Kawasaki GPz1100

Doing 500 miles in a day on a GPz1100 was a new form of torture. I'd previously been hurtling around the country on an ancient GT750, which was bad enough with most bits rotting off and it wandering all over the road at 90mph. The GPz was another story, altogether, not really getting its act together until more than 90mph was on the clock.

The only hassle with that scenario, apart from wailing cop cars, was fierce secondary vibes. 115mph was facilitated by the fairing which provided excellent protection. Even in the wet, most of the rain was whipped around my body. My face, though, was splattered with such an excess of water that I had to crouch down behind the screen, which could've benefited from being a foot higher.

I did try a higher screen but its poor design meant it went flat when subjected to a 90mph gale, throwing off a deluge of water into my lap. The riding position was supposed to be sporting but somehow was less than ideal. In town it caused agony on my wrists, after an hour in the saddle on the motorway I was more or less seized in position. It was a major effort to stagger off without the bike and I falling over in one tangled heap. A day's hard, excessive riding needed at least a couple of days to recover!

The intense secondary vibes didn't help. These were concentrated, initially, in the pegs, but after a couple of hours of speeding rather than fading away they seemed to spread to the whole chassis. The cycle parts seemed generally to be strong enough to resist such destructive buzzing, but I did lose a numberplate, indicator lens and footpeg over a year's riding.

My own body was not so robust. I was thrown into absolute agony some 230 miles from home when a filling fell out. I nearly choked on the large piece of amalgam then found it hard going to stop the screaming as the air rushed on to the naked nerve. You wouldn't believe the hassle I had trying to get treated by a dentist. In the end, I agreed to pay £200 for emergency treatment! The pain was so intense I had no option.

Just to finish off the day in style, 50 miles from home the big brute went into an almighty speed wobble. I'd left home with over 2mm of tread, after 500 miles it was down to about 1.5mm, causing the Pirelli Phantoms to lose all their integrity. The rubber was almost brilliant when newish, but as it went down to the legal limit the bike became almost as dangerous as having sex wearing a Russian condom with an Ugandan whore.

The speed wobble needed a deep breath, a firm hold on the bars and a desperate attack on all three discs. The GPz has immensely powerful brakes, that can lose 50mph within moments. The wobbles went wilder as speed was lost until it was a question of whether the bike would quiet down or go horizontal. This time, as in every other case, fortunately, the wobble died down and I escaped with a mere dose of excessive fear and fright.

I've owned a lot of nasty handling bikes and the GPz is by no means the worst of the bunch. It's the most expensive, though, by far. If a set of tyres last 5000 miles before letting the handling go loose, then I jump up and down with joy and throw a party in celebration. There's no mercy on consumables from this kind of rorty four, with chains, pads and sprockets all in urgent need of replacement after 5000 miles of stringent stampeding.

That did include a lot of wheelspin and wheelies, both of which were easy meat for the 120hp DOHC aircooled four. Revving out with the clutch pulled in and then dropping it fast, gave sensational, arm breaking acceleration. Poor old pillions were soon left screaming for mercy as they tried to hold on by their fingernails. It was the kind of bike which would make passengers wet themselves within a few minutes. I really blew one guy's mind, he ended up never again wanting to go near a motorcycle, curled up in a Ford Capri for the rest of his life, babbling incoherently at passing motorcyclists.

With a top speed of 150mph, and some gut busting acceleration even in top gear, the GPz was more than a match for any number of modern superbikes. Weighing in at 525lbs it was no heavier than many of the plastic fantastic crowd, but needed more muscle, a firmer grip and a bigger pair of balls than the race replicas. Racing with an FZR1000, for instance, was great fun. Trying to follow the FZR's line through fast bends would cause the undercarriage to take large chunks out of the ground, the suspension to wobble all over the place and the big brute of a bike to inevitably drift over to the wrong side of the highway.

The best technique on the GPz1000, as with most of the old aircooled monster fours, was to keep it as vertical as possible. Make corners as straight as possible by starting out on the wrong side of the road. When that was impossible, then hang off the bike. If even that failed it was all down to massive courage and a brutal grip on the bars, which could've usefully been a foot wider to give better leverage.

I gave my FZR mounted mate some frightening times, as I wobbled past him, looking like I was hurtling to oblivion. Surprisingly, given all the wobbling I never actually fell or crashed into anything. It was a close call at times, my instinctive reaction being to shut the throttle dead and reach for the brakes.

Engine braking was useful until the 'box started jumping out of gear. It only happened on the overrun, so didn't throw the engine into a 15000rpm session but the sudden loss of traction would upset the chassis, causing some quite intense tail wagging. Changing up the box was always smooth but needed the use of the rather remote and heavy clutch to ensure slickness.

Of note, at the front end, was an anti-dive system that stopped excessive fork dive even under manic braking but didn't make the front brake so remote that wet weather braking became suicidal. I suppose that if you were really stupid at the lever you could lock the wheel and slide off the road in the wet, but it was never a great concern even when the Pirellis were down to 2mm. I've owned old horrors with really retributive brakes that needed the calipers stripped and rebuilt much more often than the 15 to 20,000 miles in the case of the GPz1100.

One area where the construction of the big Kawasaki was a bit poor was the wheel bearings, which seem slightly on the small size. Even after I put in a set of SKF sealed bearings they didn't last for more than 14000 miles (against 12,500 for the OE bearings). It was always easy to tell when they were on the way out as it became like riding on a steel grating at as little as 30mph. Any long term owner would be well clever to put in new wheel bearings every 10,000 miles rather than wait for them to go whilst out on the road.

Another chronic problem is supposed to be the fuel injectors and associated sensors but I did 30,000 miles in addition to the 18000 already covered, without any worries on that score and absolutely no maintenance chores! Oil was changed every 1000 miles and the filter occasionally. Electronic ignition and automatic camchain tensioner meant there was little else to do to the motor. With its design harking back to the old Z900, the GPz has both the heritage and the engineering to claim toughness.

After a year of lots of high speed touring my back, wrists and bum have all adapted to the initial chronic pains and I can do a couple of hundred miles without too much distress. A full day's blasting, though, does in my spine and the rest of my body, not to mention my teeth. I did do 4000 miles in five days once, but I never touched the machine for a fortnight afterwards and could but barely move for a whole weekend. I know people who've been reduced to gibbering idiots by constant high speed riding on the GPz.

It takes a certain perverted kind of chap to get the best out of the Kawasaki, then. It's as tremendously fast as it is horrendously difficult to handle, but that's all part of its charm. So much so that they are becoming a bit of a cult bike. As the last one was made in '88, there are still some good ones on offer with plenty of mileage left, though the really immaculate ones fetch £3000, which is just a little bit over the top given all the hassle involved. Don't forget, either, that they need a bank account (for consumables) just as big as the rider's balls (for riding 'em fast).

Dave Breach