I’m back again building what for my money was the pinnacle of motorcycle design: a big Zed!
Even the most lovely of bikes can be spoilt by duff electrics and as the Z900A4 was hampered by Kawasaki Heavy Industries’ experiment into using a smaller battery than on previous and subsequent models, the charging system needs to be spot on.
The charging of the day was produced by a three-phase alternator on the end of the crank shaft. More modern bikes have been made more compact by piggybacking a car-type alternator behind the engine block, sometimes with an on-board regulator/rectifier, which is absurdly expensive when they fail.
This old Zed started off life with a separate rectifier to turn the three-phase AC (Alternating Current) from the
