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