So, the kz 1000r. Man, that bike. For years, it was just this legendary thing you’d see in old magazines or hear guys at bike nights whispering about. The green meanie, right? Eddie Lawson’s ride. I figured, one day, I gotta get my hands on one. Just gotta.
Well, “one day” eventually rolled around a few years back. Had a bit of spare cash, a bit of spare time – or so I thought. Big mistake on the “spare time” part. I started the hunt. Thought it’d be straightforward. Look online, find a decent one, make a deal. Easy peasy.
Turns out, finding a good kz 1000r is like finding a unicorn that also makes you breakfast. Most of them were either basket cases, held together with rust and hope, or they were priced like they were made of solid gold and personally blessed by Lawson himself. I spent months, I tell ya. Scouring every corner of the web, calling up numbers that probably hadn’t been active since the bike was new. Some guys were cool, shared some stories. Others? Well, let’s just say they saw me coming a mile away.
Eventually, I found one. Looked alright in the photos. The seller seemed okay, bit cagey, but okay. Drove a good five hours to see it. It was… present. Parked in a dim garage, covered in a dusty sheet. He kicked it over, and it coughed to life, sounded rough, but it ran. That sound, though. Even rough, it had something. So, yeah, I bought it. Paid more than I should have, probably.
Getting My Hands Dirty, Real Dirty
Got it home, and that’s when the real “fun” began. The first thing I did was try to give it a proper once-over. What I thought was a bit of surface rust turned out to be the bike’s main structural component in places. The wiring looked like a rat’s nest that had a fight with a bowl of spaghetti. And the carbs? Don’t even get me started on the carbs. It felt like every time I fixed one thing, two more things would break. It was a constant battle.
My weekends disappeared. My garage became my second home. My knuckles were always busted. Sourcing parts was a whole other adventure. You’d find something listed as “kz 1000r part” and it would turn out to be for a completely different model, or it would cost an arm and a leg, shipped from halfway across the world. I remember spending an entire Saturday just trying to track down a specific bolt. A bolt!
- Carb rebuilds (plural, yes).
- Chasing electrical gremlins that seemed to move every time I got close.
- Hunting for original-ish bits, then giving up and finding something that just worked.
- So much cleaning. Years of grime.
It wasn’t like these new bikes, you know? Those things, you just thumb a button and they purr. This kz, it had moods. Sometimes it would fire right up, sound amazing, and I’d feel like a king. Other days, it would just refuse. Absolutely refuse. I’d be out there, sweating, kicking, cursing. More than once, I just walked away and left it for another day.
I did get it running properly, eventually. Took it out for a few good rides. And yeah, when it was on song, it was special. The noise, the feel, the history of it. People would stop and stare. But man, the effort. The constant tinkering. I was always wondering what would go wrong next. It was more of a museum piece I occasionally dared to ride rather than actual transport.
After about two years of this love-hate relationship, I sold it. Some younger guy, eyes full of the same dreams I had. I made sure to be honest with him, told him what he was getting into. He didn’t care. He just saw the legend. I actually made a tiny bit of money on it, surprisingly, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, I’d had the experience. I’d owned the legend. And the legend was a bit of a pain in the backside, if I’m honest.
Sometimes, I see one at a show, all gleaming and perfect, and I get a little pang. Then I remember trying to sync those damn carbs for the fifth time, and the feeling passes. Glad I did it. Even gladder it’s someone else’s beautiful problem now. But you know, there’s a part of me that still misses the challenge, the sheer stubbornness of that old machine. Or maybe I just miss being younger and dumber. Who knows?
