Well And Truly Sumped!

Ralph gets the engine apart on his Godier Genoud Z1300 and doesn’t like what he finds…

- Ralph Ferrand

Last month I started dismantling the smoothly beating heart of my straight-six water-cooled leviathan Kawasaki.

I have to mention here, that I have no interest in safe bikes with ABS, traction control, eleventy billion suspension settings and clocks that look more like an iPad; I want a raw exciting bike that has to be tamed. The Z1300 does that in spades, or at least it did before the water pump drive went south.

When I left you I had just removed the longest cylinder head I have ever seen on a motorcycle and am ever likely to. At this point I will make note here that when stripping any bike ensure that you have lots of containers to put the parts in. I am a regular customer of an establishment in Bristol that sells lots of well cheap household goods and hardware. Now while I don’t buy those cheap Chinese hacksaw blades, that cut equally well on all four sides, I do buy lots of their food containers; like Tupperware but cheaper! They are so cheap to buy that I buy dozens at a time and despite the very reasonable price tag they are actually very hard wearing. If you follow my lead always get some oily fingerprints on them straight away, lest your ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’ purloins them for their original purpose as mine has previously tried to. They don’t seem as attractive once covered in oil.