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KZombie 14 May 2016 18:41 #726444

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What was the humidity while you were doing this?
Steve

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KZombie 14 May 2016 18:51 #726446

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Hey Steve :)

The humidity was on the edge. I was concerned initially but the day broke out into partly cloudy and breezy conditions and so I decided to go with it. Still, after about an hour and half, I could touch the clear coat and it was not tacky. So it'll be okay.

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KZombie 14 May 2016 19:02 #726449

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I think that's what happened to my tank. Did it in the shed with the A/C on but as soon as I opened the door, the tank turned cloudy.
I waited a couple weeks, sanded it ans repainted it. Looked great but 6 months later it started cracking. This time I took it down to the primer. Good for about a year but it's cracking again. I'm working on my other tank. It will be a bone dry day when I do it. B)
Steve

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KZombie 14 May 2016 19:59 #726463

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I'm ok with the results. It's dry & hard. Never got cloudy in the clear coat

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KZombie 14 May 2016 20:05 #726465

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Here's a pic a few minutes ago.
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Last edit: by wrenchmonkey. Reason: Add picture

KZombie 15 May 2016 08:12 #726523

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Looking really really good Wrench, laid out some nice paint and that color I think will really pop with contrast to the rest of the bike... can't wait to see it bolted together or at least staged!!!!

Nice job man keep it up! :evil:

Brett
All the gear all the time!

1985 Kawasaki GPz 750 (ZX750-A3) 15,000 original miles www.kzrider.com/forum/11-projects/601230...z750-refresh-project

Father - Husband - Bourbonr - Rider

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KZombie 15 May 2016 19:11 #726664

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Hey Brett :)

Thanks again man. I'm still enjoying the process and getting giddy as a child about it finally going back together. Speaking of which, today I hopped into the garage all happy I was going to finally start assembly of the ol' KZombie.
But first, I had to spend an hour rolling everything out of the garage and sweeping-up the dusty mess left from painting yesterday. Paint fall-out is super fine, like gypsum dust and sticks to everything.

So I finally got the frame set back up to begin making it roller. Pulled out the new steering stem bearings and seals and that went pretty easy. Probably spent more time smearing grease into the rollers than anything:



Whoo Hoo! Now I can finally assemble the front end! So I went and pulled the newly rebuilt forks off the shelf, got all the nicely polished and painted parts set up on the bench and then went to get the fork oil... Where's my fork oil? Are you freakin' kidding me? I forgot to get the dang fork oil... AGAIN! :angry:
No problem. I can handle this minor set back. I'll work on the rear wheel instead. Get to half a roller at least. So I put the forks and all their associate bits away safely and reloaded the workbench with the rear wheel, the new bearing set and all the cleaned or painted parts for this. I have to admit the rear wheel on KZombie is a handful but I had both my manuals ready on the pages for reference and once I got it straight in my brain as to the assembly order of the axle, bearings, seals, spacers. I cut open the new bearings bag and laid them out. 2 bearings for the front wheel? Check! 3 bearings for the rear wheel? Check! I placed the big bearing on the hub and the two smallest bearings by the front wheel for later assembly and that left two medium bearings for the inner rear wheel.
Of course I had managed to almost take two steps forward and so in typical KZombie fashion, I had to take one giant leap backward... I placed the first of two bearings into the rear wheel hub and this happened:



Um? Houston? We have a problem... The 2 smaller bearings for the rear wheel were too small ! :huh:
So I pulled the original bearings out of the baggie I had put them in some weeks back and commenced to teasing my brain into thinking maybe, just maybe I could make these old things work. After all, they have less than 20k miles on them. So I bathed the first one in some WD40 to clean out all the old grease. It looked good! Then I rolled it in my hands. Not so bueno :( Sounded like there were rice crispies mixed in with the ball bearings. No amount of cleaning would remove that crunchy sound while rolling the bearing in my super oily hand. Sadly, I know what the cause of this is - rusted balls. Old age. - The bearings not me! The same thing happened with both the upper and lower steering stem bearings. The races were great but moisture attacked the balls themselves and they rusted and pitted and would randomly crunch through rotation.
Thus endeth the lesson on making a frame into a roller in one day.
Later, I hopped online and checked where I got the wheel bearing set from. weBay seller. So I contacted them through the auction site and fingers crossed that I can replace, exchange, refund since these bearings are useless to me.
Dejected, I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up parts that will hopefully, some day, be needed to install on this reluctant bike.
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KZombie 16 May 2016 17:56 #726867

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Great looking paint jobs wm,,my favorit's part of the read was the genius move using the sliced off tape for the next part of the rim..Haaa,tightness at its best,,i see your bearings are on the way,cool

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KZombie 16 May 2016 19:45 #726892

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That paint turned out pretty wicked! She's slowly coming together, just keep your chin up and take it one step at a time. When I built my bike up, the front end and rear end mods took me just around 2 years to complete as I was chipping away whenever I could on her. It was a bit of time, but more than worth it. You're getting there! She's starting to look really good!

