My not a Cafe Racer build.

So the destruction begins.

On the first ride I was pretty frightened by the bikes lack of brakes. I thought about going through and fixing up the stock stuff, but since I already wanted to change the bars and the forks are pretty shitty anyways I started looking for a set of forks from a newer sportbike. Well Craigslist scored again, I found a guy parting out a 2005 ZX6R, the same bike I just sold. He had pretty much everything except the bodywork and engine. I really only wanted the front end, but he made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and I ended up taking the whole thing home.

In the last 2 days I've gotten it torn down to just parts and started selling all the stuff I dont need. If you need any parts let me know.

Here's where things got tricky. I wanted to put the Ninjas entire front end onto the honda. The catch is that the steerer tube on the Kawi fork is much larger in diameter than the honda, and is a bit shorter as well.

The simplest way I could think of to solve this problem was to swap the steerer tubes between the 2 sets of crowns, but that's a little more complicated than it sounds.

The kawi stem was pressed into the lower crown, and by pressed I mean it took everything my shop press had, plus a little heat to break it free. The honda on the other hand was all steel, and the steerer tube was pressed into the crown, then welded on the bottom. This was actually the easier of the 2. Just grind down the weld, and press out. No big deal.

Ok so now we have a steerer tube that fits the frame, but a crown with a hole that's too big. Thankfully I had a fix for this. I pulled a piece of heavy wall DOM tubing off the rack and chucked it up in the lathe and started carefully cutting away at it. I ended up with a sleeve that duplicated the dimensions of the bottom end of the kawi stem on the outside, and was a tight fit for the honda stem on the inside. I then pressed the adapter into the crown, pressed the steerer tube into the adapter, and then welded the steerer to the inside of the adapter.

Poof, we now have a ZX6 fork that will bolt to a 32 year old honda.

I also had to make a sleeve for the upper crown, but that was much simpler. Just a tube with the correct ID and OD to properly center everything.

So here's the first fit up of everything. Looks like the stock clutch cable will work just fine with the Kawi lever, and now I'm just working on splicing all the wires together to make the Ninja switches work everything.

kevinwilly said:

Nah, man- the twin shocks look MUCH sweeter.


But ohlins DOES make drop-in replacements...

Click to expand...

I totally agree, it's an old school bike, and the dual shocks just look right. I've seen people do swingarm swaps on these and to me it just seems dumb. You end up doing a TON of work so that you can end up with a modern fork and swing arm on a flexy old frame with a shitty old air cooled motor. Doesn't make sense to me at all. This is supposed to be my beater bike, not something high performance or super cool. Someone would actually want to steal it then. Besides, if you want a sportbike just buy a sport bike. I have one of those and love it, but also want something different.

We did discover today that the kawasaki key will actually open the lock on the fuel tank, which is really nice since I dont have the honda key. I also sold a few more parts, so I'm going to replace the rear shocks with these

13.5" Pair Air Shock Absorber Clevis Honda CB750 CB 750 | eBay

My buddy just put a set on his KZ1000 police bike project and they work very well and look great. Cant beat the price either.

Speaking of his project, we actually worked on that today too. He pulled my carbs for me while I fabbed him up a custom seat pan. Gonna get a custom pad made to go on it and add some mesh to the cut outs to finish it up. Worked out great though. I'll probably be doing something similar on this one, but shorter, as I plan to chop my frame off right behind the shocks.

So even though this thing is gonna be a bit of a hack job by my standards, and not a show bike by any means I do want it to be functional, and be something I can ride regularly. With that in mind I'm adding a few details that arent really mandatory, but are nice.

This is the first one. Fitting the Kawasaki fork required the removal of the stock honda steering lock bracket as it was in the way of the Kawasaki ignition switch. Well after getting everything mounted I realized that if I flipped that bracket over and did a little grinding it would actually still work. So after a little toying around with placement I welded it back on, and I now have a functioning steering lock again.

So after my buddy left I got to work hackin on my frame. This is gonna be a solo ride, no room for bitches :flipoff2:

Fabbed up a little reinforcement plate which will also provide a place to mount the seat pan, as well as the tail light bracket (when the light arrives). Also pulled the battery and started cleaning up all the wiring bullshit that sits under the seat. Gonna make a custom battery box and hide it to clean up the look a bit.

Also went ahead and ditched the rear brake. Shit was just gonna slow me down. Saved 12lbs too :flipoff2: