In the last year, a real nostalgia project has been going on. In the late seventies, I owned a Rickman Kawasaki that was put a lot of effort into. You were young and of course wanted something that was maximally potent. The bike itself was a chassis kit from the then Rickman agent on Rutger Fuchsgatan in Stockholm, but the engine received a solid treatment. A Z1 engine that got increased cylinder volume (1068 cc), almost brutal cams from Yoshimura, an open Devil 4-1 exhaust system, four large snorting Del Orto carburetors with acc pumps and a cylinder head with enlarged valves and a rather radical porting. Very few (if any) defeated me and during the test at an organized drag racing competition, it was 10.3 seconds and 215 km/h over the finish line. Not so bad at the time. Like so much else, it disappeared from my life and almost 40 years later, the longing became great and I started looking for objects both within and outside the country’s borders and one day it is only there… My wife and I are in Tenerife when an object appears on the sales site and it was located just south of Stockholm. The reflection time did not occur and I bought it unseen without hesitations. This is where the project… begins.
As can be seen above, the motorcycle was complete and partly in a decent condition, but a number of “handy guys” had over the years added some oddities and less talented solutions such as. the grotesque position lights for trucks that have become turn signals and the less beautiful painting. The most positive thing was that a previous owner had the engine completely renovated by a well-known and reputable company, so there it was just to thank and bow even if the undersized Mikuni flatslide carburetors were not optimal. My “original bike” was black with gold decals so it was an easy choice and after a bit of digging in the archives, it turned out that this was sold as a completely new bike by the swedish importer with just that color scheme. Couldn’t get any better. The pictures below show some different phases of the renovation and when it rolled out on the road again in May 2021, it was with a very good feeling. Getting hold of Rickman original parts is clearly challenging despite a large global network of contacts and since it has not been inspected for many years, the first trip went to the inspection station and now it is so clear inspection-free (a nice initiative from the Swedish authorities) … The guys at the inspection had never seen one before and they flocked around it and took pictures from all possible angles. Funny…
