Bike of the Month Oct 2010.

Simon Hill, UK.

thank you very much for the invite to be bike of the month, i feel honoured & proud. Just to give you guys a little insight about myself,  Simon Hill, i am 44 years young & live in the little sleepy Wiltshire town called Wootton Bassett in the uk. In recent years this town has become well known world wide for the repatriation of our troops killed in action in the middle east (so much sadness on a very regular basis).
On a much brighter note, by day im a bodyshop manager of a vehicle accident repair centre & by night i run my own business with a partner restoring & tuning vintage motor scooters, mainly lambrettas & vespas from the 50s,60s & seventies, to add to my very busy schedule, i buy & sell a few retro motorcycles, mainly bikes ive bought reasonably cheap , tarted up a little, used them for a few months, then move them on so i can try something else out.
One such bike last year was a 1983 z1000r now owned by Mr.B.White of Bristol in the uk, as listed on your site. From selling the z1000r after having a fews months summer fun, i moved  onto a Harley 1360 fxd (WHY ? )  a honda cb1000 big one , then started thinking im really missing that green mean machine, so much fun on a skinny back tyre, loads of grunt & fantastic fun up & around Snowdonia national park mountains etc etc ! so started to look for another, then realized perhaps i did the wrong thing selling that one, because when one or two eventually showed there selves on the market for sale, they were either bitzas or knackered or loads of money, i then bought a gpz750r1 on spec without seeing it, on receiving this bike & sitting on it, i realized how much smaller it felt than my old z1000r, so sold it on.

Then eventually on the dreaded ebay a very tired looking z1100r came up , but it was untouched & straight with just a few minor parts to find. I believe its much easier to work with something that you can tell has not been messed around with, rather than something that has had years of bodging & messed around with & hidden with paint & filler. So i contacted the vendor & agreed a mutual price, i paid over the odds but felt this bike was worth every penny. Once i had collected it from Cornwall in the uk, i got it running, mot,d & taxed it, used it for a couple of weeks as it was, then decided time to strip & sort it all out.

After finding your wonderful site & seeing & studying your bikes of the month, i was away. Many late nights(early mornings) I just could not leave it alone,I decided to make it as stock as possible because the standard bike is just so iconic, i knew the engine & gearbox were sound & rest just very tatty, so a total strip down & acid dip to start,

some powder coating & the rest of the bodywork off to my daytime job to get sorted, i refurbed most of the original parts as much as i could knowing this is the best way to get it all right ( patern parts suck) & all though i do this with my vintage scooter projects, this is the first motorcycle i have ever gone this far with, but found all the principles basically the same.Four months later im riding around on a fabulous machine that im very proud of.

Ive covered just under a 1000 miles on  it, & have only needed to adjust the clutch & reseal the cam cover rubber bungs due to a slight weep from them, i still have to set the carbs up a little sweeter but runs & sounds awesome.
I would like to add at this point that joining this site has been such a help, with great advice & genuine helpfull members who have been invaluable for the sourcing of some parts, & hopefully meet some of you in the future.I got a front mudguard from germany & another from the us(original completely rotten) so ive fitted the more sporty looking z1000r one & have a good z11000r to go back on the bike whenever. I call my work on this bike a refurb rather than a resto.I think alot of people get this confused, a lick of paint, new chain and tyres does not deserve the title of a fully restored bike that i keep reading in the small adds these days!

& just to top it all off , ive managed to get a ticket to have dinner with the man himself Eddie Lawson on the 15th of october 2010 at an evening event where he will talking about his career & his time with kawasaki,i believe this to be the first time he has visited the uk since 1989, so a rare opportunity to see, never mind meet, oh and sign my petrol tank!

Simon Hill.

As always We will be featuring a different bike each month on kz1000r.com
that we feel is deserving of the title "Bike of The Month."

Check back often to see what our pick is.

To nominate or submit your own bike for "Bike of The Month."
Send some info on yourself your bike and loads of pic's bigger the better.

PLEASE SEND IN YOUR INFO IF YOU ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO OWN ONE OF THESE BIKES!

I really want to bring THIS Registry up to date so accurate number's left in circulation can be made available,

this will intern help us get a true market value for insurance purposes.

Please include the chassis number and the month of production printed on the headstock of your bike.

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