Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

Goose is my 1983 GPz750 (was an '84)

With about 3 months to go on my P's my GS500 died. I hummed and harred for a while, but decided that getting another learner legal bike for 3 months was pointless.
I had a couple of grand in my pocket and went shopping. A couple of grand really doesn’t buy you much, so the hunting went on for a while. I took a look at some horrible old CX500's and XV750's, then stumbled on a plain red 1984 GPz750 in Kaleen.
As soon as I saw it, I wanted it.
It had a bit of an oil leak from somewhere around the back of the engine, no stickers, a pretty rattly engine - but I didn’t care. I was getting a 'real' bike - and I wanted it to be this.
Money was exchanged and I rolled out the driveway.
With the fuel cap not closed properly, so ended up with a lap full of fuel - oh well.

Goose got ridden around like this for the better part of 12 months, just happily doing his thing. The oil leak turned out to be a combination of a stripped top bolt on the cam chain tensioner, and a weeping leak from between the head (common on old Kwakas).

One night trawling on eBay, I came across a set of full lower fairings for an '85 model. Awesome! I'll grab those (they were even already red) and found a sticker set too. I figured if I was going to start getting the beast looking ok, then I may as well go the whole hog.
Ike and I managed to make some fairing brackets and on went the fairings (Nuts! About half a shade lighter, oh well). I didn’t care though. It looked like a sports bike with its full fairings, and once the stickers went on - that was it. I realised right then that I would somehow have Goose for a *long* time.
For the most part, Goose kept up its usual routine of getting me to work most days (I had a car as well then).
Then the winter of 2007 hit. I had just moved in with Jess, and only had a car port to keep Goose in. As the days got colder, Goose got harder and harder to start in the mornings (even with a new battery). Eventually he gave up and was basically left there till spring.
Then that spring turned into a scorcher, and I started having some horrible over-heating issues. Goose refused to sit in traffic for anything more than a few minutes and would start to loose idle speed and eventually would just die and wouldn’t restart for a good hour, after it had cooled down. Also I could feel the engine getting pretty tired too. The cam chain was getting noisier, it was burning way more oil (as seen by the trail of smoke that followed me everywhere) and basically didn’t like life much.
CanberraRIDERS had just started then too, and we got an invite to form a precession for a members daughters Year12 formal entry. Cool!
Or Not.
The entry way to the formal was grid-lock, and it was a stinking hot evening. I could feel goose getting worse and worse. As we got right up to the entrance, he died. By some complete miracle I managed to take about 3 steps and clutch start it (probably because the engine had just lost all it compression somewhere back up the entrance queue). I hobbled it around the corner and turned him off. And that’s all she wrote for about 2 hours. Eventually he started and I nursed him home - but I knew the damaged had been done. So Goose got parked back in under the car port to do... well, very little.
I had another bike at the time, an old XJ550 (Fang) so that got me around for a bit.
Then one weekend, for the hell of it, I decided to throw the battery on charge as I headed down to Repco for some new plugs, and then to the servo for a jerry can of fresh fuel. I drained the old fuel and put the fresh stuff in. Thru a new set of plugs into him and hit the starter. It took a bit of work - but eventually he sprang to life again! And not sounding as horrible as it could have. Gos then came and picked him up for a spell in the 4th Dimension, just so he could be given the once over.
This stage was when Jess and I moved to Lyons, and a proper garage. However I knew that Goose's days of being a daily commuter were finished and he got pushed into the back corner of the garage as I went and bought a newer bike (the XJR).
Over the next two years, Goose got dragged out every now and again, but nothing serious.
Then about 8 months ago, Jess told me that I should do something with Goose and restore him. Make a good project out of him.
Yes - sounds like a marvellous idea!!
So I went shopping for either someone to rebuild my current engine, or a good 2nd hand engine. Then I stumbled across a 1983 GPz in Goulburn. Recently rebuilt engine, $2200. That’s about a 3rd of what it would cost me to rebuild Gooses engine! Nice! So Craig and I went and got eh 2nd GPz.
Then nothing happened for a couple of weeks, while I worked out a game plan. I came to the realisation that the work required to transfer all my 'good bits' to the 2nd bike was a small fraction of going the other way around. This is when Goose went from being an '84 model to a '83 model.
But something went bad. We're still not sure what, but it was either contamination from the old fuel tank, or the more likely contamination from a shitty jerry can I had - but it royally trashed the carbies. It took us months to finally get everything clean fresh and running again - but eventually he was happy, running and registered.
Then something else broke *sigh*.
There started being this horrible noise from down the LHS of the engine. Again, Goose got parked up due to lack of time on my behalf. Things had really started to ramp up at work.
Then only recently, Craig need to bring an old GPx250 around to get some work done (Craig is garage-less at the moment), and also Supamodel wanted to check out the recently broken A100 I have. So I figure that it seemed as good a time as ever.
The magneto cover came off to reveal a loose magnet pack, kinda being held in with 3 stripped allen bolts (heads where stripped, not the threads). New Bolts, Loctite - sorted! Then I noticed something far worse. There was about a 5mm gap between the cam-chain tensioner and the engine. Crap. I tried doing it up, but was achieving nothing. Stripped thread. Yay. So out came the carbies and airbox. Drilled out the whole and retapped it. Sorted! Like a new one!
This week I went to take Goose thru a rego inspection, and be blew an anti-dive unit on the way to the mechanic. Fk. Everything passed, bar that. Last night Criag and I swapped over the forks for another set and now should be right to pass on Monday morning.
Goose is coming Back!
Again!

