SEPTEMBER 2013 / BACK STREET HEROES 39 38 BACK STREET HEROES / SEPTEMBER 2013

It all started as a bit of a bet.

Last summer, four friends happened

to muse over the idea of whether

they could all build choppers from

scratch by the following April.

Actually, to be strictly accurate, the

group started out with six builders,

two of whom had to bow out

of the contest at an early stage.

I use the word ‘contest’

advisedly, because it wasn’t

really a competition.

More a handful of mates

working towards

a common goal

and helping

each other out

along the way.

ero Garage is a secret and enigmatic organisation that may or may not meet at So Low Choppers in Suffolk. I can say no more; the first rule of Hero Garage is you do not talk about Hero Garage. This might or

might not have been the first Hero Garage Build-Off. But building was done. Last month, we brought you Jay Lee

Ransome’s ‘Frisco-style Yamaha XS650 chopper, which was the first of the quartet of customs to be completed. Jay must be thoroughly fed up by constantly having the prefix ‘nineteen-year-old’ attached to his name, but the fact is he’s built more cool bikes than most people twice his ages, and he’s not even out of his teens. The trio with whom he was competing were

his dad, Clive, and friends, Gary Cotter and Paul Sadler. They were, incidentally, rather chuffed that Dave Manning referred to them as Jay’s ‘equally youthful mates’ in the XS650 feature, seeing as, with all due respect, not one of them will see forty from below again. By the time that serious building commenced, the deadline had been moved to June 2013, with the aim that our gallant heroes would finish their bikes, give them a bit of a shakedown, meet up on a grey and rainy morning and ride all the way to the Isle of Man. And back again. Hopefully. We’ll be

H

SEPTEMBER 2013 / BACK STREET HEROES 41 40 BACK STREET HEROES / SEPTEMBER 2013

lardy if capacious vessel with its ability to carry seven-and-a-half gallons of unleaded petroleum might seem like an ideal choice for long distance touring (or, at least, as far as Liverpool docks with a turn around the Island of Man thrown into the bargain). But, once the frame had been tacked together and the tank placed on the top rails, it looked, to use a fine Suffolk phrase, like a hen on a five bar gate. So Paul set about re-tunnelling it, while also adding a useful hinge. Hinge? Indeed. He’d decided to hide the electrics underneath, so this fixing would make it easy to lift up the tank and thus access the coils, etc, without having to dismantle the entire bike.

Although there was the merest good-natured hint of competition about this

build-off, the foursome – plus assorted fellow Hero Garagers – were ready to help, if only by pointing and saying, ‘Nah, don’t like that!’. Sometimes, I suspect, this was simply Paul checking that his doubts about a certain part were well-founded. Take, for example, the headstock gusset, which started life as a complete square with the centre removed, a bit like a square Polo mint. But larger. And not made of sugar and peppermint. The universal reaction was ‘Er, bit bulky, that, chap’, which was something for which Paul had allowed. Whipping out his handy grinder, the offending gusset was cut back to a single curved rib. Elsewhere, Paul’s one-off brackets met with far more approval, both from others and, more importantly, from Mr Sadler himself. The

bringing you an article on each HG Build-Off bike in turn (with a concluding report on that big ride north), and this month, we present for your delectation and delight, the Kawasaki Z650 of Mr Paul Sadler.

You may remember Paul’s green and cream Vincent chop, ‘Miss Demeanour’, which graced, along with his daughter, Jasmin, the cover of BSH 315. Although the new project might have been built for a bet, it was certainly going to be no less well-built and thought out than his big British V-twin bike. Like two of his fellow compatriots, Paul chose the Japanese option, starting with a donor Kawasaki Z650. A 1983 model, it was probably one of the last Zeds to roll off the production line before it was brought to a halt and retooled to make the GPZ range. Although it was only manufactured for six years, the Z650 was immensely popular, not least because it had been designed by Ben Inamura, the man behind the Z1. The Z650 was quick, relatively light and agile, while the engine was remarkably resilient, even in the face of brutal treatment. The mid-range Zed having now been obsolete for some thirty years (which, in my book, still makes it a new bike), they are becoming rarer, particularly in stock trim – and few stayed true to the factory’s specification for very long.

So, having found a decent Kwak which could – and, in August 2012, did – fly through an MoT, Paul did the sensible thing. He cut it up. Or as he says;

“I did the introductions properly. ‘Mr Angle Grinder, meet Mr Kawasaki.’ The rest is history.”

He unearthed a home-made jig that he’d built previously, apparently with a show of surprise which I don’t believe for a moment. Mr Sadler doesn’t just mislay things like that (especially not an article the size of a jig). His workshop has stuff like old engineering measurement tables pinned to the wall; cupboards with tiny little drawers for, well, tiny things; cupboards with wide flat drawers for maps and charts and perhaps just wide, flat things; austere bits of machinery which might have been made just after the Industrial Revolution or yesterday (in some cases, such as in Paul’s

of the packaging before Paul had begun to take them apart and machine off parts he considered to be surplus to requirements. And then, at the beginning of September, the tube from which Paul would construct his frame was delivered. It was at this point that Samm, Paul’s wife, realised that, with both the approach of winter and the steel lorry, she was destined to be a workshop widow once again. This is like a golf widow, but with less chance of your husband losing his balls in the undergrowth. Surprisingly that, given the heavy machinery in Paul’s shed.

