Kawasaki ZN1300 Voyager
Kawasaki ZN1300 Voyager | |
Manufacturer | |
---|---|
Also called | ZN 1300 Voyager |
Production | 1983 - 85 |
Engine | Four stroke transverse six cylinder. DOHC, 4 valves per cylinder |
Compression ratio | 9.3;1 |
Top Speed | 145 mph |
Ignition | Battery powered transistorized |
Spark Plug | NGK BPR6ES `83-86[1] |
Battery | YUASA Y50-N18L-A `83-86[1] |
Transmission | 5 Speed |
Frame | Double-downtube, full-cradle frame; box-section steel swing arm |
Suspension | Front: 41mm Kayaba air adjustable forks Rear: Dual Kayaba shocks, fully adjustable. |
Brakes | Front: 2x 266mm discs 1 piston caliper Rear: Single 296mm disc 1 piston caliper |
Front Tire | 130/90-16 |
Rear Tire | 150/90-15 |
Seat Height | 757 mm / 29.8 in |
Weight | 324.0 kg / 714.3 lbs (dry), 417 kg / 919 lbs (wet) |
Fuel Capacity | 27 Liters / 7.1 US gal |
Manuals | Service Manual |
It could reach a top speed of 145 mph.
Engine
The engine was a Liquid cooled cooled Four stroke transverse six cylinder. DOHC, 4 valves per cylinder. The engine featured a 9.3;1 compression ratio.
Chassis
It came with a 130/90-16 front tire and a 150/90-15 rear tire. Stopping was achieved via 2x 266mm discs 1 piston caliper in the front and a Single 296mm disc 1 piston caliper in the rear. The front suspension was a 41mm Kayaba air adjustable forks while the rear was equipped with a Dual Kayaba shocks, fully adjustable.. The ZN1300 Voyager was fitted with a 27 Liters / 7.1 US gal fuel tank. The bike weighed just 324.0 kg / 714.3 lbs.
Photos
Overview
Kawasaki ZN 1300 Voyager
Good old Blake was a fine one to talk. His friend Coleridge
was the guy who went to extremes, dabbling with opium and dreaming of Xanadu.
Nevertheless, Blake is right. How much is enough? Or (as the thought pertains to
our discussion), how big can a touring bike be before its size intrudes
unforgivingly on performance? Motorcycle designers, like racers, can't know
for sure till they cross the border, hanging it out to discover how Newton's
laws apply to the business at hand.
Kawasaki's new touring bike is right on the line.
Nine-hundred-fifteen pounds (that's right, nine hundred) of luxury
motorcycle. Anywhere except on the straightest open road the Kawasaki's size
does indeed intrude, at times unforgivingly, on performance. But wait! This is a
TOURING bikedesigned exclusively for setting your sights on the next state, or
even the next country, and making the big break.
Okay, we'll bite. We'll play angel's advocate. On a highway
across rolling farmland the Voyager cradles you in comfort and provides you with
every diversion and entertainment known to the modern nomad. It's powerful,
smooth, comfortable, and equipped with high-quality luggage and wind protection.
One-dimensionally, the Voyager is first-rate.
Touring comfort encompasses seating accommodations, suspension
compliance and engine smoothness. The Voyager's seating position is excellent.
Its handlebars adjust up and down and back and forth, and the angle of the
pullback alters. Although the seat and pegs are non-adjustable, their
positioning fits five-eight to six-foot riders well. They sit comfortably, their
bodies in a classic touring posture torso dead vertical, thighs horizontal,
lower legs vertical. The passenger too has some freedom of adjustability: the
flick of a latch lets the tail trunk slide back and forth about two inches. With
the trunk forward the passenger sits in the classic posture; with the trunk back
she leans back slightly. The passenger's feet rest on floorboards rather than
pegsa nice touch. Both the rider and passenger find their seats firm but
comfortable. Our riders would have uniformly preferred a softer foam
composition, but throughout a full day's ride the quality remains 100 percent
consistent.
