We all know the challenge of owning older machinery.  Many parts are no longer available, and intimate knowledge of the bikes unique traits of the GPz900r are understandably often long forgotten at a modern Kawasaki service centre – here in Adelaide that is a total of two….

The Kawasaki service manual is a really important resource for owning & maintaining the bike, however it doesn’t contain any corporate secrets and most of us already own it.  But it’s also no longer available from Kawasaki and will undoubtedly get harder & harder to find as time goes by.

Having it freely available simply allows more owners to get access to the information and helps us all keep these bikes running.

Proprietary Information

So I am trying to get authorisation from Kawasaki to scan the service manual & post online.

First attempt was to contact Kawasaki Australia, who advised sending through an email to: info@kawasaki.com.au.  I did ask whether anyone would actually read this but was assured someone would.  Well 3 weeks later no reply, so I called again and was told by Karen (!) that it was proprietary information and I could get into a lot of trouble if I posted it online.

Duh – that’s why I’m politely asking isn’t it?

OK forget Australia, to be brutally honest I wasn’t expecting them to consider this request seriously anyway. Both times I’ve called the phone operators attitude clearly suggested I was wasting her precious time. So sorry for the interruption to your important work 🙂

16/10/2020: I’ve now posted a corporate request directly on the Kawasaki Japan site.  

Copyright

I’ve purchased a couple of original sales brochures for the GPz900r from the fantastic folks at Lloyd Chapman Motorcycles. They even threw in a couple of other bike brochures for free – how good is that!

The copyright for these fantastic memories only expires in 2034 – so again I would really like to get consent from Kawasaki to share these with everyone online.

Kawasaki Contacts

Cynically I often feel that the role of first responders in large organisation’s is to hinder & deflect, rather than actually help or assist.  And getting big organisations to think outside the box is difficult – ironically one of the reasons the GPz900r design is so special.

So the key here will be to locate Kawasaki employees who are passionate about Kawasaki history, know the legacy of the GPz900r and are prepared to give up some of their time to champion the idea of publicly sharing this information.  This will only gain traction if there is a push from within the organisation.

So if anyone has any potential contacts at Kawasaki please feel free to send the details through.

Australian Owners

I noticed that the Dunlop international site was not listing the RS3 150/70/18 – so I called Don at DC Motorcycles, my local tyre guy, to check supply.  He called back to say there were just FIVE RS3 in Oz and one RS4, and Dunlop had no plans to import anymore of these.

Goddam – was enjoying these.

We can’t figure why there is just ONE RS4, Don thinks Dunlop just added it when they were doing the intial import of the range.  So even though I don’t need it I’ve ordered a spare RS3 for the rear just to have one for next set of boots…

I contacted the great folks at WrenchMonkees to see if I could get some info or a ‘package’ price on the 636 swing arm they used on their great update bike.

Hi Adrian.

Great idea. Hope you’ll have many GpZ 900 owners onboard : )

A “plug-in” solution is not an option. Sorry.
Too much work, and can’t remember all the details, but :

The ZX636 swingarm was chosen simply because it looks good. Midsection of the “front part” was cut out and width was trimmed, to make it fit in the frame.

New seals and two sets of pin bearings on each side, was installed, to match theGpz 900 inner bearing “tube” and Gps 900 axle.

Shock mount on the ZX636 swingarm is off-center / asymmetric, as the shock on the 636 is mounted some centimeters towards the left / chain side. But the mount is very wide and can be machined down so it will fit the stock link from the Gpz 900.

I think we used some parts from the ZX636 link and some parts from the Gps 900 link, something about bolt sizes and bearings…but can’t remember exactly, sorry..
So…swingarm in place, and an adjustable YSS monoshock replaced the stock Gpz item. Can’t remember the length, sorry..

ZX10 wheel including the ZX10 sprocket carrier and bushing fits without a problem in the ZX636 swingarm, I seem to recall that the chain line / left side was just right. And maybe we replaced the wheel bearings to fit the ZX636 wheel axle, but again, not sure..

Rear brake caliper and bracket is also ZX636, and the TRW disc is the smallest available diameter for the ZX10 wheel, which happened to be the same as the ZX636 : )

Chain is 530.

Hope this is useful : )

If you have any further questions, let me know, and I´ll try to answer.