anyone?

 

Make it look good and ride it. restorations cost way too much...

 

I am a retired licensed road racer (Washington and Oregon). Neither of those bikes is good for track use if you are thinking of getting a race license. I would strongly suggest buying a 600 cc bike for track use. Light weight and a way better horsepower to weight ratio. The newer sport bikes, at least '98 forward, and the newer the better, are going to be more suitable for track use.

A Honda CBR 600 is a very good track bike. If you can afford one, a Yamaha R6 is probably the best track bike for an older sport bike (or the Honda I mentioned). You can buy a race only bike if you join your state race organization and look on their list serve, if they have one. Race bikes are always for sale.

But if these are your first bikes, I do not recommend you ride on a track until you have at least a few years of street use on a sportbike. And take some riding schools for track. Keith Code has a very good school (I have been to two, traveled to CA to do them), but there are others that may be available where you live.

As far as restoring the bikes, I say restore them, if you can afford to do it and you don't care if you don't have them to ride. But again, if these are your first bikes, I think what Rick S. said is good advice, because it puts the bike on the road so you can get some miles on it and get that experience and enjoyment you want and need.

Restoration takes a long time. It is costly. That means you take the whole bike apart down to the bare frame, refinish the frame, sub frame and all body work or get new body work and refinish it, etc. You rebuild everything or replace with new parts. If you are just replacing a few things here and there, well, that is not a restoration.

I have restored two sports cars. I can tell you from experience that unless you are restoring a very rare car or a very, very old and rare motorcycle, it is mostly a black hole. You never recoup your money when you sell it. It takes years. Partly because of the cost to purchase new parts and to do repairs. You can't fork out that much money that quickly. I am building a 95 ZX9R from a frame, for a show bike. It will have a custom mural painted on it commemorating military veterans of the Vietnam conflict. But this kind of project, or a restoration, is done for the enjoyment of the process, so you don't put unreasonable deadlines on the project. So again, if you don't care about having them to ride, you do a restoration.

 

Thank you guys!

These are my first sport bikes. I have ridden road bikes for years and dirt bikes for... 15 years. Before that I was riding pedal bikes for 22 years

I do plan to take a class before I just jump into things competitively.

I will take what you both have said to heart, and I will this winter strip the zx9 down, not quite to the frame, but enough to run through it and learn some mechanics, so I can hopefully have her back together and on the road by spring, ride it, then decide next winter if I want to restore this particular one, or sell it for maybe one with less miles or whatever because it is my dream bike.

The zx7, I will just do the regular maintenance just so I can have something to ride If I do not finish the zx9 in time.

As for the track bike, I know that my bikes are older and heavier, but I like the feel of them compared to newer, lighter (and smaller at 600cc) bikes. Is there like a classic of vintage class I could potentially enter in? I am not looking to go pro or anything, just have fun and be competitive at most.

That said, is there a website that lists all the local state by state race organizations so I could just get plugged into my local community?

Thanks again guys!

P.S. I have tried to attach photos to show you guys my tear down and dream bike but the photos wont attach when I drag them onto the the page where it says to drag photos. Any help with this?

 

Same with me, off bikes many years, bought my dream bike a 94 zx7.
Since it's a dream bike spend as much to make it right, somewhere in between restoration and general maintenance.
If you do some exploration on the bike lots of things will present itself to fix, is what I find. So without getting to overzealous the thing will cost you plenty.
Make it look great, make sure its safe, and ride

 

I "restored" or "re-did" my ZX9 B over last winter and it was a very frustrating and rewarding process. One thing I will say is after 22 years the bearings on the bike are old and dried out. So definitely replace all your bearings. Tuff to find good quality parts for these bikes as years go on. One thing I can say is if your factory fairings are in good shape, or need minor fixing, your better off fixing them then buying ebay fairings. Take a look at my thread for a few tips on what to do and what not to do.

http://www.zxforums.com/forums/zx-9r-forum/169738-marks-97-zx900-build.html