The Zephyr Zone

Here's a nifty little site that tracks the asking price of used motorcycles in the U.S. You can see the maximum anyone has asked for a 550 is $3000 USD

https://motorcyclegraph.com/usa/kawasaki/zephyr-550

£3000 ($4200) seems a bit much. But air cooled bikes do seem to be back in style...

Just a quick update - I was initially underwhelmed by performance changes after the cam swap, but after dialing in my jetting all I can say is WOW!!!!! So much power, I'm constantly finding myself thinking "Uh oh, I'm going way too fast way too quickly." Sounds like a beast as well, with a...

I'm refurbishing a set of Tokico calipers that I bought off ebay for my 550. They came with what look like very nice, OEM pads, with a lot of meat left on them (~4mm of material). They are stamped "TOKICO" with a Kawasaki "K", so I'm assuming they were stock issue, maybe even ori...

What kind of mileage are you getting on your Zephyr? My 550 varies pretty dramatically. City driving (zipping around) is about 30-35mpg. HIghway or twisties gives me 40-50mpg

lots of details about this swap and 550 cams in general in a thread on kzrider --

https://www.kzrider.com/forum/2-engine/ ... =40#775728

Well I went ahead and swapped in a set of zx550 cams (the cams in the gpz550 from 1984 on). The lift is the same as the zr cams but zx cams have something like 10 degrees more duration. Set the center lobe to 104 degree for both intake and exhaust. The gpz550 had the intake cam at 94 degrees. Haven'...

I've looked a bunch of rotors and I think I like the appearance of the stock rotors best. They're priced about the same as the high-end aftermarket rotors. I wonder how they perform compared to those? If performance is comparable I think I'll just stick to stock.

Has anybody done this swap? I have a line on a set of 1984 gpz550 cams. From what I understand, the zr550 already has the same cams as the earlier gpz's (the "first performance grind"). So it's a matter of whether the 1984 cams are big step up. Seems that way from the hp numbers - the '84 ...

Does anybody have any recommendations? I just put some EBC V rotors on mine: https://thumpertalk.com/uploads/monthly_2017_11/59ff39794fe22_newrotors.jpg.34cdf03c6d2f043a359bf35748c0885f.jpg Haven't had a chance to use them yet because I've been going through the bike and replacing all the gaskets, ...

I used HEL lines on my 550,very satisfied with them. Would recommend the "race" setup with two lines all the way. That splitter makes it very difficult to bleed the lines properly... Leif So that dispenses with the splitter altogether? Trying to picture how that would work. Is it somethin...