Bill Low's ZXR791

Kawasaki ZXR791
Specifications at a glance: Every single part has been either lightened, polished, chromed or custom painted

Literally every single bolt has been replaced with titanium (if it is a stress loaded bolt) or aluminum if it was a non-stressed bolt. This was expensive but shaved a total of about 9 pounds off the bike



Here is the low dow of the major mods:


Fork Conversion


To swap a 96-03 complete front end on a 91-95, you must purchase the forks, brakes AND the lower triple clamp and stem of a P model bike. The later front end has a tapered fork slider tube that is larger in diameter on the bottom triple and will not fit in the earlier triples.
The head of the frame is identical and uses the same steering head bearings and is the same length so the later lower triple and stem fit perfectly. This is a perfect time to replace your steering head bearings with new ones. I would recommend doing it whether they need it or not just for the simple fact that you wont want to take this all apart again later for something that is easy and inexpensive to do now.

You should be able to use the stock 91-95 upper triple clamp, however I did not try it, I actually purchased a Vortex billet 96-03 upper that looks real nice and is lighter than stock. Installation is straight forward, just reverse the procedure of taking your old forks off and install the 96-03 forks and clamps. I purchased Titanium pinch bolts for the clamps to shave a little weight while I was at it. One of the added bonuses is the fact that you can now utilize the Tokico 6 piston calipers of the P model ZX7R which are far superior to the stock 91-95 units. Your stock 91-95 brake calipers would not bolt up to the later forks anyway.

The parts you CAN use off the 91-95 are the axle, speedo drive, axle spacers, rotors and wheel. These will all go on with no issues.
I chose to upgrade both the wheel( with a light RC Components wheel) and the rotors (with EBC pro-lites). I also upgraded the rotor bolts with a set of lightweight but strong Titanium units. With the new front end you get increased adjustability (compression damping), better brakes, slightly stiffer front end and in my humble opinion a better looking fender. Go ahead be bold, try it, you WILL feel the difference!



96-03 P model gauge cluster installation on 93-95 L or M models (should also work on 91-92 J and K models)


It is easy to a point but there is one problem. Let me explain:

First, the two mounting bolts are not exactly in the same spot on the headlight bracket. What I did is line up where I wanted the gauges and then drilled two new holes in the face of the bracket where the gauges mount. This is pretty simple.

Second, The speedometer and temp gauge are as simple as removing the wiring terminals from your stock units and reconnecting them to the new cluster on the back, all is labeled and it is straightforward as can be.

Third, the problem I ran into was that the stock tach (all wires are the same on the back so hookup is easy) runs off of only one coil on the 93-95 where as the 96-03 runs straight from the ignitor box and is a DUAL pulse signal. When I hooked the 2003 tach up it was only reading half the RPM because it was only getting one pulse from only one tach. I purchased a dual coil tach adapter from Schnitz racing which is a really nice connector setup with a diode in it to isolate both coils from each other but provide the tach with dual pulses. Well, this worked great up to 7000 RPM and the the tach got erratic. I believe the adapter just couldn’t keep up or something. Anyway, I purchased a Dyna 2000 digital ignition (really nice quality setup) and it has two tach signal wires, one single pulse and one dual pulse. I used the digital dual pulse output wire and connected it to the tach input on the back of the tach. Works great !!! Accurate as all heck. I then added an Illumiglo white gauge faces which makes them even more trick. Too cool.