2018 KAWASAKI Z900RS PROJECT
PROJECT
P78
III Dymag forged CA5
aluminum wheels—$2451
Let's start off with a bang, shall we? The biggest
visual and performance mod we made to the Ka-
wasaki is fitting the stunning gold-painted Dymag
forged-aluminum wheels.
I'm a huge fan of aftermarket wheels and feel
they are seriously underutilized when people start
modifying their motorcycles.
These new wheels represent a weight loss of
27 percent on the front and 28 percent on the
rear, plus the sprocket and carrier weighs a very
tasty 50-percent less than stock.
The addition of the wheels means less un-
sprung mass for the engine to deal with during
The Dymags take a bucket of
unsprung weight off the Z and
look absolutely stunning. Who
doesn't love gold wheels?
acceleration, and for the brakes
when stopping. It makes a huge
difference to overall performance.
There're two schools of thought
with the wheels: They are first and
foremost a performance modifica-
tion, and we noticed when we fit
the carbon-fiber Dymags at Pikes
Peak how much havoc they played
with our suspension settings.
However, that was during the
white heat of competition, where
(Above) Fitting
nice wheels is
not easy if you
want to keep
them scratch-
free. Joey
jammed a rag
so the caliper
wouldn't hit
the paint—it
was close.
The standard
wheels still
look good, just
not as good as
the Dymags.
you're searching for every tenth of
a second you can find. When fit-
ting the Dymags to our Kawasaki,
the benefits are much more about
looks than overall performance.
Don't get me wrong, they are far
and away one of the best things
you can do when modifying your
bike, but we are not pushing this
bike as hard as our KTM race bike
so the performance benefits are a
little less in this regard.
But, hey, they make the bike
look absolutely a-w-e-s-o-m-e!
