This bike was an ex-WA bike - the owner used to ride it all over WA with some massive panniers and a home-made sissy bar that was almost 1m tall
- all home-made, he was a boilermaker and his stuff was heavy-duty, but well built all the same. The bike also had a massive Vetter fairing - looked similiar to the old-school cop-bike fairing.I purchased it from the owners brother - a dude who was in the army and hard to track down. Cannot recall the details, but somehow the sale of this bike became known to me - could have been a contact in the old Z Owners club here maybe ? - but in any case, I ended up buying this old rig for $800 with no rego.
I don't have any photos of the bike as it was, the fairing, panniers and sissy bar all came off within 1 or 2 days of the bike coming to my place. But I do have some photos of how it looked after I had ditched all of this shit !
wire spoked front wheel, 3.5" alloy rear wheel, tank bra and O'Brien 4-1 zorst. Taken mid-2000. Ignore the 900 badges
The bike was ridden pretty regularly from 2000 through to 2002. I did 1 trip up to Brisvegas with PC in late 2001......can't forget this trip, its when I found out the missus was preggers with #3 !!
Here is the old girl with the gold mags off the Pearl, Gearsack rack fitted for the Brissie trip, and some other exhaust - I think the O'Brien would have been fitted to the Black Pearl for its 2001 PCRA season around this time.......and proper 1000 badges this time. (The original wheels for this bike are Henry Abe mag wheels - available as a factory option for 1977 Z1000's but very rare indeed. Most of these bikes were ordered with standard spoked wire wheels).
I pranged this bike in March 2002 - almost 10 years ago to the day actually. Some young fucktard reversed out of his driveway straight into my path, I nearly missed him.....ended up with fractured radius & ulnar on left forearm and a big scar on the L leg. After this, I fixed the bike but didn't ride it much - it was then stolen in late 2002 but recovered.
I have decided to give this old girl a new lease of life - it has been patiently sitting in the annex to the 4th, waiting its turn for almost 10 years to the day........well the other week I stripped most of the bits off and gave the frame a mighty cleaning yesterday and today.....
The basic integrity of this frame is really good. Despite the prang, it is dead straight ( I hit the Hi-lux, not the bike
) - none of the OEM brackets have been modified or removed - although all the additional brackets that were on the bike have been removed with the exception of 2 small ones up high near the lower triple clamp - in a typical position for a steering damper. I will be leaving these on for reasons which will become clear later in the build ...... 
Here are some before & after shots of the detailing I have also completed this weekend, on the mag wheels. These wheels were available as a factory option on the 1977 Z1000.
Before
After
The wheels still need to have the outer perimeter polished right up, and PC will be doing a number on these with the same 2-pak he used on the wheels on the MFP12 - nice glossy black
- they should look great when finished.So this is the start of another build story. The frame needs some bracing, I will detail this during the next couple of weeks. Then it will be off to the powder coaters. Glenno has given me a set of Rex shocks which will look great on the back
PC is lined up to throw some paint on the bodywork (which has been ready for painting for a while now) - some new tyres and then ready for historic rego !!
