Everything came together to give me a couple hours’ time to work on the intake.

As mentioned earlier, my pretty adapter plate was cut before I knew I would be using the stock Kawasaki boots to mount the throttle body. Because of the way the boots bolt on, there is some degree of overhang.

I welded mounting tabs on the plate, drilled and tapped holes for the boots and drilled holes to mount the plate to the manifold. Sadly, my drill creeped a little, so one of the mounting holes doesn’t line up perfectly. It will be easy to address and will not be visible once installed. Oh, well. Such is the way of hand fabrication.

Other than that, it looks pretty good.

Once I have the manifold installed on the engine, I will have some experimental freedom on positioning the TB. The boots impart a small angle, which leans the TB assembly, and the TB itself can be mounted to the boots with the throttle eccentric on either side of the engine. I don’t think it will clear the doghouse if they lean forward, so I’m sure I’ll need to angle them backward. Then it should just be a matter of choosing which side I need the throttle cable to come in.