Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday,
- John Wayne -
Well, who am I to argue with The Duke?
I had a few hours on my hands last week between risky, unworthy moments of near electrocution and a recent shopping list of parts had begun to pile up so while the tank was be blasted with electrons I set to putting more of KZombie together. I found a good deal on complete stainless steel, brake line kit on eBay and was pleased with the results:
These brake lines were optionally colored with various options for the banjo fittings and the lines so I got real creative and chose black and black. The kit was complete with all washers and new bolts and I was able to install all four lines in about 30 minutes. It felt like it should have gone faster but I found the banjo fittings were pressed on being ... parallel to the opposite end and this presented a little more challenge when installing the line from front Master Cylinder because the stainless line wouldn't twist much. I did finally get it though.
Next I got to installing the throttle cables and routing some of the forward control wiring. Basically anything that came off the handlebars was run. This allowed me to finally get the clutch cable installed and the engine cover on the left buttoned up. Incredibly, this went smooth as silk and I was grateful for being so A-type when I dismantled KZombie almost 10 years ago as I labelled the crap out of every connection, electrical or mechanical. The clutch feels good though. A tiny amount of "free play" in the lever before I can feel it engage the clutch and squish the pressure plate.
Looking like a rider in for service more than restoration:
Next up was the bank of carburetors...
Is it just me, or do y'all think they made this process entirely too difficult? I have always struggled with installing the carbs. It soooo feels like that old saying - "trying to stuff 10 pounds of potato into a 5 pound sack.". Well, this was no different than any other set of carbs and was reluctant and caused a lot of sweating. Finally, almost about to concede at the 75th yard line, I opted to pull the intake boots back inside the air box, thereby making lots of room to struggle further with the carb bank and press them into the carb mounts. Later, I wiggled the intake boots back out of the air box and onto the carb's intakes:
I know that there is almost always a thread on this forum regarding "air box or pods?" and of course there's lots of folks on either side of this fence but I'm gunna toss my hat into the ring here and say just one thing about it - Those carb boots between the air box and carb intakes? They're as much inside the air box as outside between the air box and carb. Brilliant Einstein! So what's my point? Well, it occurred to me that the shape and overall length of these boots must be making them perform as basically a rubber velocity stack. No? I mean when you see the boots in your hands, they're shaped like velocity stacks. Thus, my thinking is that they must also act as velocity stacks to each carb. No? I know that with all my automobile pursuits, having velocity stacks installed was one more way to increase performance of said carb; swirling and accelerating the air flow into the carb's throttle body is a performance enhancement. No?
Anyway. I'm sure this may stir up more dust in the air box vs pod debates but I'm kinda' thinkin' those genius minds at Kawasaki's skunk works knew what they were doing when they designed these little, albeit aggravatingly tight boots for the carbs.
Stepping back from my beautiful machine as it comes rises further from the grave:
You might notice that now KZombie is sporting a new chain. Yup. I stuck with stock sized gearing and chain but did run into the snag of the master link. Turns out that during my absence from motorcycles, the overall thought of a master link clip (I have been told it's actually called a "conifer link/clip"?) has been changed out to a rivet style master link. Sadly, I do not possess a rivet tool and so even though the chain is fully installed and tension set, the master link will have to make a truck-ride visit to Waco Motorsports at some point to have that master link rivet tool put to use. I've seen lots of EweToob videos at this point on how to crimp or peen the master link rivet yourself with various home brew methods or tooling and I even tried one method involving tubing flare bit and a simple C-clamp but I must be stupid because I can't get it to work and rather than screw-up a perfectly new chain or risk the chain flying apart at speed. I'm just going to pass on this particular bit and leave it to a shop with the right tool.
In and about this time, I had managed to install a few more bits like the side stand finally. I also added the required oil to the engine and my replacement valve cover gasket arrived so I installed it, greased the new allen head bolts with anti seize and torqued them down to that careful point where my wrist clicks :laugh:
Incredibly, KZombie still has the entire emissions setup but since I wasn't putting it back on, I chose to take a short segment of the original air hose/plenum and install it between the two reed valves and secure it with the stock original clips:
Yeah. That sure as hell ain't pretty but it is an original part so I'm happy with it!
I turned my focus to the exhaust side of the equation next, since the intake side was mostly buttoned up (still have to plug the hole in the air box where the emissions system was. I have a rubber plug/bung that fits it and was planning to use it.)
