- use CVK Keihins of one type or another.The CVK Keihin is a semi flat-slide carby. It gives heaps better response than the old slide-carb Mikuni's found on old zeds, and also the CV-style Mikuni's found on early-80's jap bikes like the Z1000J, GSX1100 etc. Even though these were a better style of constant-velocity carbie, they still used round slides.
I installed a set of 34mm CV Mikunis to Cherry back in 2001, to replace the standard 26mm slide carbs. Once the 34's were jetted up correctly - they worked really well. Great economy and you got some reasonable poke as well - 34mm is 34mm any way you look at it
. CVK carbs are also cheap as chips at the wreckers - and far cheaper than any of the normal performance carbies you normally see on old 4-cyl jap bikes. Even a set of Mikuni smooth-bore carbs are up around $800 these days ! and if you want current FCR flatslides or CR's etc - well expect to spend well over a grand.With Cherry currently undergoing a rebuild, I figure its as good as time as any, to sort out this conversion. I want some extra grunt with this bike - for reasons that will become apparent really quickly once the build is finished
- and in the box of goodies that came with the 1000RX - was a spare set of 36mm CVK's which have already been pulled completely apart. I had a good look at these carbies today, compared to a normal set of 26mm Mikuni slide carbs from a Z1000 motor. These old-school slide carbs are physically similiar in most respects from 1972 through to 1980 for aussie-delivered bikes - so this conversion should be easy enough for any Z900 through to Z1000 or even to the later 1100's ( all the cylinder bore centres are the same for the air-cooled zeddies so the carbie spacings are all identical - even the smaller motors use the same bore centres....).
In a nutshell - the following specs were determined:
OEM 26/28mm slide carbs - bore centre #1 & #2, #3 & #4 - 75mm
36mm CVK Keihins - bore centre #1 & #2, #3 & #4 - also 75mm . This is a good thing
However - the bore centre between the 2 inner carbs is different.
OEM 26/28mm slide carbs - bore centre #2 & #3 carbs - 96mm
36mm CVK Keihins - bore centre #2 & #3 carbs - 86mm.
This is due mainly to the later water-cooled motors having the cam-chain up the l/h side of the block and not in the centre.
Here are some photos which make it pretty clear:
CVK carbs in front, Mikuni slide carbs at rear
its easy to see how the #1 & #2 carbs on each set line up perfectly - and the slight difference in the centre spacing - 10mm - which puts the #3 & #4 carbs out of whack....
So the conversion really only needs 5 seperate parts changed:
Upper rear carbie bracket - lengthened 10mm
Lower front carbie bracket - lengthened 10mm
Choke actuating bracket - lengthened 10mm
T-piece junction for fuel feed between #3 & #4 carbs
Throttle actuating arm between #3 & #4 carbs extended 10mm
Here are the individual brackets that need to be modded:
from top to bottom, that is the choke bracket, upper rear bracket & lower front bracket. All just mild steel, but all of varying thickness and profiles. Matching these for just a short 10mm extension will be a pain in the arse
The other 2 bits that will need to be sorted out are the fuel feed T piece and the actuating arm between #2 & #3.....here they are
T-piece
actuating arm
the T-piece could be dead easy. In the stock position, it sits almost flush inside each carbie body, with only the 'leg' of the T protruding upwards for the fuel line. To get a 10mm extension - it just needs to sit 5mm further out in each body. The ends of the 'T' are o-ringed to seal the fuel flow - on these carbs its a double o-ring at each end. Total length of each end is 21mm.....so moving it out 5mm on each side still leaves 16mm in the carby body. So I am just going to put new o-rings in, then fit the T-piece into each carby body like normal - and see how that goes. This could work - but if it doesn't well it just means getting some new T-pieces made up for the fuel junction that are 5mm longer on each end.
The throttle actuating arm is pretty simple - I just need to extend the arm 10mm out one side. This will ensure that the throttle movement is transferred between #2 & #3 correctly.
The whole conversion should be pretty straightforward as far as fitting to the motor is concerned - the width of the OEM slide carbs is 107mm front-to-back, the CVK carbs are only 100mm. The OD of the carbie spigot on the CVK carbs is 42mm - stock 34mm CV carbs like those on the Z1000J have an OD of 40mm - so I reckon these 36mm CVK's will squeeze into some stock Z1000J or GPz1100 inlet rubbers with just a tad of persuasion
. These manifold rubbers bolt straight onto a normal Zed motor. 
There will be no issues with the throttle cables either - the stock cable ends on any old zeddie will fit the CVK carbs easily enough. The only thing I may need to sort out is a choke cable up to the handlebars - the choke mechanism on the CVK carbies is a cable-operated jobbie - unlike the simple choke lever found on the old slide carbs. Small price to pay for better performance I think.....
I will have to source another set of CVK's though - while digging through the parts box tonight, I found out why these carbs had been pulled apart - some numpty has pulled the butterfly mechanism out of #3 carb, and fuxored the pivot in doing so
. Will be interesting to see how this all pans out.......
Yeah I like Kawasakis.
we went back out the next night and i removed the fairing off the old girl and FMD i beat him buy around 7/8 bike lenghts but i nearly riped my self off the bike when i pulled my head back up.Those were the day's 
