Project Kawasaki Z900 Stocker part 1 Stripping yarns!

Kindly given a box of old Zed bits, Ralph Ferrand is back on the case with one of his favourite four-strokes!

-  RALPH FERRAND

Right now I’m the envy of my Zed Head friends, having been the lucky recipient of the extremely generous gift of a collection of boxes containing a 1976 Kawasaki Z900 from a fellow member of the Z1 Owners Club.

I gave my word that I would perform as good restoration as I am able to and have been throwing money at the project from day one. Although the bike is mostly apart, the bottom-end of the motor was in one piece so it was time to pull that apart.

Many years ago I designed and made an engine building stand to hold bike motors whilst they are disassembled and rebuilt that allows the engine to be turned though 360 degrees. This was with an eye on selling them on, but with the top-quality parts I was using, they would have cost an arm and a leg. Sealey has just produced a new engine building stand and they sent me one to try out. Engines don’t come much heavier than a Z900 lump, so it seemed like a good test. It turned up flat pack and was easy enough to put together. I tied lifting straps to the engine and attached them to the lifting arm over the top of my bike bench. I dropped the bench down, leaving the engine hanging from the arm. The engine building stand was placed on the bench and the platform brought up to the suspended engine. I lined up the arms of the stand with the top crankcase engine mountings and bolted the arms up to the crankcase. Once fully secured I raised the bench so that I could remove the lifting slings. It has to be said that the stand doesn’t have the rigidity of my own version, but will do the job allowing the engine to be rotated through 180 degrees, and is good value at £165.54.