'84 GPZ550 Brat Build

JFarhanbod

New Member
Here's my bike!

This is my first bike and first build. I'm really big into the vintage BMW scene though. If anyones interested, I'll sneak a few pics of those projects. This thing was pretty thrashed when I picked it up. The "owner" said he never rode it and it sat for a couple years. I figured no big deal. The bike had been sitting out in the back of a farm, dropped over about a billion times and just generally unloved. Before I went I read up on the GPZ heritage and was pretty set on getting it if it looked savable. My motorcycle dreams got the best of me and I bought it on the spot.

When I picked it up:

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I took it home and started ripping into to see if I could get it running. To my surprise, I was able to get it running the same day. It ran like absolute garbage though but I figured that was good enough and started planning which way I wanted to go with it.

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I ended up taking the bike completely down to the frame for some paint and de-tabbing. Spent a bit with the grinder and some sandpaper making it look nicer. By this point I knew I wanted a pretty bare bones bike and the whole cafe racer was always appealing to me. This is kinda where the project stops though. I kind of felt like I was in over my head and went back to life for a bit while this sat in my backyard in pieces for about 6 months. During those 6 months I was still hoarding some parts, the coolest being this 07 GSXR-1000 Front End

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At this point I had my buddies always asking me what happened to my bike figuring I abandoned it. Then I started seeing all my buddies going on rides and reading up on some threads here and that's when I decided to buckle up and get this thing going again. I put the bike together from bare frame rolling with the motor in it in 2 days. The most hectic 2 days ever.

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Did I mention this thing was mostly built in my backyard?

At this point I kind of used up all my resources since I don't have a welder. That's where my buddy Chris (Champ's Speed Shop) comes in. He's been a massive help in getting this thing together. I ended up leaving the country for about a month and in that time he offered to help me out with some welding and getting everything buttoned up. He ended up finding a bunch of parts for me and even helping make a new harness since the original one I made was garbage. I'm super grateful for all his help if ya can't tell haha.

That brings us up to more recently. The rear was chopped and a new custom hoop bent by SONIC was welded on there.

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Then my buddy, Chris, came up with an ingenious way to get the headlight on the front GSXR forks. I was only able to find one company that made a headlight bracket for these forks and that cost $150 bucks. That wasn't gonna work for us. He ended up using 2 sets of the generic brackets to make it the same diameter of the fork.

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Heres one of the more recent pictures of it. I saw on a craigslist ad that someone was running zx600 headers and these 4-1's were on ebay for cheap. I figured what the hell and picked em up. They ended up fitting perfectly and tuck under there really nicely after you cut off the stock flanges. Also in there is a battery box that Chris bent with a homemade tool, it came out awesome.

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Theres a bunch of other little things that I'm missing pics of like the all the switches integrated into the headlight bucket, the rebuilt and jetted carbs,etc but here's where we're at now. Just finishing up the wiring, making the seat pan and hoping she fires up!

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And if ya read all that, THANKS!
 
First time working on it since last week. Played some Tetris and got her to crank. Gonna work on her all tomorrow and hopefully get it running
 

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Still riding this thing around. A crazy amount of stuff has happened to this thing since I last posted in here.

Next big milestone is going to be boring the motor to 615cc

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Hey man!!! Nice build!!! What did you have to do to the gxsr front end to get it to work? I just found one for practically free, and want to put it on my 84 GPZ!
 
Love the gpz550's. Really makes me wish I would have finished/kept mine.

Nice to see the zx6 headers are a direct bolt on. Those gsxr forks look right at home on there too.
 
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