A revival mission

[GregT]

Post cardiac surgery I've been playing myself back in by restoring my old F3 Kawasaki racebike. It's sat here under a cover since 1999, and before that it was last used in anger at the New Brighton street races in 1992 against Joey and the visiting Irish team. The regular rider had moved on to a TZ by then - but blew the gearbox in that at a previous meeting so we hauled the old girl out and did a quick conversion to petrol to suit the new regs...4ths and 5ths against TZ's and bigger bikes showed it was still good.
Anyway, it's based on an early EX500. Heavily modified. 142kg wet and about 72hp at the wheel on Methanol. Led Nationals - but never won one. Did win the F3 support class at the Manfield WSB round in 1989.

Finished and ready to be paraded at the upcoming Southern Classic festival in December.

[GregT]

One pic at a time....

[steve murdoch]

Cool bike, Greg.
Stock specs are approximately 170kg and 50hp.
So close to 50% more power and 30 less kg. It must be a blast to ride.
Aluminum tank?

[GregT]

Alloy tank and seat. A friend of mine did quite a few tanks back in the day. He's just retired from his "real" job and will be back into alloy work shortly.

If anyone wants the full story, google kiwibiker forum, scroll down to the Classic bike section, thread of the same name.
Sorry, I can't post a link.

Edit - I know the EX is a popular bike in Canadian vintage racing - and the US based forum (which my internet won't let me join) isn't much help when it comes to racing them. Read the thread mentioned above...
Here, it would run in a group of pre 89 F3 with pre 82 Senior. Now I've got it running again, with the right rider, it's a potential group winner. And it's genuine period, not a recreation....

[GregT]

Well, it got finished and paraded. Kiwimacchi - member on here, is the rider. He was pretty tentative initially but I told him to get into it on the Sunday...So he did and had an entertaining little play with Croz on an RGB500 Suzuki...
I was interested to see the lap times in the group it would race with. The "works" MacIntosh - full house 1100 - with a multi NZ champ riding was into the 1.10 bracket. The next few pre 82's and the leading pre89 F3 were around 1.13....This bike was doing 1.13's in 1988/89. With modern rubber....