With its range of adjustability (air front and rear,
compression damping at the rear), the suspension provides settings for vastly
different loads and road conditions. Fully loaded solo or two-up, the Kawasaki
needs about 15 pounds of air in the front and 40 at the rear, with a number
three or four damping adjustment to complement the stiff springing. Set up
thusly, the wonderfully compliant suspension reacts quickly to small bumps or
highway expansion joints, with enough travel to soak up the potholes.
With six cylinders stroking beneath you there's no mistaking
the mechanical activity going on, but the high-frequency vibration is perceived
generally rather than through any one point. At most rpm levels you sense an
electric-like hum through the seat and bar; it's an almost pleasant sensation
enhanced by the level rise in power delivery. Overall, we must rank the Voyager
nearly as smooth as the Gold Wing or Venture but distinctive, like a BMW, with
its own brand of smoothness.
That's open-road performance, but every road eventually turns.
So, to give the whole picture, it's time to play devil's advocate. When you
abandon the runway-straight interstate for the more curvy state highways, you
feel every one of the Voyager's 915 pounds. That weight affects both handling
(around town, on semi-tight roads and in special conditions on the open road),
and performance (acceleration and fuel economy).
There may be a guy around big enough to jump on the Voyager
and muscle it out of the parking lot, but none of our staffers fits the bill. We
had to develop a little technique to maneuver the bike at low speeds without
wobbling like a novice. The Voyager is so heavy, and the weight located so high,
that simply getting under way can be exciting, turning tight in a parking lot is
always an accomplishment, and tricky maneuverslike backing downhill diagonally
to the curbrequire real concentration. The best way to keep the bike steady is
to power it. Forget about putting a foot down to catch your balance; this
requires throttle. But the 1300 is remarkably quick revving, so throttle alone
results in jerkiness, which the moderate shaft reaction exacerbates. That means
a combination of throttle and clutch is best. The clutch engagement is a touch
sudden and the lever's engagement point is far from the bar, so a little
practice is in order. We occasionally dialed in a little rear brake action at
the same time. No matter how smooth you get, the abundant fork flex will always
amaze you and sometimes make your low-speed wobbling downright comical.
On suburban streets, country roads or through the mountains,
the 1300 demands respect. It steers well, and not just for a bike of its size.
Response is quick, and requires minimal input. Handling, though, involves more
than steering alone. Pick your line, steer into it and inertia overcomes your
plans unless your speed is well within bounds. The Voyager, if you're riding
briskly, may not follow the line you're used to. It driftswide. And if you try
to roll it in tighter via countersteering, or reduce speed by braking, you may
lose ground clearance. Most likely, you'll accept it and go wide, or drag
something if necessary, then tone down the speed for the next turn. And the next
one after that. On the positive side, for a bike its size, the ZN has pretty
good ground clearance. The pegs touch down if you have too little air in the
suspension or if you're moving along smartly, but that's truly an excellent
warning system. And the tires stick well.
Side winds affect the Voyager unusually on the open road,
another consequence of its mass. On one particular test ride, a 20-25 mph side
wind made the Voyager's wheels feel as if they were rolling out from under the
bike sideways. The result was sudden leaning of up to 10 or 15 degrees off
vertical, and wandering in the lane, quite literally from white line to white
line. Two other bikes during the same test, the Harley-Davidson FXRT and the
Yamaha Venture, cut through the wind much better.
With any vehicle, sheer horsepower is only half the story. A
locomotive may have some pretty impressive numbers, but its acceleration from 50
to 80 is wanting. The power-to-weight ratio more directly affects the
motorcyclist. It's not a surprise that the ZN's roll-on acceleration is
standard. From 2000 to 4000 rpm in the lower gears (first to third) the Voyager
gives a good strong surge of acceleration. It quickly reaches cruising speed and
readily passes traffic on tight roads. If you're already at a cruising speed and
want to pass traffic, a downshift from fifth to fourth is definitely in order
and sometimes you'll need to go from fourth to third. For comparison's sake, the
Venture runs away from the Voyager in a fifth-gear roll-on from 50 mph. In fact,
the Venture pulls away from the Kawasaki when the Yamaha is in fifth and the ZN
is in fourth. To its credit, power delivery is smooth and strong right up
to redline, and the Kawasaki runs happily all day long at 85 to 90 mph.
