If you put a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14R in your garage this year, then you should pay attention to the latest recall notice from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
At the heart of the recall is an issue with the ZX-14R’s front brake master cylinder, which may be missing an internal component that can cause inconsistent front braking force. In total, 84 motorcycles might could have this issue.
The Kawasaki Ninja line began life with the Kawasaki GPZ900R (the Ninja 900 to its friends) in 1984. Now 30 years later, Kawasaki is celebrating three decades of Ninja motorcycles, a model name that has become synonymous with the sport bike segment.
While the Ninja 900 began as Maverick’s daily ride in the movie Top Gun, the model sparked what would later become the superbike wars amongst the Japanese manufacturers.
The Ninja name has grown in time to become the Ninja ZX-10R superbike, refined itself to become the Ninja ZX-14R sport-tourer, and also grown into the small-displacement offerings of the Ninja 250R and Ninja 300, with many models in between.
A Ninja also just recently won the World Superbike Championship — not bad for a Gen-Xer. So we bid Happy Birthday to the Ninja, and hope for another 30 years of awesome green bikes with the Ninja name emblazoned upon them. Got a story about your Ninja? Leave it in the comments.
Kawasaki is gearing up to launch its new hyperbike, the 2012 Kawasaki ZX-14 or the 2012 Kawasaki ZZR1400 as it’s known to our friends outside of the US market. Keeping a constant stream of video teaser videos over the past few weeks, Team Green has finally given us a glimpse at the new Kawasaki ZX-14 in it’s latest “Ultimate” video. Flashing the dimensions “84 x 65mm” in the video, the new ZX-14/ZZR1400 will surely live up to its name with a 1,440cc engine displacement, and is expected to make over 200hp in production trim.
The new ZX-14 is also likely to include anti-lock brakes and traction control, in order to help tame all that hyperbike power on-tap. If you’ve missed out on Kawasaki’s teaser campaign, we’ve got all of them waiting for you after the jump in reverse chronological order. Expect to see the 2012 Kawasaki ZX-14 unveiled on October 10th if Kawasaki can keep it under wraps for that long, sooner if the Japanese company can’t.
The internet has been abuzz lately with leaked/early/spy photos, some real, and some not so much. Looking a bit like the genuine article, we get another alleged glimpse at a soon to be released motorcycle before its public unveiling. While Kawasaki has been busy teasing the interwebs with videos that feature a nice exhaust note, a flash of green light, and the date: 10/10/2011, it looks like Asian motorcycle magazine Young Machine has released its issue featuring the 2012 Kawasaki ZX-14 (that’s the 2012 Kawasaki ZZR1400 for our friends in other markets) a tad early.
In what looks to be the first photos of the new Kawasaki ZX-14, we also get a look at some of the basic features that the new hypersport will boast in 2012, namely a 1429cc motor, anti-lock brakes, Kawasaki’s traction control system, and rider-selectable engine maps. As for looks…ZX-10R owners will be pleased. Photos after the jump, and if you read what appears to be Japanese, help us out with a translation in the comments. Thanks for the tip John!
Rumors are swelling around the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14 (the Kawasaki ZZR1400 for friends on the other side of the pond). First up is that a new updated Kawasaki ZX-14 is set to debut by the end of the month. Expected to be only a cosmetic makeover, the 2012 Kawasaki ZX-14 will mechanically be the same as the current model.
Looking farther down the pipe though, it would seem from reports and patents that Kawasaki has been eyeing putting a supercharger on the hypersport machine, presumably to better position the ZX-14 against the increasingly more powerful 1,000 superbikes, like the company’s on 2011 Kawasaki ZX-10R.