2017 Kawasaki Z900 Pre-Preview
During its presentation at Intermot, Kawasaki announced a new Z900, but we’d have to wait until EICMA to see it. Still, Kawasaki released a pair of images and some preliminary details with the caveat that they were still subject to change. Here’s what we know so far.
The Z900 is powered by a 16-valve 948cc Inline-Four claiming 123.6 hp. Kawasaki says the engine offers linear power delivery with a noticeable kick after 6000 rpm. The engine has a secondary balancer driven on the sixth web of the crankshaft to reduce some of the excess vibrations.
As they did with the Z1000, Kawasaki’s engineers performed acoustic testing to shape the airbox to tune the Z900’s intake note. The Z900’s intake note is a bit milder than the Z1000’s howl, but still carefully crafted to add to the riding experience.
The Z900 uses a new steel trellis frame that Kawasaki says weighs only 29.8 pounds, or about 3 pounds lighter than the the similarly new trellis on the 2017 Ninja 650. The extruded aluminum swingarm is also light, claiming just 8.6 pounds of unsprung weight. Kawasaki claims the Z900 has a curb weight of 464 pounds with ABS (and 460 pounds sans ABS).
A rebound and preload-adjustable shock is mounted with a linkage above the swingarm for mass centralization. Up front, the Z900 uses a 41mm upside-down fork with stepless rebound damping and spring preload adjustability.
Dual four-piston calipers squeeze the 300mm front rotors, with optional ABS from Nissin.
Other features include a 31.3-inch seat height, rubber-mounted bar ends, adjustable hand levers, LCD display with gear position indicator and Z-shaped LED taillights.
Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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That design is getting a bit long in the tooth. Time to get out a clean sheet.
wtf is teh point of this bike? the Z1000 and the Ninja 1000 ( I had a 2011 N 1000) are heavy bikes with big motors. there's a million of those out there. we need one more minor variation? that's like one more bar band covering John Cougar. Who cares?