Z1300 and KZ1300 Fork Ear Comparison

		Z1300 Fork Ear Comparison

Last Update 8/22/08

This shows a 79' or 80' Z1300 fork ear (headlight mounting bracket) in comparison to the 81' and newer Z1300 part. The ears are identical except for the length. 79' or 80' fork ears are approximately 6 and 5/8" where the newer parts are 5 and 5/8" because they have an air crossover tube that fits below them. They didn't start using this crossover tube till the 81' models and they had to shorten the ears by 1" to make room for it.

On the 79' and 80' model bikes you had to put air in each fork individually which I suppose could cause a handling problem if one fork leaked air and the other didn't. To solve this potential problem they drilled small holes in the forks starting in 81' and placed this air crossover under the fork ears where the holes are. Then the forks shared air pressure at all times through this crossover so both forks were under the same air pressure at all times. Even if one started leaking, the pressure would drop evenly in both forks.

I haven't seen the ZG1300 ears, but I imagine they're the same as the 81' and up KZ1300 parts. As far as I know, all 1300's had 41mm fork tubes so the inside diameter of these ears should be about .003 to .005 thousandths of an inch larger than 41mm.

The trim pieces that fit above and below the ears are composed of 4 individual pieces on each side. There's a larger chrome piece, a smaller chrome piece, a metal spacer and a rubber damper. It seems pretty over engineered but I guess it works and the trim pieces keep the ears from making rattling noises.

Parts Diagram Expanded View

NOTE: On these newer browsers I've noticed that they don't always display my large images in full size when you open an image from the thumbnails. Once you click the thumbnail and open the larger image, if you 'mouse over' the image you should see a " + " symbol or some other indicator like a box with arrows usually on the bottom right edge of the image. If you click on the indicator, then the image will expand to it's full size which displays full screen on computers that use a 800 x 600 resolution setting for the monitor. If you click the indicator again it will go back to the smaller image. Some people use a resolution setting of 1024 x 768 or higher on their monitors and for those users the images will appear smaller than full screen in size. You can change your monitor settings easily enough if you desire. Also, the indicator I've noticed is slow to appear even after the image appears to of completely loaded. The indicator in Netscape seems to be a lot faster to display than the one in Internet Explorer.

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