 80s sported these stiffer designs, so they don’t look out of place here. CNCmachined shock mounts are bolted and welded on to the arm, superfluous linkage attachments are removed, and the whole lot gets a mirror polished finish. Öhlins rear shocks are de-rigueur for this sort of thing of course, and if the budget stretches, a set of matching right-way-up front forks makes for a top- notch suspension package.
Even the best suspension will struggle without a firm foundation though, so Dave has his own prescription for frame fettling. He has an aerospace coded welding contact, who adds in strengthening ribs and gussets around the steering head and across the rear swingarm pivot plates. That gives older frames some much-needed stiffness (fresh gussets have that effect on me, too – Ed), and once the frame is powder coated, it looks properly factory spec.
Brakes and wheels are up to the customer, of course. The two bikes Dave has on his benches have similar wirespoked rims with wider modern rubber, but different brakes. One owner wanted Brembo Goldline calipers, the other has gone for Pretech six-piston front units, and Dave’s handmade brackets let him adapt almost any parts to fit. The whole set up is then festooned with Dave’s aircraft-spec lock-wiring for that final trick touch.
Dave’s services are very much in demand at the moment – in fact, no less a man than Kawasaki’s current European marketing manager has sent his original, unmolested Z1000 down to Buzzworkz for the full treatment. Dave gets most of his work via word of mouth recommendations, and through the Z1 Owners’ Club at the moment, but we think he’ll be getting a few extra calls once his bikes become more widely seen. So, if you think it’s time you got the Zed you deserve, give the man a shout… Go to: www. buzzworkz. co.uk/ or www.facebook.com/buzzworkz/