TOPIC:

Or,
Could This Be More Clique?

I came across this advertised on OfferUp KZ1000. (Now I have another OfferUp KZ adventure posted on here for your reading amazement) I sent an offer, but as it is offerup (the home of tweekers, liars and flakes, here anyway) I didn't expect to get a reply, but, I did!

The reply read: "A guy is supposed to be coming tomorrow to buy it."
So I replied, " I have a truck, a ramp and right now money."
replied back " I'll tell my husband"

Next thing I get is "OK. Come get it" and the address.

I load the ramp, tie downs, grab the cash hit the road and the place is about 20 minutes away in the barrio. ( That's the Spanish/Mexican Ghetto for all you in fly-over country.)

I get there, walk in the back yard and it's exactly what you expect to find in a barrio (poverty), some young Mexican kid is living in one half of a converted garage and is showing the bike to two haggard tweeker looking white trash types. The young Mex kid is giving the tweeker guys the pitch, so I just stand by and listen and wait to see what happens. Tweeker trash nods his head, says nothing and walks away, right out of the yard.

I then say to the seller," so you sellin this to me or to him? " The mexican kid stammers a bit then says in broken English, "No Man I sell it to you." The two white trash tweeker's drive off at this point.

So we get talkin, the young Mexican kid is IA as hell with 2 anchor babies in diapers and another one in the oven, he moves his rattle can painted car with a knocking engine so we can load the bike, and then he tells me, " I was workin at the scrap yard and some guy brought this in to sell it for scrap so I bought it before it went across the scale. I'm only selling this cause I gotta pay rent. This was was my dream bike man." So, you know, that dream bike comment kinda touches me. Here's a young guy who's half the age of the bike, illegally here from another country, but, He's got The Dream man. The KZ dream. A Mexican/American/Japanese dream. He know's what's cool. You gotta kinda respect that.
So, we chat for a bit, little barefoot kids in diapers runnin around. I tell him about a place that's lookin for workers and looks the other way about papers. Not that I agree with that shit, at all, but, it is what it is.

To add more to the story, I bend down to look at the right front of the motor and it's stamped "903". The kid keeps telling me about the bike. " I was gonna fix it man. But I don't really know how, and I fucked up. I painted it silver." Wait for it...drum roll.. that's right folk's, silver, aka, "Mexican Chrome".

Now, to all that didn't like the terminology or characterizations of my story. Let me say this. I am white, and you don't know me. You don't know what I do nor do most of you have the desire, or the balls to do what I do or go where I go. Two of my friends/peers doing what I do have been murdered in the past few years. Every day I work with the homeless, the discards, the unwanted, those at the bottom of society, regardless of brand name. I talk to, work shoulder to shoulder with, touch, employ, shop with etc more people of color than 9/10th's of the "politically correct" class will in a year or ten years and let me tell you, the races don't speak to each other in PC.
We do talk about race and culture and and call each other "gringos" or "frijoleros" it always ends in laughter. We live in the real world. So, if you still want to throw it out there, you just can't stop yourself from calling me the "R" word in regards to this real life occurrence, all I can say is, Have a Nice Day and F you very much.

So what is it and how much?
Steve

WTF!

It's a Z1A or B I think. Pretty tough shape but worth recovering. Surprised the tires weren't painted silver. Everything else is.

A pretty entertaining post IMHO and a great description of the overall scene.

So did you buy it ? How much ?

Nice find.
Old style "top hat" head nuts, but they appear to be the taller ones.
17mm carb drain plugs.
Difficult to tell but, the chain adjusters look like the small ones.
Rear brake lever bolt has the bolt head facing rear.

Appears to be mid-late production '74 Z1-A.

Good Ridin'
slmjim & Z1BEBE

Of course this bike came with no paper and in my experience that's almost going to be a given with bikes that are this far gone. I've had Motor Vehicle inspect it and it wasn't stolen TG. There's always a risk of losing the bike on these BOS/no title purchases if they come up stolen, but still not out of the woods. The Bond title process here includes notifying the last registered owner, who has 15 days to either provide a new title to be transferred to me, reply stating why they can't produce a title or not reply at all. I have to gamble that the bike was registered so long ago that the last registered owner is unreachable. I never offer more than I'm willing to lose for these bill of sale/no title job's. Here it's $145.00 to have a service do all the bond title paperwork. I could do it myself for less but it's a big PITA and takes about 6 hours to do all the steps involved, so more cost efficient to let them do it. I should have a title in a few weeks.
I've run a camera into the cylinders and found no rust and I used the suction gun and paint thinner to wash off most of the silver paint, but I won't do much more or spend any money on it until I have the paper in hand.

You sure he wasn't just huffing paint and it got all over the bike?

Great find man! The last I I bought looked like it was painted by a rodeo clown !