Tasty turbo!
What we have here is Chris Kitchen’s 1979 Kawasaki Z1-R TC, imported into the UK from Australia in March 2017, and it was my job to get her sorted. So here we go!
First of all, what is the Z1-R TC? Well, she’s less well-known than the 1980s raft of turbo bikes. By 1977-78 the Z1-R was looking a little long in the tooth compared to the opposition and the reasoning (well, in Canada and the USA) was that to boost (ahem) the bike’s flagging sales they should add lots of extra power by slapping a turbo on it.
Alan Masek was the man behind the plan. A former Kawasaki USA general manager, he’d formed the Turbo Cycle Corporation in California to offer bolt-on turbo kits to customers. He secured a number of Z1-Rs from Kawasaki and did a deal where he’d bolt-on the kits and sell the bike without a warranty.
So, it wasn’t strictly an official bike – more a dealer special – and the resultant machine was over-powered and under-engineered: no special suspension or internal mods were made. The turbo itself (a Rajay 370 F40 unit, normally seen on light aircraft) running at 10lb of boost would give the Z1-R an extra 40bhp to deal with – but all power
