Oil pan swap

Hey, Im new here, I have a 84 1300 cruiser, I just bought, strip it down to a street bike and now Im trying to put a 6 in to 1 header on it, but the oil pan is large and in the way, I have three set of 6 to 1 headers, haven't tried the other two header, but can I change the oil pan to a short oil pan, like on the early models, so the header can clear the button, has anybody done this before ????, all help would be appreciated.

Check out "Oil" under the "FAQ" link. You'll find some information about the pans there and hopefully that will help. My bike is mostly stock.

The large and shallow sumps are interchangeable but need to remember that the oil pickup pipe is a different length in each.  there's not much demand for the shallow sump - I think I threw mine away

Kawasaki added that deeper oil pan for a reason - the early models were serious oil burners and the deeper oil pan provided (in addition to other benefits) more oil to burn.   Having said that, Kawasaki eventually redesigned the pistons (more oil return holes and different piston rings??) to solve the oil burning issue (not sure what year the new piston design was deployed - maybe 81 or 82?? - someone here will know), so maybe by then a  deeper pan was no longer required (but as far as I know, all later model KZ, ZG and ZN models have the deeper oil pan. 

I have an '81 and can go 400 miles to get from the upper sump line to the lower, so I wouldn't say that the problem was solved, but at least I can ride all day without checking it (I still carry a quart with me).  That said, the oil gets dirty very fast and I wonder if this issue if the reason why.  I'm curious if others experience this.

The reason Kawaski changed to the deeper oil sump was to eliminate oil starvation.  With the shallow pan, hard acceleration, especially uphill, resulted in the oil flowing to the rear of the sump.  The oil pickup would then draw in air.  The result was ruined main and rod bearings.  Engines that suffered from this would be full of metal shavings.