Z1OwnersClub GB

Anyone any experience of the above, ie what to look for, faults, parts availability, what's good, whats crap etc...

TIA.

have a look on the kettle clinic forum,free to join, they have a section on the 380 and 550, there might be something there.

ken

you could ring JMC restorations, Mike the owner is a star, plenty of time to talk, and he owns a few z900's,

Garry, hi
Rhencullen (a mate of mine) from this forum owned one until recently: pop him a PM Im sure he can shed somelight on owning and running a GT380.

Cheers Tim

The 550 is the one to have, the 500 triple Kawasaki should have made!

King of Kings wrote:The 550 is the one to have, the 500 triple Kawasaki should have made!

You jest???

I had a GT550 and it was nice.... but slow & a very "mild mannered" machine - sound good though.

The points are a bit of a phaff - get decent electronic system. Handle steady enough but no faster than a decent RD/GT 250

Wasnt the 550 the only one out of the 250, 380, 550 and 750 that had a counter clockwise crank rotation?
Vaguely remember trying to set up 550 timing with electronic ignition and couldnt work out why it was retarding with revs instead of advancing?

warren3200gt wrote:Wasnt the 550 the only one out of the 250, 380, 550 and 750 that had a counter clockwise crank rotation?
Vaguely remember trying to set up 550 timing with electronic ignition and couldnt work out why it was retarding with revs instead of advancing?

Never heard of that...... didn't they also have chromed bores

Actually a google suggests it was only the 380 that ran counter clockwise. So long ago I cant remember what the mates engine size was.

one of them was notable for having a dummy silencer(iirc)

Me old GT500 had reverse gear

I've had all the GT's back in the day, from the 125/185/250 twins, 250 Hustler,500 Cobra and all the triples but god knows why, I think they must have come cheap and they all chucked their guts or suffered terminal electrical failure in the end.
They were all a bit bland performance wise and iffy in the electrical department although the Cobra had some oomph for what it was and the motor managed to stay in one piece .
The 380 wasn't fantastic and the 250 Yams were quicker and lighter.
Nothing specifically worse than the other GT's as far as i remember for the 380 .
Main thing was fragile electrics and hot middle cylinder which pretty much goes the same for all the triples.

Savage wrote:I knew someone who had a 380, he gave me the impression it was at best average (not that quick) and certainly nothing to reminisce over. They should be cheap to pick up but people get misty eyed over things from when they were young.

Should have gone to SpecSavers.

The 380 wasn’t blisteringly quick (unless you were riding old Brit iron... ) but it sounded great, and looked superb with its four chrome pipes and candy paint, especially the J,K and L . About twenty years ago before the whole classic show scene really kicked off I hadn’t seen one for years, and a guy out the back of my unit came back from (one of the first) Stafford with two he’d bought cheap ( one mint under a grand, those were the days...) Walking into his unit and looking at one again as if for the first time I was reminded how fucking brilliant it looked to an eighteen year old wanting to get on the road and look cool, especially if you contrast it with the sort of dross choices of farting plastic scootery shite the same youngster would be given today. I think mine cost me £450 and was 3 months old. Specsavers my arse that’s an old bloke’s thinking and misses the point...

In the day, they were good bikes. They would wheelie well, the pegs and stands could be scraped and it stopped OK. Now I would say it was heavy, slow and handled poorly lol..but that is the march of time.

Faults they had in addition to the normal ageing problems, were the nylon oil pump gear could shear. The baffles on the two lower silencers would collapse and rattle on every bump. The alternators were hit and miss and 2nd/3rd gears could be problematic...but maybe that was all the wheelies
If it rained and water got into the sprocket cover, then the digital gear indicator would show 8's instead of 1-5
I would have another one tomorrow though, the only real difference in the 380 and the 550, was the 550 had an electric start...they were not much faster than the 380.
Clock faces tend to have cracked and crazed now, but there are specialists that restore them