Written by Marlon Slack
Chicago?s Chris Zahner might be a bartender, but I think he?s a damned magician. Look at his latest bike – a 1987 Kawasaki Ninja 250 – a motorcycle a generation of boy racers learnt to ride on. They were dropped in car parks, dumped in corners and had gearboxes so abused they should have been taken into government care. People rode them into the ground and then forgot about them. But not Chris, who built a track day racer around a bargain basement EX250 he picked up one night at work.

?It landed in my lap last year, about a week before I was due to pack up my van and move to Chicago from New York,? Chris explains. ?A middle aged lady and her friend sat in the restaurant I was bartending at. We ended up talking about motorcycles, how she used to ride a Ninja but it?s been sitting in her garage for 10 years unridden, and her husband has been begging her to sell it?.
With his interest piqued, Chris headed out to see the Ninja the very next day. It was in pristine condition, with only 4,200 miles on the clock. And the best thing" It could be his for $300. Well, on the condition he took the lady for a blast around the block on the back of his Harley. Oh, and she made him promise he?d make sure the Ninja would ?live out a glorious life?. Easy. But there was only problem. It didn?t have a title.

There?s ways around a lack of title in the US, but Chris had been eager to get a beginner?s track day bike up and running. And it seemed like t...