11/01/2019
The Bulldog Build.
In 1979 I bought a brand new 1978 KZ1000A2A in green off the showroom floor. I changed the exhaust the next week and kept changing things until I couldn’t think of another part to replace or drill out to make it lighter and faster. Within my means at the time. I ended up with a Tracy one piece body, police bike forks, Calfab swingarm, 29mm smoothbores, magnesium Morris Mags. It was pretty trick for the time.
As time went by, I got married, had a family and the bike was less important. I wound up selling it in the 90s.
About 7 years ago, my interest was rekindled with these old KZ’s, I flipped a few bikes and then did some full restorations on a few early 73 Z1 900’s. Then I built a restomod, it was a 75 Z1 and I was hooked. Next build was the 79 MKII my wife and I enjoy now. I love building bikes! We love riding together. It’s a good life!
Next up, I wanted to create something like my first KZ with the Tracey body. But when I looked at the pictures of it, it looked thin. I envisioned something a little thicker, if the old KZ was a greyhound, the new bike would be more like a Bulldog. Beefy and strong. That’s when Karen and I started talking about this build. It works out that we can use it to showcase our bodies we make and sell from our business Z1worKZ.
The body, we started off with the intension of making fiberglass bodies to take to market. But our passion is carbon fiber. One day we decided to try and make a carbon body, when it came out perfect, we were pleasantly surprised. We made the carbon Bulldog body over a year ago and are just now putting the final changes on it. The body features 12 coats of paint, 46V crystal red with several clear coats. The body doubled in weight from the paint process.
The fairing was inspired by the Daeg ZRX1200 but scaled down to be a minimal bikini cowl. The front fender design is stolen straight from the ZX6.
The frame is a 79 Police bike frame with just a few brackets added to the rear triangles to beef up the cantilevered shocks. The swingarm is from a XJR1300. The front end is a Z1000 triple clamp (thanks to Les Holt for making the stem) with ZX6 fork legs (thanks to Gordy Roth for the adaptors and extensions). The wheels are JB Power MAGTAM CNC’d compressed magnesium purchased thru Hypercycle in Van Nuys (thanks to Carry Andrew). The brakes are off the ZX6 donor front end and a nice Brembo dual piston caliper hanging in the rear (Thanks to Don Roberts for the rear disc carrier). The titanium exhaust and rearsets are K-Factory out of Japan. The Titanium silencer is Ladybird from Japan as well.
The engine starts off 1980 police bike cases, 1978 welded 15T crank, 1980 ST clutch basket and a stock 1980 trans. The pistons are MTC 1076cc with 12:1 compression bored by Joe at PitStop Performance. The head is ported and machined to accept the 3X camshafts. The valves are stainless APE with 1mm oversize on the exhaust. Heavy duty valve springs, cam chain, chain guides and under bucket shims are in place to keep things together. Its all feed by a set of Mikuni 34mm RS carbs. Ignition is provided by a Dyna 2000 system feeding Accel super coils.
That’s our build, through it all, my sweet wife Karen has been there, building, grinding, painting, sanding, cleaning, blasting, laying up carbon, helping with each and every decision. She really makes it fun. When I doubt myself, she braces me back up, she is amazing. Thank you Karen.
Todd Attebery
