Hello everyone. My name is Joe Da Noze. Not really but, since I have this huge appendage on my face it seems to be a quite fitting nick name.

I am new to the group. I am in the U.S. Military and live in Japan. I just returned from an 8 month deployment to Iraq. I'm glad to get back home and start working on my bike. I have seen a lot of "This and That" on this forum but not a lot of true stories. Since I am a mechanic by trade I would like to share my story with you. I am tired of looking at my bike sit in the garage so I decided to rebuild it. As the days go by and the story continues you will understand why the rebuild is necessary. Hopefully my ideas are shared with you to give you some ideas as well. I will continue this blog as I progress on the bike. If you have questions or comments, please share them with me as I am not all knowing.

The story begins:

I bought my Red 1996 GPZ in 1997. It had 1800 miles on it when I bought it. I bought it from a dealer in Japan and to my surprise it is U.S. Specs. That is a great feature since I am planning on taking my bike back to the states once my military career is over.

I moved from Northern Japan to Tokyo in 2000. Since the journey was only a 7 hour drive away I took my bike with me. I became an MSF RiderCoach and taught other military members how to ride. This bike became a part of me like a child that I am not willing to give up. Most of my friends rode street bikes and I learned real quick that I couldn't keep up with the ZX-12. My bike is heavier and slower then the mighty ZX-12. So a few ideas came to mind but getting any maintenance done in Japan equates to selling body parts on the black market. So my dreams of outrunning the ZX-12 came to an end.

in 2006 I had to leave Japan for a year and do my time in Korea. It was a great assignment but I couldn't take my bike with me. After being there for a year I can't understand why anyone would want to bring one with. The military packed it up in a crate and shipped it off to California and it sat waiting for me to finish my assignment.

Finally, in 2007, I was reassigned to Northern Japan again. Me and my bike were home. I looked at it and couldn't decide what to do with it. It hadn't been started for over a year. That meant "New Battery" and "Carb Cleaning." Then it had been tied down in the crate and that meant the fork springs were shot. The last time I rode it in Tokyo the clutches started to slip and 2 years later that thought entered my mind again. The list kept growing and growing and finally I decided that the bike wasn't worth the trouble when I looked at the rotors. Such a depressing site just sitting in my garage.

I found other ways to ride weather it was borrowing my friend's bike for the day or borrowing another friend's second bike. There was a stretch of time where someone left me a bike for 6 months and told me to ride it. The list goes on and on. But the sorry image of my "Child" sitting hopelessly in my garage never faded. I almost felt guilty leaving it there all this time and never paying it much attention.

Again, with the Japanese Maintenance fees, created the start of J.J.'s Garage. Jeremy and Joe (my best friend and I) decided to work on bikes and charge a lot less. It started with the $50 tire changes. Yes, just to mount 1 tire in Japan is right around $50 depending on the yen rate. We would mount the tire for $15 and Balance for another $15. This was a great thing because $60 mounted and balanced was better than $100 just for mounting. J.J.'s Garage was starting to take off and with the purchase of a trailer we could begin charging for towing. That seems to be a real money maker. You wouldn't believe how many bikes wreck around here.

With all of this maintenance going on people would always comment on how we do such good work and yet I never touched mine. After a while comments like that start to stick. Well NO MORE!! I am not procrastinating anymore. Oh wait, I deployed for 8 months. Can't work on the bike when I'm gone. Jeremy and I went together and came up with all sorts of ideas. We also decided that if we did a good job we could use the bike as advertising. What better way to relaunch J.J.'s Garage??

So my story begins. This will be a start to finish story of how my 15 year old bike becomes alive once again. I hope this rebuild will only take a couple months. I am excited to take my bike back to the mountains where we first learned how to ride together.

Again, please read and learn from my experiences and add comments as you see fit. Pictures will be added to the "Images" portion of this site with little captions of explanation as the rebuild continues. Hopefully all of us can get something out of it.