Kawasaki Zephyr (real world)

[Weaver]

About six weeks ago, I got asked by my friend Jo to build a model of her bike to go on the cake at her wedding. They'd found a model of her bloke's V-Max without trouble, but Jo's Suzuki Intruder isn't available in any form at any price and the only model of "her" Zephyr is the Aoshima 1/12th one, which she bought. However, she's not a modeller, so when she opened the box and realised she had to build it, the call went out...

I've never done a bike model before, so it was new territory for me to (shiny? What's that then?). I took lots of reference photos of her bike and tried to make it as close as possible, but it was never going to be spot on. For one thing, the model is of a Japanese market 400cc version and her's is the UK market 550cc version. The engine itself wasn't a problem, because the 550 is a bored-out 400 anyway, but there were lots of other detail equipment differences: mirrors, oil-cooler, idiot-light pod, shocks, rear brake caliper, mudguard. Jo's bike also has various aftermarket/home-made additions: crash bars, rack, screen, handlebar muffs, rust and dirt...

Asking for advice on her produced some good info (cheers folks! ) but generally, the bike modelling world seems a bit thin when it comes to aftermarket stuff, unless you're building a racing bike.



First bit of modifying: the clutch operating arm was just aweb at 90 deg to the casing, which was totally wrong and very conspicuous (to abiker), so I cut it off and made a new one. Drilling the stub of the web gave me a new cable bracket:




Wheels with sprayed undercoat. Kawasaki just powder-coat the wheels before the last machining op which gives a nice silver-on-black effect, but it's a right pain to do on a model because you can't easily mask into all those little nooks and crannies. In the end I fre-handed it, touched it up, and thanked my lucky stars that wear and tear on Jo's bike has made the edges a bit random anyway:



The inside faces of the swingarm and fork legs were hollow, so I filled them:



Given more time I'd have made inside faces for the brake calipers too, but I had to make a decision to stop fiddling and get it built at some point. The way the fork legs are designed in the kit is seriously wierd and again, given 6 months and the budget to buy another one if I screwed up, I'd have cut the stanchions off the sliders, drilled the latter, and fitted alloy tube replacements. Eventually decided I couldn't take the risk here though.



All the wires and pipes in the kit were repesented by 2mm rubber tube which was ridiculously over-scale, so I replaced the clutch, throttle, speedo and plug cables with florist's wire. and the brake cables with "wriggly wire" from Little Cars, which is basically a very fine, black spring that looks like wire-wound brake pipe. Needs careful handling to avoid crushing it. I also cut the speedo drive off the fork leg ( ) and made a proper drive unit for it in the wheel hub.

[Weaver]

I decided to paint the shiny bits with Tamiya Clear Red and Smoke over Silver to get the effect on Jo's bike.





Unfortunately, as soon as I  started airbrushing, a) it went wrong and b) I realised it would take about 50 coats to get the effect, I decided to brush paint instead.







Final tally was undercoat, silver coat, four couts of red and two coats of smoke to get the desired effect. Two small triangular side panels just got the silver and the smoke to re-create their effect: ironically, if they'd moulded them in the dark bluey-silver grey used for some of the sprues they'd have been fine with a coat of varnish, but sod's law, they were on the white sprue...

I could go on forever about the dumb decisions in the design of this kit, but just another example: no reflector inside the tail light (unlike the headlight and indicators). Fortunately a tab from the chome sprue was big enough to cut down.



Tubular accessories (rack and crash bars) were interesting to scratch build: bent from alloy tube and, in the case of the rack, drilled and pinned with brass rod stubs for a more secure joint:





Wethering on the swing-arm and engine/oil-cooler, exhaust ports. The need for access to these areas seriously delayed the final assembly of the bike, and hence the jobs like the screen which could only be done one it was together. You can see the crash bars here too: helpfully, they couldn't be made identical because the engine mounting are asymetric  :






This ball-mounted vice, which I've generally under-utilised up to now, really came into it's own on this build as the bike came together in one big, fragile piece. I found I could clamp the bike by it's tires without damage (asyou do on real bike lifts) and them position it anywhere I liked:

[Weaver]

Finished article.













