You know what they say… What is old can be new again. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. You’ve heard these sayings before, but check out how beautiful the end product can be when you put a little love and elbow grease into something that may be a little dated, but has great “bones”.

Enter this beauty… the rebuilt, upgraded motor of the vintage 1980 Kawasaki KZ1000. This motor was the pinnacle in it’s day in the late 70’s to early 80’s. It was one awesome engine! This one came straight from one of Rick’s personal bikes and was sent to and rebuilt by Bob at Moshinskie Performance in Knoxville, TN. It’s the first custom build here at Rick’s and we couldn’t be more excited. Of course, this motor has been customized mechanically with our stator, heavy duty starter motor, and rectifier regulator to be one beautiful piece of upgraded equipment.

This motor is on it’s way back to us and we’ll have it with us at trade shows, it will be on display in our lobby, and of course you know Rick is going to have some fun riding around with this beauty!

Bob and Rick have been friends for a long time. We sponsored him when he used to drag race, and he worked in our service department here at Rick’s for awhile. When it came time to decide who would do the engine rebuild for our first official Rick’s Motorsport Electrics custom bike, there was no question who we would call! Bob specializes in old school Kawasaki KZ900/1000’s and Honda CB550/750’s. He is very meticulous in his work and it definitely shows! Just check out the organization of his shop in the background! You can check out Bob’s work at  https://www.moshinskieperformance.com.

There was some other work done by some amazing professionals as well…

The machine work was done by Fast by Gast. They did the machine crank cap, valve job and deck head, resurface stock valves, bore, hone, sleeve, and deck cylinder, and undercut transmission.

Gardner Racing Concepts also helped out with heavy duty clutch hub and parts!

APE Racing Parts did cam cover caps, billet cam chain tensioner, heavy duty valve springs, slotted cam shaft sprockets, crankshaft support plate, heavy duty cylinder studs.

Wiseco for the piston kit.

Web Cam Inc for K395 cam shafts.

Kibblewhile Precision Machining Inc for Viton valve guide seals.

Tsubaki for the heavy duty cam chain.

OEM Kawasaki for clutch plates, cam bearings, o-rings, dowel pins.

Old School Vintage Parts for the gasket set & cam chain rollers & guides

Multi-cylinder air cooled Japanese motorcycles were the pinnacle of their time in the late 70’s to early 80’s and this motor is a perfect example of that!  Rick is building the bike piece by piece and we’ll be updating our blog with his progress so stay tuned!