Z650 - from standard to...?

Yes indeed Puffin, Big 4 used to punt out a lot of trick bikes. Much missed! Anyway, I've done a few more bits, not as much as I'd hoped, so posts coming up now...

I took this little lot off...



But it is going to go back on again

I gotta find a way to tidy up the top yoke - I don't really like the risers, although they suit the bike as a whole, and I need to get the clocks sorted - the boost gauge replaces the standard speedo, and the standard cable driven rev counter is replaced by an SPA all-singing all-dancing rev counter / speedo / idiot light jobbie.



The button that I've fitted into the redundant right-hand indicator warning light is the button to scroll through the display on the clocks.

This lot is probably going to be reworked too, partly as there's an additional oil tank to be fitted somewhere, and partly because I'm thinking of using a small battery...



And the catseye rear light seen here is going to be replaced by an SV650 rear light, which fits really neatly under the Z650 'ducktail' unit.


With the old, standard, engine pulled out, the new, trick, engine was slipped into place...


You might, just, be able to make out that there's a bit of head work been done here...

When the Dymags were first fitted, I got some bloke to make up the wheel spacers,along with the caliper hangers for the Yamaha blue spot 4-piston calipers, and a rear caliper hanger for another blue spot. But, at some p[oint, I decided that I didn't want a big 4-potter on the rear, so threw away / lost the spacers and hanger. So, I needed new ones.
So the rear wheel needed centralising and measuring up for some spacers...
Hmm, looks a bit close to the swinging arm on the left.


The shock mounts and centre casting mark on the Dymag gave convenient reference points.


Stacks of room on the right hand side, and I'll get a mate to machine up a spacer before I start thinking of a caliper hanger (mainly because I don't know what caliper I'm going to use yet)


So it was all measured up with the wheel in place and a couple of spacers ordered. When they arrive I'll be able to bolt it together solid, and check for chain alignment...

You may not be able to tell from the pics, but once it was centralised there was a bit more room between the sprocket carrier and the swinging arm...

And my spacers have arrived, along with a couple of extra shims in case my measuring was to cock...

So, while trying to find the wheel spacers, I managed to find a shitload of rear caliper hangers, and one caliper. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the caliper doesn't fit any of the hangers, and the chances are that none of the hangers will be suitable for the Zed, but there's something to play with for a bit, anyway...

I made up a pair of angle brackets to hang the SV650 light that was replacing the standard one (much lighter you see!) off the top yoke, keeping it nice and tight to the bottom of the clocks and the fork legs.

And the angle of the brackets also matches the angle of the control levers...

So, having finally got back into the Shed of Dread, and ignoring the carb issue hoping it'll go away, I started actually doing some stuff. Although, unsurprisingly, not much...
After taking off the temporarily bolted on headers, I took out the two remaining exhaust port studs, and fitted a new set. Ooh, a teeny tiny step forward! I also got a mate to spin up a set of spacers for the oil cooler that I'll be fitting, so I can get on and make the bracketry for that. But had to go back and check out that rear wheel spacing. With the spacers that my good mate Sam had made, I got the wheel centralised within a mill' or so. Which was fine, but as the pic below shows, it is scarily close to the left hand side of the swinging arm, and the chain run is going to be close to the left-hand shock too. Added to which, it's looking highly likely that the chain and rear frame down tube will want to be occupying the same space.

I'm now thinking of shifting it to the right by five or ten mm, and accept a slight misalignment of wheels...

Okay, so while fiddling with my rear end (er...) I found a caliper hanger that matched the spindle diameter, but which needs some machining to make it the right thickness for what I'd discovered on the left hand side of the swinging arm. And I bolted on an SV650 caliper I hand hanging about.

I dunno if you can see here, but it's right for the offset of the disc (zero) but not for the 210mm diameter.

So, with some guesswork and a ruler waved in it's general direction, I reckon I need a disc of 230mm diameter. Either that, or get a new caliper hanger made, and I think that the disc is the easier option! So, anyone know of any online disc dimension lsitings? Some quick measurements show that the disc fitted to the Dymag is a six bolt fixing (so a three bolt one would also do the trick) of PCD 109mm, with the central hole being 99mm diameter.

Oh, and I was reminded about something that's been bugging me since I first built the bike with the 1100 motor - the shock alignment.
When the swinging arm was made by Martek, the shock mounts were wider apart than the standard mounts, so they're a bit 'splay-legged'...

So I'm thinking of doing something with the top shock mounts to bring it all into alignment. The shocks worked fine, but it was always something that bugged me, and ikt just wasn't right.

I'd initially thought that I'd use this hanger -

But as it has a rubber damper in it (dunno why, most don't seem to have it, I thinik this was from a ZXR750H1) it'd be a bit pants to machine, so maybe I'll go with this one instead -

I've marked it up with the changes that it'd need to work, although I'd still need to find a larger disc, as you can see here -

Old goldfish brain here got distracted again, while I was fannying around fitting the new exhaust studs into the head I had a look inside the headers... and noticed that the inside of the header pipes had some 'clag' (for want of a better word) inside. The headers weren't genuine Mr Turbo ones, as they didn't fit due to the fact that the GPz engine sits further back in the Z650 frame than it did in the 1100 frame, so I had Mickey Burke at Eyeball Engineering in Tamworth make me some new headers (and up-pipe) to suit...

Time to get the Dremel out...

So, the cheapo Aldi-bought Dremel copy got some action...

although this does mean that I'll now have to check out the welds on the inside of the up-pipe joining headers to turbo as well now. The amount of difference it'll make, performance wise, is totally negligible, but it makes me happy doing it...