TrikeKid
Junk Hoarder
The first rule of project bikes is find/buy/trade until you have all the project bikes. This '77 KZ650 fell in my lap for free over Labor Day weekend. My boss bought a house that came with a hoard of bikes and cars. He bought most of the good stuff to flip before buying the house and the remaining stuff. This bike and a Concours that someone had converted into an ATC were left behind. I went up to look over the remaining hoard and check out the alleged "Kawasaki three wheeler in the garage" and ended up being presented with the title for this thing.
This was a "rat bike" I guess, like a rat rod, where you make it look shitty on purpose? 59 Caddy tail lights, rubber rat glued to the tank, diamond plate side covers and headlight bracket... just a fuckin mess. It also appears a drunken ape tried to remove some excess brackets and tabs from the frame, gonna have to patch/replace some tubing where it's ground right through. On the up side, the thing has a title and all I had to do was stuff a hot battery in it to get it to fire up. Ran like dog shit but it did run 10-15 minutes after I drug it out of the truck.
Only pic I have before I started ripping the ugly shit off, right after getting it loaded up.
Sunday morning I cleaned the carbs and drained the gravy out of the tank, one carb appears to at least have had a float bowl replaced or something, way cleaner than the rest. Ended up pulling them back off to properly rebuild them, will probably have them off one more time to change jetting. Quick clean up did let me get a test ride down the block.
Ripped the stupid tail lights off and some of the sketchy wiring, got me to here. Seat and tank are both off something else but don't go together, I'll end up making a seat. It appears to have Sportster rear shocks installed to drop it, I bought some used stock ones on eBay but the more I look at it the more I don't think I'll end up using them.
Snagged some much better bars off the Concours deathtrap three wheeler thing, lopped the coil mounts off the frame so I could lower the tank and knocked out a headlight bracket to bring the light down and in. Front brake hydraulics are fucked and the master conveniently doesn't fit on these bars anyway so I'm inclined to do the proper chopper thing and delete on that as much as my inner "I don't wanna die on a Kawasaki" tells me to rebuild them. Going to find a smaller throttle housing and revisit the front brakes. This is how it sits now, didn't take much to knock a good bit of the ugly off it. That right side cover is the last bit of really tacky stuff to eliminate.
This was a "rat bike" I guess, like a rat rod, where you make it look shitty on purpose? 59 Caddy tail lights, rubber rat glued to the tank, diamond plate side covers and headlight bracket... just a fuckin mess. It also appears a drunken ape tried to remove some excess brackets and tabs from the frame, gonna have to patch/replace some tubing where it's ground right through. On the up side, the thing has a title and all I had to do was stuff a hot battery in it to get it to fire up. Ran like dog shit but it did run 10-15 minutes after I drug it out of the truck.
Only pic I have before I started ripping the ugly shit off, right after getting it loaded up.
Sunday morning I cleaned the carbs and drained the gravy out of the tank, one carb appears to at least have had a float bowl replaced or something, way cleaner than the rest. Ended up pulling them back off to properly rebuild them, will probably have them off one more time to change jetting. Quick clean up did let me get a test ride down the block.
Ripped the stupid tail lights off and some of the sketchy wiring, got me to here. Seat and tank are both off something else but don't go together, I'll end up making a seat. It appears to have Sportster rear shocks installed to drop it, I bought some used stock ones on eBay but the more I look at it the more I don't think I'll end up using them.
Snagged some much better bars off the Concours deathtrap three wheeler thing, lopped the coil mounts off the frame so I could lower the tank and knocked out a headlight bracket to bring the light down and in. Front brake hydraulics are fucked and the master conveniently doesn't fit on these bars anyway so I'm inclined to do the proper chopper thing and delete on that as much as my inner "I don't wanna die on a Kawasaki" tells me to rebuild them. Going to find a smaller throttle housing and revisit the front brakes. This is how it sits now, didn't take much to knock a good bit of the ugly off it. That right side cover is the last bit of really tacky stuff to eliminate.