Using a lot of horsepower to move a lot of weight requires a
lot of fuel about one gallon every 35 miles. There's no drawback to the
marginal fuel economy, assuming you don't mind handing over about a dollar more
than a Venture rider does for a fill-up.
Far more important is cruising range. Since the ZN holds 6.6
gallons, it has an actual run-it-dry range of 232 miles, making it easily
comparable to the Venture (with a 226-mile cruising range) or the Aspehcade (218
miles).
Living with the Voyager, you note many other impressions not
solely applicable to its function as a luxury tourer. The Voyager incorporates a
trick (and patented) two-part centerstand. To hoist the ZN, first slip the
stand's legs down so they're brushing the ground. Then kick the trailing part of
the stand down to touch the legs; that piece levers the bike up. It's about as
easy as raising a standard 550. Nice. Getting the bike off the stand is more
difficult; that requires jerking the bike forward like you really mean it. Other
features include three hot leads for accessories (like electric garments).
There's one behind the right front turn signal, another under the left grabrail,
and another behind the right side cover.
The Voyager uses an updated version of the original
six-cylinder 1300 engine, and the engineers modified it well. The '84 ZN
features new pistons with a squish-shaped crown. The new pistons still yield a
9.3:1 compression ratio, and promote quick flame-front travel so well that even
with its fairly high compression ratio the 1300 burns any grade of pump gas.
The updated engine includes a new clutchsmaller, lighter and
more compact. Where the R&D guys could trim weight and maintain performance,
they did. The new clutch (except for the short span of engagement) works well.
The old engine had an automotive-style harmonic balancer on
one end of the crank to absorb vibration instead of allowing it to excite the
loose-end of the long crankshaft. The new engine has a second alternator on the
left crank end instead. The dual-alternator setup allows the ZN to produce
spectacular wattage300 from the primary alternator and 200 from the secondary.
Kawasaki has a fair amount of experience now with fuel
injection, from the original Z-1 Classic and the first GPz1100 (both used
electronic fuel injection) to the current GPz1100 and the ZN1300 (both use
digital fuel injection). The DFI works much better than the EFI, thanks to some
subtle changes.
With EFI, a swinging gate in the intake tract measured
airflow, the rate of which dictated the duration of the squirt of fuel. (EFI
does not vary the amount of fuel flowing per se; it varies the duration of the
squirt, up to 6.0 milliseconds.) The problem? With EFI the gate created
turbulence in the intake tract, resulting jn some hesitation off idle. DFI
differs fundamentally from EFI by having no gate in the intake. Instead, sensors
measure throttle opening, engine revs, air and engine temperature, and
atmospheric pressure to regulate the duration of the squirt. It works well on
the GPz, and it's effective on the ZN. Throttle response is instantaneous and
crisp.
Engine aside, the Voyager is a new bike. The frame, its
geometry, the suspension, brakes and, obviously, all the bodywork are new. New,
though, does not mean different in concept. The decision to use the original
1300 engine as a starting point dictated what the Voyager would bebig. That
original powerplant was nearly 300 pounds. Though the designers came up with new
rolling stock, they didn't downsize; more to the point, they couldn't. A
300-pound engine requires a stout chassis, and that the Kawasaki has. In-
deed, to accommodate all the items Kawasaki believes will make
this a gadgeteer's/audiophile's/touring rider's dream, the designers had to make
it bigger yet, evidenced by the 2.3-inch increase in wheelbase and the need for
larger components all aroundthe one-gallon-larger fuel tank, for instance.
