Cycle Worlds “Best Used Bike”

I was surfing through some of the on-line motorcycle magazines when I came across a Cycle World Special Feature, CW’s Best Used Bikes and there was a photo of a ZRX1100R.  Well, that immediately got my attention, so I clicked on the link.

Best Used Bikes

I was interested because about three years ago I bought a used 2002 ZRX1200R, the newer, bigger brother of the 1100.   Back in the day when I was putting around on my Honda CB77 305 SuperHawk and my Honda 450 DOHC, Kawasaki was the premier performance motor cycle.  The first of their legendary super bikes was two stroke H1 and H2 triple cylinder bikes.  A buddy of mine had the 750 H2 Kawasaki. These things were just scary fast from a stop light.  Kawasaki came out with their first four stroke performance bike with the Z-900, followed by the legendary KZ-1000 and the KZ-1100.  These bikes were very fast, handled well, and was the platform that Eddie Lawson won several national championships on.  Eddie’s 1981 KZ 1000 was the model for the “retro” ZRX-1100 / 1200.

ZRX1100R and the ZK1000

ZRX1100R and KZ1000

The ZRX is retro in styling, but backed up with some more modern running gear.  The 4 cylinder inline engine is liquid cooled as apposed to the air cooled KZ.  It has modern multi piston caliper disk brakes, electronic ignition and some of the later models even have catalytic converters for reduced emissions.

I have been thoroughly pleased with the Kawa.  It is very versatile, it can be a daily driver, it can do a pretty good imitation of a sport bike, but the reason I like it, it is just fun to ride.  It has enough power to be both fun and dangerous.  It is kinda fun walking away from a Z06 Corvette at a stop light, but you can’t roll on a lot of throttle quickly or it will stand up on the rear wheel in a heartbeat!  As a daily driver it is smooth and is perfectly comfortable cruising at 35 miles per hour, or if you want to do a track day it will cruise nicely at 135 miles per hour.

Ride Safe.

3 Comments so far

  1. vette is fast on October 20th, 2010

    Great detailed information, I just bookmarked you on my google reader.

    Sent from my iPad 4G

  2. GSX-R750 guy on November 2nd, 2010

    Think of how retarded the average person is, and realize halve of them are stupider than that.

    Sent from my Android phone

  3. Keith Henderson - KT4VQ on November 23rd, 2019

    Bob, I too am a fan of the old muscle bikes. I owned a 1976 KZ 900 (https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.qrz.com/q/kt4vq/KZ900.png) and a 1973 KZ 750 MACH III. I will have to scan the MACH III picture sometime. I nicknamed the KZ 750 my pogo stick. You simply could not keep it on the ground, Hard to beat the old school bikes. You can see some of my other bikes on my QRZ page.