My mother laughed — and not just a broad smile or a quick chuckle either. She roared, her shoulders heaved and her eyes watered. Bloody hell, no wonder I grew up lacking confidence. ”It doesn’t look that small,” said my father, in his hesitantly sympathetic way.
Sod the pair of ’em. Ten years earlier I would have been sorely pissed off at this typical parental reaction, but I seem to have reached the age when I really don’t care much... well, not so they’d notice.
And what was it the old lady found so uncontrollably hysterical? No, cesspit, it was nothing to do with my wedding tackle, it was a bike — a W reg Kawasaki Z400. Of all the two wheeled exports shipped out of the land of Nippon I wouldn’t have said the little Zed four had any more inherent comic potential than the next, would you?
Nope, the reason I was close to matricide was because mummy dear was used to seeing me on considerably more potent machinery, including a hugely wonderful CB900 Honda — a perverse period of intense hedonistic high speeds, interspersed with bouts of mechanical problems, not to say fucking breakdowns; the end coming with a broken camchain, six busted valves and a repair bill so extensive my imagination had as much trouble comprehending it as my bank manager.
There were other reasons for the down-market plunge, though. First, I was about to move to London (Unlucky, dude - 2017 Ed.). And not just anywhere in London, but a flat on a council estate at the bad, bad end of Peckham. On my very first weekend in residence I was mugged on the stairs just outside the back door. Christ alone knows what the bad boys would’ve inflicted on the Cee Bee Niner, were it parked outside, with its flash paint job and endurance fairing. But a crappy little Z400J? A different proposition, I reckoned.
Reckoning right, for once, that was exactly what it turned out to be. But it wasn’t all bad, it just felt that way to begin with. Once I’d got the Z400 four home and I’d recovered from the emotional upset of having the piss taken, I attempted to smarten the bike up a little.
If there had been a division in the SS devoted to battered motorcycles this poor little sod would’ve been taken into care years ago. Tenderly, I gave it a warm, soapy scrub down, later I eased it into a new seat cover and presented it with a nice shiny bar-end mirror. After much work it almost looked quite butch, I almost forgot it was half a litre less than I was accustomed to.
A week later, I took the bike on its first longish journey from my parents home in Suffolk to Oxford. Used to the torque of the Honda I hardly ever had to change gear, I had to re-learn the art of rapid gear-changing — the little Kawa had a sixth gear and, by Christ, it needed about six more.
Cutting through spasmodic traffic meant constantly changing gear — I often I had to go do to third to find some decent acceleration, and by the time I got up to sixth I needed change back down again. So crazy was the gear shifting that it desperately needed a gear position indicator.
At least the relatively light Z400 was easier to chuck around than the heavy old CB900, although, as the Kawasaki was basically a scaled down 550 — sharing a similar DOHC air cooled 4-cylinder engine - it was not exactly in the same lightweight class as either the 400lb CB400F or GSX400F; it did share their lack of low down grunt, though.
A hundred miles of this and I had the hang of it all again, man and machine had found a kind of harmony. In Oxford, the late August sunshine was pleasantly warm but the waves of heat pouring off the engine were something else. If there was a fairing, like on the Honda, I would’ve been done to a turn.
Getting back on the A45 1 tried to use the bike a little more sanely. Look, I warned myself, this isn’t the CB900 and you're no longer the boy racer you fancied yourself to be — right?
Oddly enough, this change in attitude made me feel a lot more positive about the Z400. Having to consider gears and engine speed (and road gradients and head winds...) gave me the impression that I was more in touch with what I was doing - existential authenticity? It seemed like I was almost beginning to like the bloody bike, although I had even less money than choice. But I was off to Shit City to seek my fortune, what could be more exciting?
Any number of things, actually - none of which I could afford. Once ensconced in London I must say that the Zed Four was just the job. By then I was accustomed to the feel of chug machine. The seat was broad and comfy, riding position OK, and it would cfrug along uncomplainingly with a slip of a girl perched on the pillion. It even provoked one girl, used to the Honda, to comment that it didn’t feel particularly slow.
Shit City traffic jams were taken in their stride, the bike could be filtered through the gaps with hardly a thought, and the disc brakes were more than powerful enough to lock the plot up when taking desperate measures to avoid frustrated tin boxes.
Estate louts had pushed the bike over in the car park a couple of times but apart from leaking a tankful of petrol overnight, the only damage had been one rear indicator written off. A replacement was procured from a Greenwich breaker for the not exactly ball-busting price of four quid, ta. Compare to the cost of falling off a mate’s new GPz550, when I came off the Z400 later, I survived with a bent crash bar and some scratched paint. Smug or what?
There were still bad times, though. Traffic light GPs were demoranising , with crazed DRs on things like CX500s, VT500s and GT550s who would burn me off. Remedy — stop trying. Once I began putting it into practice I began sleeping better at nights.
Now, if I’d been on a mount like the big Honda would things have been different? Need you ask? Not only was I coming to terms with the diminutive size of my current equipment, I was also coming to terms with myself. The CB had been a bit of an extrovert, no mistake, big and rorty and every time I swung a leg over it I’d felt that I had to live up to the machine’s image. Now I’ve left all that behind.
Mind you, this was aided and abetted, officer, sir, by another surprising revelation. While die-hard bikers saw the Z400 for what it was (and I quote: "Understressed, underpowered and overweight” — I’ll see you outside, bastard), non-bikers had no bloody idea. Physically , I suppose, the complete machine was quite large in proportion to its engine size, but all the thickos had to do was read the side panels where its shameful lack of cubic capacity was rashly proclaimed for all the world to see. Despite this, the blind buggers still got it wrong — or maybe, now I come to think of it, 1 was better a projecting an image than I realised.
”You, won’t go over a hundred and thirty, will you?” I was once asked by a woman who drove a very fast car, and should have known better. And countless times people commented on the bike’s imposing size — to the public at large (and let’s face it, most of ’em shouldn’t be) my biking image was unimpaired by moving selflessly down from 900 to 400cc. Funny old world.
Now, of course, all of the foregoing ought to have led me to some really profound, mind expanding conclusion, but then, when has life ever been fair? In all honesty, what I can say is that swapping from the ever so wonderful but occasionally trying CB900 to the thrifty and dependable but rather bland Z400J wasn’t quite the major emotional trauma some might have predicted.
That I found a certain amount of pleasure, and thought provoking stimulus, from the smaller machine came as a real surprise but obviously not an unwelcome one.
Greg Kerry