Sounds like you're having, and are going to have, some fun Lurch
PICS!

And don't forget to mention your pipe (V&H??), which sounds awesome.

This is what Goose looked like on the day I picked him up:



When the stickers were put on:



Lower fairings:



The chrome MAC 4 into 1 exhaust:



And finally: Goose in action from the first CR WF ride

The spruce goose!!!

Awesome work, that looks so nice!

Congrats

It's a great bike the Goose - even if it is Goose Mk2 - Has one hell of a good exhaust note at full noise

Hope you get the niggling issues sorted out mate, this bike is far too good to be tucked into a garage, but neither should it be a commuter.......this is the bike for the Old Dungers rides !

I'm sure it will get commuting duties every now and again - but yeah. For the most part, its days of dragging arse up and down Tuggers parkway are finished. Goose simply deserves better than that these days.

Thats a great goose ya got there Lurch, Its good to see another one of these fine models on the site.

where did you source that MAC system? that muffler looks awesome

That one I found on eBay. Theres plenty of them there in the states.
Its a really basic system. Quality wise it's pretty cheap. It's certainly no V&H, bit it does the job, and as long as you take care of it, theyre fine.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Kawasaki ... ccessories

Mine came with no baffle tho, so I had to make my own. Its only a single baffle with minimal glassing, which is what really gives the old kwaka its note. Its also buried about 20cm down inside the can so at first glance it looks like a straight-thru exhaust.
I haven't jetted the carbs for it yet tho, which is something Ive been thinking about lately. Gos, you reckon it'd be worth getting Brett to check out?

Theyre a bit of a shit to keep polished with the full fairing tho, but when they are they look stunning.
I'd love to get a nice polished oil cooler in there to match.

Hey, question more the more knowledgable out there... jetting.
As it currently stands, Goose has a K&N filter and a very free-flowing 4 into 1 exhaust system.
How I haven't run it on a dyno yet, or on a Air/Fuel mixture sensor (a mate just bought one tho) - but at a rough guestimate, should I be looking at getting the carbs jetted?
Going by the blah on Dynojets website, the stage 1 kit (2136) sounds just right:

For mildly tuned machines using the stock airbox,
with stock or K&N filter. May also be used
with a good aftermarket exhaust system
K&N filter #KA-7583

.

The next one (stage three) seems to be aimed at carbies with individual pod filters, so thats not me.

Here's my experience with a dynojet kit:
I had a dynojet kit for my old GPX750 (with a k&n air filter and a formula-1 system) which included stages 1 2 & 3 within the one kit (they are just 3 different sets of jets after all and cost about 1/10th of the rest of the kit). Stage one went in (that also consisted drilling a number of holes in the air filter top cover to increase airflow about 10-15%) ran rich and burbled like anything on backoff and was certainly loosing a little "up top" compared to the original jets that came with the carbs.

Stage 2 went in out of curiosity and she suddenly couldn't go above 2/3 throttle like there was a limiter of some sort in the carbs and she was definitely running rich as hell. After much farking about and being unhappy with the performance on stage-1 jets I went and bought a set of oem jets as the ones that came with the bike were an "unknown" in the scheme of things to me and she ran perfectly. I kept the rest of the kit in there though, springs, needles and drilled sliders and airfilter cover and she worked a treat afterwards, with no fuelling issues whatsoever.

I was since told on here that the dynojet kits do seem to run a little "rich" compared to other jettting kits that are out there, so take this food with thought, your mileage may vary, i hope this helps, buyer beware, etc...

Cheers Mike.
It's certainly running (well, as far as I can tell) fine as it currently is. So it's probably a case of "If it aint broke..."
I'll run the A/F sensor on it, but unless it comes up with something horribly wrong, I'll leave it as is.
Should it come up with something horribly wrong, then I'll take it to Brett at MotoGarage and let him make the call.

And now registered

Good to hear it got through rego Lurch

I reckon you should take it out to Brett as soon as you can, and get him to do a couple of runs, just to get some baseline data for your current jetting. Sometimes, if you are lucky enough to have the right main jet, all that will be required is to set the clip position at the right spot to get the mid-range response just nice...

I wouldn't be spending dollars on a dyno-jet kit yet - you need to know what the power-curve looks like first, before getting extra jets you may not end up needing.

Typhoon (shuddup Gos) is gonna give it a carby balance this week. We really only got the carbies to 'running' condition, I reckon a good balance will make all the difference