Kawasaki Z750-P3 Based Trike

Owner: Stephen Wilkinson
Bike: Deathwish Jalopy Details: 738cc, 4cyl, 4 stroke, 8 valve, Pulled 76bhp at the back wheel/s and did 110mph if you dared go that fast. 280kg. Rigid Frame.

I bought this one-off custom trike early in 1999. Built by Boss Hogs Customs (class engineering job boys, shame about the electrics) it's a metallic purple Z750 (OK originally it was a GT750 but the engine is stamped as a Z750 'cos they all used the same motors and lets face it Z's are cooler than GT's) engine with a one off rigid frame, standard front end apart from an old GPz nose fairing, quickbob tank, lovely mudguards, a robin-reliant back axle and 13" alloy wheels from somewhere.

Then 50 miles on, she had a complete electrical failure....right in the middle of a dual carriageway that I was turning onto. With an artic coming right at me. Brown trousers time. Get off and push, running my feet over with the back wheels all the time.

Many thanks to : Tim Mankin (Cheers matey) for the full rewire, top notch work done at a rock bottom price.

Right then, back on the road....hang on a minute whats this, no power. Oh fuck, we've stopped dead. Its 11.30pm on a dark country road, in a friggin blizzard. Bollocks. Green Flag?, an hour?...errr OK I suppose I don't have a lot of choice. Cold? what?. A Petrol tank lined with Hammerite blocking the carbs was the culprit.
Off the road again. TAX and M.O.T. ran out, need a proper hand brake fitting and the carbs stripping, and some new float needles. In the meantime the Dog eats my seat and two of my HT leads. Kick shit out of the dog, replace said leads and recover the seat with electricians tape. Trike going rusty, I don't give a shit, its been sat there for the best part of three months and I fuckin' hate it. Bastard bloody machine.

Many thanks to : That place at the back of Morrisons for welding a copper plate on the bottom of my new tank, Millers for my new tank, Angela (my now ex-girlfriend) for stripping it and respraying whilst I was at work, Agi for fixing up a new handbrake and his sheer genius on the two welded bolts made into tank mountings.

Running again!. Off to Thompson Motors at Middlesbrough for my MOT. Passed first time. TAX the bitch, and all of a sudden I'm legal. Trike running, Relationship with Angela ended and money in my pocket. Party Time. Keep changing the fuel filters 'cos the new tank is full of rust.

Many thanks to : Geoff of the Booze Brothers for the battery charger which I still have hold of by the way, Sandra for the 4 hour talk we had about said relationship, Mark and Carol for hiding me away whilst the shit hit the fan, Big George of the Booze Brothers for showing me the best way to strip clean and rebuild my carbs, Dav and Denzil, and Paddy of the Booze Brothers for helping me on the Midsummer Madness Run when my back wheel went all wobbly and most of all Paddy for taking me back to his house and missing the run to grind 2mm off my wheel nuts to sort out my wobbly back wheel....nice one Paddy, your welcome to that GPz fairing.

Is this starting to sound like a run of credits or is it just me?. Anyhow, the trike is running fine now apart from the battery...which is fucked and refuses to hold a charge if left standing for more than a few hours, time to get a new one methinks.

The purple beast, or Neddie-Bertha, as she has been named goes dead well in a straight line the 15 year old motor spinning nicely, burning off cars and keeping up with smaller bikes. However the road does tend to bend once in a while and after 10-15mph cornering can be a bit hairy depending on the the angle of the turn, as the back end drifts out and then proceeds to bounce, skid and tip its way through the twists.
However, putting up with a minor niggle like that is no problem when you hear the beauty tunes the pipes make when they're either pulling from low revs or really wound up, wonderful noise I tells ya.
Bonus points are picked up when you consider that no bash-lid is needed (in fact its bad manners to wear one) and it's not as bad as anyone thinks. I've topped 110mph with no lid and no sign of a fairing and it feels wonderful, the noise, the feel of wind through your hair and the sense of all round danger and un-safety cos your riding something more dangerous than any bike with next to nothing in the way of protective gear.

By far the worst and most painful experience on Neddie-Bertha was after Paddy had ground my wheel nuts down and we were having our own private run to the Strathmore Arms. After thrashing me through the corners I saw Paddy (still stood on his footpegs the mad bugger) ahead of me on a very long and very bumpy straight. Having an extra 200cc over him meant that I should thrash the tits off the trike and go howling past him like a loon.
However as I came over the top of a hill, It suddenly dawned on me the the hill instead of being flat on the top was in fact leading straight down. I left the floor at 110mph. The back end came down first, and kinked my back in eight different places. Then the front end began to lower itself showing me the road ahead, and the group of elderly people and children (around 25-30 of them I believe) stood at either side of the road. The front wheel hit, I castrated myself on the frame, lost all control of my limbs and the trike proceeded to swerve wildly about the road still doing near to the ton. Kids and Grannies alike all launched themselves into the ditches at the roadside, screaming as they did so. I regained control and blatted away, the large quantity of luggage on the back nicely covering my numberplate.

Yeah its dangerous, but I like it! (Mick Jagger I think that was originally).