Damn, good read.
Used to have a ZRX1200 and it was a kick-ass bike.
"Eh,what, why is this Concours going by so fast?!?!?! That's not normal!" said the rider of a bone-stock Concours.
One of the "instigators" of this project was a contributor on the Concours Owners Group forum by the name of "Uncle Bob", Ryan I think was his actual name.
From time to time, Concours owners would ask if there was a way to hop up the engine or change it out for a larger engine, etc. Uncle Bob was way into turbo charging ZRX1200s and knew the engine intimately inside and out.
I had been thinking along the lines of considering adapting the engine out of a Kawasaki 1200 Voyager to the Concours. It had a lot of what I was looking for - solid mid range torque and hydraulic valve actuators. It would have been a daunting task to incorporate this engine into a Concours chassis for several reasons:
1) This engine is quite bulky and heavy.
2) This engine was quite unique in that it was not based on the Ninja series.
3) Exhaust, carburetor air box and engine mounts would have to be designed specifically for the Concours, not able to leverage anything that existed.
4) I would have to have a totally custom siamese drive shaft to couple to the Concours rear drive.
Uncle Bob is the one who steered me towards the ZRX engine. We started a detailed conversation on all things ZRX/Concours. He is the one who indicated that the 6 speed Concours transmission would drop into the ZRX cases and that the bevel gear case would bolt right up (I don't think he mentioned the one hole I had to drill and tap). Many, many other details were discussed at great length.
He helped me check all of the boxes and that is when I started shopping for a donor ZRX1200R.
Dan