Road Tests

28 Kawasaki KZ1000

Bigger, heavier, faster, better. Especially better.

52 Hercules 250 Enduro

The bike has talent; the bike has problems.

81 Yamaha XS360-2D

Ma! They took away the center-stand! (Shut up, kid.)

Features

34 Beyond Racer Road: The California Hot Rod

The rewards and otherwise of rolling your own. By Cook Neilson

76 Winner!

John Harvey bags a real truck with a fake motorcycle.

99 Product Evaluation: The Camber Fairing

Maybe those touring guys know something.

By Phil Schilling.

108 Off To War on an Ital Jet 50

A little imagination doesn't hurt. By Cook Neilson.

Technical

40 Biting the Magnaflux Bullet

Think of it as cheap insurance. By Cook Neilson.

48 KawasakiZ1/KZ1000ChassisTune

Improvement? Yes. Perfection? Not quite.

By Gordon Jennings.

72 How Things Work: Helmets

For starters, you put it on your head.

By Gordon Jennings.

89 Shocks: The Last Technical Frontier

>4 close look at three that work. By Dave Holeman.

Departments

4 Editorial/Some-Awards They Missed/Cook Neilson

6 Letters/How High is Up?

12 The Duct Tapes/No Doubt About a Bow/EdHertfelder

14 Tips/Blackened Jacket

16 Pipeline/The Tire War

22 Road Test Index

26 Bits/They’re Selling in Africa

44 Book Review / The Story of Triumph / Phil Schilling

118 Classified Ads/Goods and services new and used

121 Readers Service/How to find what you saw and liked

122 Newsline/Maybe these’llhelp

• relax, everyone. Kawasaki's raucous, enhanced without having lost any of that

rambunctious Z-1 needed to have some old-time, arm-straightening performance,

of its bristles trimmed; the deed has been More pieces have been changed than

done and the transmuted article actually were left the same, but the King of Su-

is an improvement over the original. The perblkes still wears the crown.

Z-1 has gained 20 pounds in becoming Much of the impetus for a major rework

Kawasaki s new KZ1000, has lost a pair of of the big Kawasaki four was provided by

mufflers, has fought its weight gain to a the steady lowering of statutory noise

draw with a four-millimeter cylinder over- limits. A motorcycle emits noise from a

bore, has had both its engine and chassis number of sources other than its exhaust

stiffened and rebalanced, has acquired a pipes: gear whine, piston slap, the click of

new seat, and has emerged from the cam lobes against followers and even

transmutation quieter, smoother, more bearing rumble make contributions to the

comfortable and even socio-ecologically total noise emission. The old Z-1 tested at

about 84 dB(A) and It's entirely possible

that Kawasaki could have corked it down

to around 80 decibels with a new set of

mufflers. We re glad they didn’t try: had

they subtracted from the bike's exhaust

note alone that would have left us with a

big earful of clicks, whines, clacks and

rumbles, and an engine so constipated its

performance edge would be nothing but a

sad memory

What Kawasaki did, in, making a quiet

KZ1000 out of the clattery, chattery Z-1,

was to go for a reduction in the kind of

noise motorcyclists don't want to hear in...