Red Rooster: Playing Chicken with the Kawasaki Kz1000
As vintage big fours go, the Kawasaki Kz1000 is as mythical as they come. It’s hailed as one of the granddaddies of the modern superbike; the fastest production motorcycle of its era, with a racing pedigree bar none.
This low-slung Kz1000 was a mere shell of its former self, when Rok and Luka of Krakenhead Customs got their hands on it. The 1981 ?J? model was found abandoned on a farm, in their native Slovenia.
?The farmer was a home-brew winemaker,? says Rok, ?and it looked like some of that fermentation had moved over to the bike.?
?It was fixed with some serious ‘redneck engineering’?including various tractor parts, peeling rattle can paint, chipped chrome, duct tape and some questionable welds. It was the perfect bike for us to create a Kraken from scratch!?
Krakenhead wanted to ?create a stylish, but practical, old school café racer, with modern components.? A bike that would be happy on the twisties as well as blasting from one café to the next, turning heads along the way.
But first, some serious restoration work was in order.
The guys disassembled everything and discovered that the engine internals and gearbox were, miraculously, still in good nick. But everything else was a disaster?especially the carbs.
The duo set off on an arduous journey of cleaning, soda-blasting, rebuilding, painting and polishing.
The list of replacement parts is endless?there’s everything from new stainless steel fasteners to wheel and frame bearings, alo...
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