Posted by Following on from Part 1, as you know I truly love my Z but I couldn’t resist changing a few bits, although it was the performance edition and came with a few extras such as rear seat cowl, front screen, tail tidy and an Akrapovic exhaust end can.
As standard, the Z does not have any sort of stone radiator guard which I personally think is something of an oversight. So before I had even picked the bike up I ordered one from eBay. This was fitted straight away and not only serves a very good practical purpose, but looks rather nice too with a nice small discreet Z900 logo on it.
When I took the demo Z for a test ride it had a small screen on it and I did notice a bit of wind hitting me on the chest but the Z I was buying had a slightly larger screen and, I’ve got to say, this made all the difference, I don’t feel the wind buffeting now. So if you have a Z900 I would heartily recommend this as an upgrade as it is it very small and discreet but makes a bigger difference than you would think just by looking at it.
I added R&G crash bungs (which go on all my bikes!). I think these are quite discreet but will save the day if you drop it in the garage or at low speed.
The other half can confirm this as thankfully it was one of his own bikes that he dropped in the garage. I hope he’s not reading this as we’re not supposed to talk about it!
Heel guards, these came from eBay and were only cheap but look so much better than the standard ones. I did try the usual suppliers first but nobody seems to make them for the Z900.
As I don’t take pillion (I tried this once with the other half, but it made the bike so heavy (too many pies!) I won’t be doing that again) I have a seat cowl. I took off the rear foot pegs and added an Evotech bracket for the exhaust and a blanking plate for the other side.
This, in my opinion, really enhances the streetfighter look.
Onto the exhaust, now this was a bit of saga. Unbeknown to me, when you buy a new bike the exhaust has to conform to EU standards and therefore it still has a CAT in it which makes it too quiet, well for me anyway!
Even though I had the Akrapovic end can, as this is a factory accessory it was not much louder than the standard exhaust so although it was a really nice looking quality product, it now lives in the shed.
So here started my journey to finding my new exhaust that had to fit certain criteria:1. Loud;2. Looked good on my bike;3. Not too expensive.
Never before have I paid sooo much attention to other people’s exhaust pipes! Everywhere I went I checked out exhausts and where possible asked them very nicely to start their bikes so I could hear the exhaust.
The NEC bike show was approaching and I did a bit of research beforehand (this mainly consisted of which exhausts looked the nicest) and went to the bike show with a couple of mates. I dragged them round virtually every exhaust manufacturers stand and came home with lots of brochures.
Still I didn’t know what to do as although they look great, some were very expensive and you can’t actually hear any of them at the show. Doing some more research on the internet, I came across Delkevic which is a British company. The exhausts look really nice and they looked really good value. In the end I thought ‘Oh well, let’s try it.’ and ordered one.
My friends said how pleased they were that they had spent the whole day at the Bike Show looking at and researching exhausts instead of looking at new bikes which was their whole reason for going and that their time was completely wasted 🙂
I went for a complete Delkevic system with a carbon stubby end can. The cat has now gone and the exhaust looks absolutely awesome and sounds even better. It is loud and every so often is it pops and bangs and spits the odd flame. Love it.
The only change that gets made now is to put on the original pillion seat when we go touring so I can fit my microscopic tail pack on the back. This is in fact a tank bag but is at least some sort of token effort to carry the smallest amount of luggage I can get away with.
I still firmly believe it upsets the look of the bike but I do accept that I have to carry something for long trips. Got away with it for Belgium last year ….. waiting to see if I can get away with it for this year’s European trips.
Really do hope the other half is not reading this.
BK