Mid-Life Rider

Also known as the ZR750-H3.

Summary: Excellent beginner bike / street rat.

I bought this bike in late 2006 from a lovely Canadian couple for my son to learn to ride on. If you’re not familiar with it, and few people are, it’s a carbureted, four cylinder, two-valve per cylinder, 70 hp, 750cc bike with digital ignition. It runs on any sort of gas you’ve got handy and goes forever on a tank. It goes, stops, and handles nicely. It’s a great starter bike, re-entry bike, or something just for bombing around town.

Right after I bought it, I had a mechanic go through it. It has new plugs, air filter, oil (about 8 months ago), and everything was set to spec. Better still, I replaced the springs with nifty aftermarket units from Hyperpro and put on a fresh set of Michelin Pilot Roads (they have less than 1000 miles on them and are still sporting lots of tread). The front fork has new, heavier oil and slightly taller shims in it. I also added Renntec engine bars which gets me to the next part of the story.

Last summer I took my son to the track with the idea of helping him work on his bike handling skills. That didn’t work out exactly as I or he had planned and he wound up in a gravel trap, twice, each time going about 5 mph. If you remember your physics, you can picture what happened next. The bike slowed down faster than he did and he went off. The bike fell over, once in each direction, banging up the front fairing, scuffing up the engine guard, a bar end, a mirror, and the muffler. In a separate garage incident, my wife’s car got cozy with the bike and it fell over, catching the top of the gas tank. Don’t ask, I still can’t figure out how that happened.

I bought a used fairing for the bike but couldn’t get it in the original blue. I don’t really know what came over me, but I decided to turn the bike into a proper looking street fighter so I rattled canned it black, added stomp grip panels, and put on a Zero Gravity Double Bubble screen. I have another touring screen for it and a set of Givi hard bags and rack. The pictures don’t show it, but I also added mirror extenders, replaced the missing left mirror, and painted the engine guards.

Here’s what the bike used to look like.

Here are some more pictures of what it looks like now.

Here is a review published by motorcycle.com.

Here are the specs

Tags: Kawasaki, ZR750-H3, ZR-7S, Stomp Grip, Renntec, Stomp Grip, Double Bubble, For Sale