Potential Cafe Build: XS400 vs KZ440?

I understand that this is a Yamaha forum in terms of domain, but I hope to get unbiased responses. I am thinking about picking up another bike for two reasons: 1) a little better gas mileage (35mpg is not all that great when you consider that my car gets upwards of 26 city during the summer), and 2) I kind of want to experiment with building a cafe racer.

My question is, right now there are two bikes available: 1980 Yamaha XS400 Special and a 1983 Kawasaki KZ440. They are exactly the same price. The only significant different is the KZ440 does not run (owner is not sure what's wrong with it, he doesn't seem to know much about mechanics, hopefully it's just a carb clean).

The main thing I like about the XS400 is the kick and electric start set up. I kind of want that kickstart because I think it looks cool to kick a bike over to start it...the KZ440 after 82 skipped the kickstart entirely and before then (1980-1982) the kickstarts seemed to be hit or miss. The thing I like about the KZ440, however, is that my dad used to ride the s**t out of one back in the '80s, so I think it would be a cool tribute bike.

What's your opinion on the XS or the KZ? What are the key "failing" points of each bike (i.e. the virago had electrical/starter problems).

 

I'd get the KZ. Cutting a Kawasaki frame is no sin. It was also brought to the U.S. for a decade (the XS was only around for 6 years), so parts may be easier to get.
Now the sentimental connection. Your dad had one. This trumps all other arguments.

 

The kawasaki frame will be alot easier to cafe IMO and it has a cooler gas tank of course the fact that I once had one that I loved completely (it was my first cafe) makes my vote completely biased but honestly I'd pick the kawi those are great little bikes

 

I wound up picking up a KZ400 anyways. I've only ridden it 3 miles and it's already stolen my heart.

As far as a cafe build goes, the bike is really clean. Almost too clean to mess with. I also wound up taking a look over the bike. Removing the rear chrome fender / wheel shroud will put me at 60+% done with a cafe build. The stock frame loop in the back is perfect for the kind of cafe seats I like, so why bother hacking up the frame? LMAO I'm sticking to the stock air box though...at least until I do a single carb conversion on it, which I am seriously considering; the peeps that have already tried the single carb manifold from 11th Hour Industries (I think is the Co.'s name) have a pretty much unanimous consensus about the particular mod: better power, better throttle response, and the bike runs better overall with the single VM34 over the stock Keihin CVs (when properly tuned). Only issue that is preventing from trying it right now is the fact that I'm looking minimum of $300 for the conversion, if I buy the pre-man.'ed manifold ($190 for the manifold, $90 for the carb, plus various jets to tune specifically to my bike). To help make it cheaper, I might pick up some pipe from my local Home Depot and have a muffler shop do all the cutting and welding for around $50 (plus around $20-30 for the piping); this way I'm only out another $90 for the carburetor and hopefully only around $5-20 for a/some jet(s).