That makes the Voyager analogous to the old 1300. Each is the
largest example of its genre for its day, but ultimately it turns out that
smaller machines, can do the same job
better. In '78 sport meant speed, with ill handling
something you put up with. It sounds like folly now, but the odd priorities were
not so apparent then. Remember, that was when 750s were mid-12 quarter-milers
and the CBX was king. The 1978 KZ1300, all 710 pounds of it, steamed through the
quarter in 11.96; only a few bikes had done that before it. So the KZ was billed
as a sport-tourer. Times changed quickly. Handling became paramount, especially
when 750s broke well into the elevens.
Today many people understand luxury touring as comfort, and to
get the comfort they put up with the ill handling. (Sound familiar?) But we are
in the process of discovering that smaller machines can provide comfort and
protection the equal of the bigger machines and handle much better.
The Venture Royale and the Honda Aspencade are the Voyager's
direct competitors. The Venture was all new last year so we don't expect Yamaha
to update it drastically. Compared to the Venture, the Voyager is slightly more
comfortable (thanks to a touch better suspension compliance), has more luggage
capacity (and here, more is better), and much better wind protection.
It's also ill handling and comparatively slow.
Against the '83 Aspencade the Voyager is comparable, with
roughly equal wind protection, luggage capacity, smoothness and power. It's
harder to maneuver and less enjoyable on country roads than an Aspencade, but we
could see a big guy putting up with it for personal reasonsintangibles. We do,
however, suspect that Honda might react to the introduction of the Venture,
which outperformed the Aspencade in a number of ways. A more powerful,
better-handling tourer from Honda will widen the gap between it and the Voyager.
You can divide any category of motorcycles into 47
sub-categories (luxury-touring with a bias toward sport on slick downhill
right-handers), but touring is touring. Of course compromises pertain (a certain
shield provides either wind protection or optimum vision in the rain), but a
carefully considered compromise does not launch a bike into sub-category 47-a.
So for now the Yamaha is still the best touring bike on the market, regardless
of its slight bias toward sportiness. .
The Voyager? It's exactly enough on the open road. When you're
bound to run through a few turns on your way to the wide open plains, however,
it's too much.
Source Cycle World 1983
Make Model | Kawasaki ZN 1300 Voyager |
---|---|
Year | 1983 - 85 |
Engine Type | Four stroke transverse six cylinder. DOHC, 4 valves per cylinder |
Displacement | 1286 cc / 78.5 cub in |
Bore X Stroke | 62 x 71 mm |
Cooling System | Liquid cooled |
Compression | 9.3;1 |
Induction | Mikuni fuel injection |
Ignition | Battery powered transistorized |
Starting | Electric |
Max Power | 96.9 kW / 130 hp @ 8000 rpm |
Max Torque | 118 Nm / 12.03 kgf-m / 87 ft. lbs @ 6500 rpm |
Transmission | 5 Speed |
Final Drive | Shaft |
Gear Ratio | transmission (1) 41/16, 2.56 (2)36/20.1.80 (3)33/24,1,38 (4)30/27,1.11 (5)27/29,0.93 overall (1) 11.72 (2) 8.23 (3) 6.29 (4) 5.08 (5) 4.26 |
Frame | Double-downtube, full-cradle frame; box-section steel swing arm |
Front Suspension | 41mm Kayaba air adjustable forks |
Rear Suspension | Dual Kayaba shocks, fully adjustable. |
Front Brakes | 2x 266mm discs 1 piston caliper |
Rear Brakes | Single 296mm disc 1 piston caliper |
Front Tire | 130/90-16 |
Rear Tire | 150/90-15 |
Seat Height | 757 mm / 29.8 in |
Dry Weight | 324.0 kg / 714.3 lbs |
Wet Weight | 417 kg / 919 lbs |
Fuel Capacity | 27 Liters / 7.1 US gal |
Standing ¼ Mile | 13.1 sec / 100 mp/h |
Consumption Average | 34 mpg |
Top Speed | 145 mph |
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 2019 Western Power Sports Catalog. Western Power Sports. 2019.