So I now had:
- One certified death-trap of a vehicle parked up at the mechanics;
- Some nice looking albeit non-matching fairings to make it look less battered even if more patchwork; and
- A booking with the local motor registration inspection station to confirm that it was at least legal, if not safe.
For those who have never registered an unregistered vehicle in South Australia, one which needs to be checked over as part of the re-registration, the process is:
- Go to Service SA with the details of the vehicle (in this case really just the VIN, since it wasn’t registered previously);
- Fill out a form requesting a single day registration to ride without a plate, listing the route you’ll take with the vehicle to get it checked over;
- Get to your vehicle and stick the form to the windscreen;
- Take the vehicle to the inspection centre;
- Get the vehicle checked over;
- If it passes, take it straight back to Service SA for more forms and walk out with a registration plate to fix to the vehicle, and that’s that.
The morning came, and with a day off work and a mild sense of fear, both of the process and of riding the thing at more than walking pace, off I went.
Everything went, more or less, to plan, which was funny looking back as it is probably the last time I can say that about the project bike.
The form filling and pick up went well, the ride home on a largely unfaired, untested bike was tentative, all fairings were put back on for the assessment (I figured that the more it looked roadworthy rather than something from Mad Max the more likely it was to be passed), and on the open road I went.
The feeling of being back on an FZR on the road was a surreal one. Like going back to your old neighbourhood and walking around, noticing how things look so much different than you remember them, but then having moments where the connection clicks and the feeling of comfort returns all in a rush of long forgotten memories.
I took it, in spite of my better judgement, on an 80kmh limit road, hoping that the bodged sprocket nut would stay put for just a little longer. It revved cleanly into the midrange, there were no shakes in the steering or pulling to one side or another. The temperature gauge stayed pretty steady, only climbing a little when we stopped at lights. The brakes were rubbish, but they worked well enough to get me there and back. It was, for the first time in what was probably the better part of ten years, back on the road, legally, and it felt reasonably solid.
At one point I kept pushing it through the revs, close to the 10500rpm redline, and nothing blew up. The noise, the howl, was as I remembered it, but quieter thanks to the stock pipe. The acceleration was gentle compared to my daily ride (a 2018 z900), but the character was there – that familiar FZR feeling that at 6000rpm the party hadn’t even started, and that the only way that this thing wanted to be ridden was in anger.
The inspection was as underwhelming as it was nerve wracking. The formalities of getting it into the inspection shed, standing well clear while the inspector checked it over, and having to endure five minutes of panic as she disappeared inside and made a long phone call. ‘This one is right on the border of what we need to check in terms of compliance plates, so I just needed to check what I was meant to do with it – you’re all good to go’.
And that was that.
The youngish fella who was also doing inspections chatted to me on the way out – ‘we don’t see many of those left on the road – nice’ – and all of a sudden the whole thing felt a whole lot more worth it. I was working on something that at least one person in the whole of Adelaide looked at and recognised for what it was – a piece of sportbike history that had quietly become rare in this part of the world. Not in any way exclusive, just rare.
The ride home, via Service SA to pick up the plates, went via the local winding road as seemed the right thing to do, only giving it a gentle lean given its precarious state, but even that was enough to remember the sharp handling that made it what it was back in ’89. There was also an obligatory photo stop at the local scenic lookout, where in the right light and if you didn’t look too hard, the bike actually looked half decent…
So that was the end of the first phase of the project – getting the thing at least legal again. Now there was just the small matter of what the hell to do next, and in what order, with the dim throbbing anxiety of the ‘you need a new engine’ conversation now starting to push past the euphoria of having a road-legal FZR and take pride of place in my mind.
Next up: About that bodged sprocket…