Devin
78 kz 650 custom
Wiseco 720cc big bore
Dynajet stage 3 carb kit with pods
2002 Kawasaki Z750 exhaust
2001 Buell lightning front end
1999 Ninja 600 swingarm with 1999 Ninja 900 rear rim
converted to monoshock rear
Too many goodies to list fully

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KZombie 17 May 2016 05:42 #726939

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Hey Gents!
Yup. I'm a cheap old bastard!
"So cheap I squeak..." is what my old man used to say. :laugh:
Truth be told:
I sliced off that first piece of masking tape from a spoke and looked at it curling up, stuck to my knife and the light bulb went on - :ohmy:
Hey! A perfectly, custom made piece of 1/4" masking tape, exactly the length of this spoke...
So yeah. Turns out I have a few qualities, more than cheap, I'm lazy too! One wonders what my gal ever saw in me? :whistle:
Why not take advantage of all that laborious effort and reuse what would be otherwise waste?

Dev, you are so right about the time aspect of this project. Back at day one, nearly 10 years ago, I was thinking I'd have this old bike slam dunked in days if not hours. Today... meh, I don't even try to guess where the finish line is. I have come to accept that some projects fall together as if they want to be done, while others fight you tooth and nail the whole way.
KZombie is the latter.
Like last evening. I was digging through all the tubs and boxes of parts I took off the bike so long ago. Laying pieces on the floor around the frame trying to remember what and where this odd looking piece is or goes. I don't remember half of it - (OK kids. Let this be a lesson to y'all. Drugs are bad! MmmKaaay? Short term memory loss is a real thing. Not some contrived malady meant to scare you :whistle: ).
Anyhow, it turns out I'm missing a few things beyond the obvious - my mind - like the left side foot peg. Now who'd abscond with the left side foot peg? Or the side stand spring? Or the right side handlebar brake lever?
One of the biggest issues I discovered is about the steering lock. I do not have the seat lock or the ignition cylinder or obviously the key. So this may be a problem in trying to resolve that steering lock which I chose to leave on the frame even when I bought replacement ignition and seat locks with matching keys.

Oh and then there's this - the exhaust system for KZombie is actually in pretty nice condition. Go figure. But I did discover one problem that I have no idea how to solve. Hopefully someone here on the forum has figured this out - mud daubers built nests or whatever you call those muddy clumps INSIDE my exhaust system! Fricken bugs!
I think these critters are mostly a southern thing? They look like alien wasps or hornets but pretty much don't bother humans except to build these adobe egg nests in the oddest places.
I picked up the exhaust sections and heard this internal "clunk" as something fell from one end of the muffler to the other. Then little bits of ancient dried mud and some egg casing remains fell out. So I shook the thing for like 10 minutes figuring the mud clump would ultimately be destroyed and fall out in bits but uh uh, that's not happening at some point the clump stopped moving, like I suddenly wedged it into some internal baffling; I dunno. Fricken bugs :angry:

So it's like your experience Devin... Time is what it takes. In your case, it was engineering new systems to advance the state of the art and in my case it's idiot pursuits like debugging an exhaust system :laugh:

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KZombie 17 May 2016 07:22 #726960

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Fill them up with water, let them sit and flush them out.
Steve
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KZombie 17 May 2016 08:35 #726970

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The only thing that matters with builds like this is that you're taking small steps forward and getting closer you your end goal. Yeah, my build took lots of head scratching, fabbing, machining, sketching on CAD, etc. At times I looked at it and thought "when is it ever going to be ready?" But one small piece here and another thing there, and it's closer and closer to being finished. I still have some bugs to work out, get my rear tire hugger on, put an LED tail light on it... But I can ride it now, and that's more than ok with me :)
78 kz 650 custom
Wiseco 720cc big bore
Dynajet stage 3 carb kit with pods
2002 Kawasaki Z750 exhaust
2001 Buell lightning front end
1999 Ninja 600 swingarm with 1999 Ninja 900 rear rim
converted to monoshock rear
Too many goodies to list fully
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