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48 Pages – PDF Download – Complete Series – Kawasaki GPz550
“Project GPz – Is he Kwackers?
If you made the Mechanics Show last October, you might have spotted our man Graham Curtis stripping down the rough GPz550 D1 he bought from AP Motorcycles in Matlock. After the show he carted it home in bits. Next October it will draw gasps of admiration on our show stand (we hope…).
You will have already heard about, and maybe even seen, Mechanics’ new project bike at the Classic & Motorcycle Mechanics Show at Stafford in October.
Editor Bob and I were agreed that my next project should be a Kawasaki but he was interested in doing a KH400 triple, and my preference was more toward a four stroke.
It’s not that I don’t like the two stroke triples, but my preference would be for an early S2 350 or a H1; something which had a real image in its era. to me, the KH400 was already overdue for pensioning off and couldn’t live up to the image of its ancestors.
I like bikes which have a certain amount of history to them, something which changed the way we look at things.
My Honda CB400F was like that. Honda’s re-entry into the sports middleweight market. They had set things alreight with the CB72 & 77 then went off the boil into the ‘glam rock’ 70’s with overweight, underpowered machines covered in chrome.
The 400F capitalised, momentarily, on Honda’s illustrious Grand Prix career of the 1960’s. the Yamaha 250LC did a similar trick in 1980 by offering a ‘TZ-alike’ machine for boy racers.
‘But this is supposed to be about a Kawasaki isn’t it?’, I hear you say. Well, yes it is, but I was rambling on trying to illustrate the sort of bikes that interest me.
The choice boiled down to a Z650 or GPz550. Common sense dictated that the 650 was the bike to go for, but it was just a very good motorcycle, a downsized Z1 which handled. The GPz550, on the other hand…”
48 Pages – PDF Download – Complete Series – Kawasaki GPz550
