Kawasaki Z400J

Herbert's revenge on the time I'd stuck a potato down the can of his Z400J's 4-1 was to sell me the heap at a seemingly bargain price. Heap was perhaps an unfair description as it was more a heavy concentration of road grime than an actual collapse of metal. The 1982 machine had last been cleaned in 1989!

A blast around the block convinced me that there was some life left in the engine and that neither the braking nor handling had reached suicidal levels. The bike weighed 425lbs in theory but the controls were so heavy that it was more like a 500lb monster than a supposedly small four. Derived from the 550, everything about the J was on the hefty side.

Being less inclined towards sloth than Herbert, I set about cleaning off the accumulated grime. Two tins of Gunk and a jet-wash cleared much of the muck. A couple of sessions with the wire-brush revealed an excess of corroded metalwork. The steel was primed and repainted, the alloy set to with good old Solvol, with mixed results. There were patches of resistant white rot that I couldn't shift. All this effort still added up to a bike that was showing its age. The crud had also effectively stopped several oil leaks from the engine which now dribbled out continuously, causing my neighbour to make references to his happy days with British tackle. Sarcastic bastardo!

The main leak came from the head gasket, which three days after purchase blew, leaving the performance on a par with a not so nifty fifty and desperate gulping noises down below - the motor, not me thinking I was going to die under the wheels of a speeding cage. You don't want to take old Jap motors apart because invariably they will never run right...this was my excuse for exerting massive force on the cylinder head bolts, which, amazingly, resulted in both a running engine and great diminution in the oil leakage.

Most of my riding was in Central London. The bike was both slow in acceleration and handling, making it less than perfect for the city but given that most cages were stalled dead it wasn't that great an inhibition. New, they claimed 40-odd horses but 60,000 miles on what was reckoned to be a completely stock engine must've lost a lot of that. Testified by its reluctance to do much more than 85mpg and 40mpg lack of economy.

One area where it was showing its age, the gearbox and clutch. The latter heavy and grabby, the former liable to slip into false neutrals in an annoyingly random manner. Herbert admitted that he'd had similar problems, and as a lad who grew up on ancient Honda's he was an expert in dealing with recalcitrant gearchanges. If he couldn't master the box, it was unlikely that a relative novice like myself was going to get a handle on it. I went so far as to try to remove the clutch cover but found that the screws were corroded in too solidly to shift.

Third or fourth offered the best range of speed, most useful acceleration and a minimal amount of vibration. Despite its age and mileage, the Z proved to have a lack of vibes, almost electric smooth at certain revs and even when thrashed there was only a mild buzzing in the pegs. Probably down to its excessive mass soaking up the vibration. Ignoring the carb balancing chores made no difference, although the clutch would knock ominously at tickover revs.

The whole engine clattered away like there wasn't much life left but it'd been like that for the past three years, all the components nicely worn into each other and no-one willing to take a chance on actually adjusting any of the internals, sure in the knowledge that it would probably throw the whole plot out. That was our excuse for being lazy beggars, anyhow.

Handling was best described as being quite loose whilst not actually being dangerous. Even on worn suspension it never really flapped its handlebars all over shop, thanks to inherently stable geometry and good weight distribution. This went as far as making the handlebars hard to turn, especially at low speeds, though the steering head bearings were worn enough to need a bit of a tweak on the top yoke's nut.

The suspension was original, untouched since the bike was turned out of the factory. It wasn't exactly top notch when brand spanking new and Herbert's 15 stones hadn't given it an easy time. Still, it didn't really do that much damage to forward progress, so limited was the speed and acceleration. Only when I added a buxom lass to the pillion perch were the limits reached, the back tyre taking chunks out of the remnants of the rear mudguard, which promptly disintegrated, also taking the light bracket and numberplate out. The girlfriend wasn't too amused at this testament to her great mass, nor by my swearing fit. Rather than doing something expensive, like buying new shocks, I found a lighter lady friend! A used guard and light cost a fiver from the local breaker - for some reason, he was in a very merry mood.

The twin disc front brakes had been refurbished more than a few times. Suffering from sticking calipers, warped or cracked discs, and hose that kept springing leaks. Despite all this nonsense, the current set-up had more than enough power and feel to use safely in most conditions. Probably down to the long-lived EBC pads. The only limit on the braking was the way too much force would make the front forks act like they were falling apart. As it was a slow turning old heap at the best of times, good braking came as a great relief in tricky situations.

In London they usually turned up when some cabbie went berserk with the slowness of the traffic. I cut up one chap, who slewed up on to the pavement in an attempt at giving my back end a nudge. I hammered the throttle, escaped easily, but the untoward velocity meant I but narrowly missed disaster in the form of a bus doing a sudden right turn. I had the front brake on so hard that the bars were shuddering in my hands and the ancient Metz's were screaming for mercy. Despite the noise and shakes, it pulled up in a more or less straight line.

There comes a time in every machine's life when it gives out strong hints that the end is nigh. I thought the low rev rumbling and reluctant starting were trying to tell me something, so sold on to a mate at a price that took these things into account. Bugger me if the old hack isn't still going strong over a year and 80,000-odd miles later! Admittedly it'd tried to set fire to itself a couple of times and now didn't like going over 75mph but I wouldn't like to take any bets on how imminent is its demise. It might just break into six figures.

On one level the Z400J's a totally mediocre bike with little by way of speed kicks or handling finesse on offer, but at its heart there's a very tough mill that can take huge neglect; one of the definitive UJM's, then, available for next to nowt and always worth a look if you're after serious wheels.

Bernie T.