The engine was bolted to the jig and then Paul formed the top tubes using a pipe bender

borrowed from Clive. Whether he held onto said piece of equipment longer than was strictly necessary to thwart Mr Ransome’s own plans for a build (coming next month), I couldn’t possibly say. I wouldn’t have thought so for a single moment! Instead of a single centre post, Paul used two parallel vertical tubes to which he could attach the engine mounts.

Paul had acquired a Kawasaki VN1500 petrol tank. Now this

engine mounts, headlight bracket and the bell hanger under the fuel tank are all subtly different but complement each other. Painting the frame and bracketry cream is a notion that, on paper, might have made a strong man blanch, but it works well, bringing an architectural quality to both.

Paul isn’t a man to take the easy route and, for all his genial exterior, he’s remarkably disciplined. During the course of the build, he wanted to make his own mudguards (among other items), and although an aftermarket item or a cut-down trailer ’guard might have been a perfectly adequate

“THE LITTLE VOICES IN MY HEAD TOLD ME TO DO IT. THE ONLY PROBLEM IS I BELIEVE THEM, AND SO THAT’S HOW THE NEW BUILD STARTED…”

English wheel, it’s the latter). It’s not so much the workshop of a bike builder as that of an engineer.

Even before he began to disembowel the Zed, Paul had a good idea of the design of the finished bike. He could have built something that involved considerably less work and time and yet which wouldn’t have been derided by his HG colleagues, but where would be the fun in that? As he says;

“The little voices in my head told me to do it. The only problem is I believe them, and so that’s how the new build started…”

A new set of DNA springers arrived at Casa Sadler at about this time. They were barely out

42 BACK STREET HEROES / SEPTEMBER 2013

solution, that’s not how Mr Sadler rolls. And he wanted to roll – in this case, his own sheet metal. So he built himself an English wheel. I seem to recall that he also made specialist items during the Vincent build; unsurprisingly, Paul is a skilled toolmaker by trade, although this really is a case of taking your work home. I would suggest to the rest of the Hero Garage that, when it comes to future build-offs, that they don’t allow Paul to have anything whatsoever to do with the rules, otherwise they might find themselves having to make all their own tooling before starting a project, and possibly drilling for their metal ore and growing cows for saddle leather.

With Jay having TIG-welded the frame together – of course, not a ploy to distract Jay from his own build which, at this point, was romping away and ended up being finished miles ahead of his, er, ‘youthful mates’ – it might have seemed as if Paul was on the home stretch. Even a decision to change the handlebars didn’t take him too far off course. The original ‘bars were big and curved and I think, at this distance, I can admit to Paul that I really didn’t think they fitted with the lines and feel of the bike. Fortunately, there was no need for such blithe rudeness because, after borrowing a pair of Z-bars (appropriate, that, given this is a Zed) from another HG’er and ace tea-maker, Scott, Paul

made up a set of his own which set off the modified front end far better, especially with the addition of the inverted levers that he found on the internet.

And then Paul fell out of love with the tank. The petrol tank that had meekly undergone surgery and was doing a good job of both concealing the electrics and keeping the fuel in one place, as well as minding its own business. From somewhere – sometimes it’s best not to ask exactly where – the idea of scalloped sides popped up. Paul says;

“One moment I had a nice fuel-tight tank and the next minute I’d cut it into section, thrown a few bits away and, hey, I had more scrap!”

Well, not quite. But it was basically a case of starting all over again, although the end result was a great success, and the English wheel once more came into its own. Creating a new tank was more or less the last job before the now finished bike was stripped down for painting. Paul says that he would normally run a project in dry build form for a while in order to iron out any snags and

complications but, with the clock ticking and the TT looming, he could afford no such luxury. The paint was entrusted to So Low Choppers and Hilary Stokes at Hurricane Airbrush Art and the rising sun and ghostly gold and copper-leafed samurai warrior are a nod towards the Kawasaki’s origins and Paul’s passion for martial arts. But, of course, the most important question of all is whether or no the Z650 made it to the Isle of Man? You’re just going to have to wait and see…

ENGINE:1983 Kawasaki Z650 inline four, Marvin 4-into-1 exhaust.

FRAME:One-off twin downtube rigid by owner, 28-degree neck rake.

FRONT END:16” Harley-Davidson spoked wheel, Avon 5.00 x 16” SM tyre, Harley calipers, 2” under stock DNA springer forks modified by owner, custom-made Zed ‘bars

by owner, internal cables by owner, 316 stainless inverted levers, one-off mudguard by owner, vintage car headlight.

REAR END:16” Harley-Davidson spoked wheel, Avon 5.00 x 16” SM tyre, one-off mudguard by owner, one-off number plate mount by owner, LED taillights.

MISCELLANEOUS:Kawasaki VN1500 fuel tank, heavily modified by owner, individual sprung seats covered by Colne Creek Leather, concealed cable-operated front master cylinder, electrics hidden under tank.

PAINT AND FINISH:Paint by So-Low Choppers and Hurricane Airbrush Art. Powder coating and 2-pack paint by Morley Brothers. Polishing by Karl at Ali Polishing Services.

THANKS TO:“All of my bros at Hero Garage for help, inspiration and just being there – you know who you are, it’s been a blast and long may it last! Oh and thanks for no help from Alec of Old Empire Motorcycles, but I’ll mention him anyway ‘cause I’m good like that!”

“ONE MOMENT I HAD A NICE FUEL-TIGHT TANK AND THE

NEXT MINUTE I’D CUT IT INTO SECTION, THROWN A FEW

BITS AWAY AND, HEY, I HAD MORE SCRAP!”

words & photos: BLUE

SPEC:PAUL’S Z650