I made a UK-style number plate by printing it out onto 160-gm paper (the font is available on-line) and sticking it to the back of a piece of clear plastic with canopy glue.











The screen was a major pain. I has several failed attempts at heat-forming styrene sheet before advice from here made me think it was a materials problem not a technique problem (Cheers Jon!). The final one was made from a shirt collar stiffener. The brackets are exceedingly fragile, being drilled into the bars at one end and glued to the screen at the other, so I didn't take the chance on paiting them. They're only sort-of accurate anyway. The time taken to do this meant that I ran out of time to do the handlebar muffs, although John and Jo have threatened to do them with fabric at some point in the future. The blob of grey fluff behind the screen represents the furry elephant mascot Jo has there on the real bike  .







Jo's seat has pale grey-brown polish stuck in the creases on the side and the textured pattern on the top. The problem was that the kit seat was dead smooth. I picked up a tip on another website to make creaes in the side of it by coating it with liquid poly and then dabbing it with a scrunched-up plastic bag. I couldn't find a way or doing the precise pattern on the top though (a riveter wheel might have dome it, but I havn't got one), so in the end, I just stippled it on with a cut-off paint brush.





The tank protector was printed on paper and stuck on with white glue (image found on the internet). I tried printing it on clear decal flim, but the grey in the carbon-fibre pattern was too pale and came out transparent. If I'd done it on white decals film, I'd have had to cut out the slots, and I doubt the decal would have stayed in one piece or had flat edges. Speaking of decals, the ones for the speedo and tacho were 1mm too wide for the recessed instrument pod faces - cheers...



The wires seen sticking out of the tires in a couple of shots are there to hold it securely on the cake, and can be removed. I also drilled the side stand for a wire, but it turned out not to be needed.

All these pics are slightly inaccurate btw, because while I was taking them I realised there were a couple of tiny stickers on the screen and rack that I could make out of masking tape, so I did...



Comments, criticisms and offers to build the next bloody bike somebody asks me for, all welcome!  

[Weaver]

Cheers Dunc - can't say I'm in a hurry to do another one!

Here are some of the zillion reference pics I took of Jo's bike:

[Captain Canada]

Beauty ! Great job on this one...just like the real thing !

[RotorheadTX]

And then Ford (Mercury) sued you for the use of the copyrighted name 'Zephyr'... just like they sued Kawasaki, and won.  

Oh, and beaut of a model you've constructed there!! 

[chrisonord]

Absolutely marvellous H
I am sure your friends will be well happy with that, are you going to give her a tube of autosol  as a wedding present 
Chris.

[Weaver]

Cheers folks - the do was on Saturday and everybody loved the model, especially Jo.

[Cobra]

Awesome Job why do i get the Feeling you Earned a 'Medal of Valor' for working on that Bike & Backing up your Friend You did an awesome Job on the Paint,Too  Stay Cool! Dan

[jcf]

Great job Harold. The bug deflector came out really well. 

[NARSES2]

Thats really, really nice Harold 

[rickshaw]

Thats really well done.  Must have made an interesting cake decoration.   You mentioned the groom had one?  Do you have pictures of that one?

[Weaver]

Cheers Folks! 

Thats really well done.  Must have made an interesting cake decoration.   You mentioned the groom had one?  Do you have pictures of that one?

The groom's wasn't a model kit, it was a die-cast cartoon-style Vmax from the French strip "Joe bar Team". His mate re-painted it to look like his bike and riding gear.



I don't have pictures from the do, but I know some were taken so I'm currently waiting for them to appear.

[jcf]

And then Ford (Mercury) sued you for the use of the copyrighted name 'Zephyr'... just like they sued Kawasaki, and won.  

Yes, the Ford Motor Corporation, but Zephyr was originally appended to its Lincoln-Zephyr line in 1936.

[RotorheadTX]

Cool, thanks! Learned something new today!

(But corporate greed still suckz!)