As you may recall, the exhaust system for KZombie looked really good once I gave it a vigorous bath and rub down with quad-0 steel wool but sadly, the loose mud dauber nests bouncing around inside the mufflers turned out to be the muffler internals themselves. Chunks of the baffles were rusted free and loose
Serendipitous timing for a "1978 KZ650 exhaust system, complete", on the List Von Craig turned up in Austin recently and drove down and picked it up. Well, it was a good price I thought and original part and in pretty good shape. Truth be told, KZombie's mufflers looked better in the chrome department but these ones were functional and so I slapped them on:
You can see the forward ends of the exhaust are pretty worn but it'll be good enough to get the old beast running. At some point I am going to replace it entirely with a new 4-into-2 chromed exhaust.
Don't you just love the wiring diagrams for machines? I mean, I've done miles of wiring in all kinds of vehicles and consider myself very good at it but I still have to laugh at the diagrams (schematics are even more misleading). Everything looks so obvious. So neat. So unlike the reality.
THIS IS REALITY:
THIS IS THE DIAGRAM:
Another John Wayne quote is in order here - "Life is tough but it's tougher when you're stupid." - John Wayne -
These wiring diagrams always make me feel smart but then the reality of the wiring loom makes me feel stupid. Compounding this whole mess is the inconsistencies found in these diagrams. I have three different manuals for KZombie - FSM, Clymer and Haynes. Every one of them has subtle but often as it turns out significant differences between them.
Keep in mind, that all these diagrams are assuming a bone stock, original parts used situation. KZombie was anything but bone stock with original parts. More like bare stock with mainly original crap left over that the PO chose to ignore or just plain didn't know was a problem.
The ignition key is a perfect example. I have three examples now of ignition key switches. Everyone listed as "KZ650 Ignition Key Switch" too. I mean, it was right there in black and white on the internet so it must be true; right? :whistle:
That's another thing I've learned in this restoration - I SUCK at online shopping!
Ultimately, to button up the entire wire loom, I had to go with a new "Emgo" key switch even while
knowing other perfectly sane members of this forum chose to get rid of it (the aftermarket switch) because there were problems getting it to work. It did take some doing but I was finally successful force-feeding KZombie to work with an aftermarket switch. As it turns out, the diagram - all three of the applicable diagrams in all of my manuals - had one thing in common with regard to the ignition switch. A single, out of loom, brown wire which the new, aftermarket, Emgo switch does not have. I had to squint a little more and analyze the legends on one of my diagrams (personally, I prefer the Clymer because is it rendered in full color) and break out the multimeter but I got it figured out. It required the slightest modification to the new switch's wire-to-connector, a splice of sorts. I had to also acknowledge the wire colors were not the same and deduce the changes but I did.
So it was on to another newly arrived part. The ignition coils:
Pretty straight forward I guess. Thankfully, the colored primary leads are hard to screw-up and other than leaving the HT leads at full length for the time being, it's done.
All that was left was to install the battery and test out my handy super-sleuth work. Of course that went sideways because my battery while new, was not charged and my battery charger was committed to electron bombardment duty with my tank :dry:
Onto one of the last things in my shortening list of tasks - the seat. You can see in the first pictures of this thread what the original seat looked like... yeah, pretty much a horror show. I broke out the razor knife and had at it. Spared nothing it gutting the seat back to it's pan for which I had already ordered a new seat "kit" with foam and cover. It's not a stock looking seat and I reckon most of you will say "WTF are you thinking?" when you ultimately see my seat finished but it had a few things going for it which I find attractive:
(1) - I could afford this option.
(2) - It provides a slightly lower seating position than stock
(3) - I SUCK at online shopping (or did I already mention this?)
Number 3 is the main reason I chose the seat kit I did because I found a near
perfect, original KZ650 seat on eBay and I really wanted it but it was an auction and not a [Buy it now] sale. Of course when the time came for the auction to end, I was at work, up to my elbows in another restoration and totally forgot. It didn't matter anyway because the auction went way up over my budget.
So back to my original pain, I mean, pan. No I mean pain:
Ain't that a beaut? Ah heck, it's only going to need a little buffing and should be good to go; no?
Back to the drawing board. I already have the seat kit on it's way and it's made to fit the stock pan. I checked my pan options online and they're pretty much non existent. Closest was an eBay seat which looked good but reading the fine print said "pan is damaged beyond use as the seat was ripped off the bike frame". Doh!
Thus, the seat is going to, for lack of a better term, take a back seat for now. I'll cut up some steel and fabricate the side sections which are so important to a seat recover because they contain all the cleats or points which secure the new cover. KZombie's scheduled rise from the dead just has to slide back a bit.
The weather here has been up and down like a toilet seat of late. Some days are awesome and perfect for painting while other days I don't even want to step foot in the garage due to the heat index or humidity but I have plugged a few minutes daily into the tank and skins in prepping for paint. These will all someday be metallic blue (the darker, stock-esque, color blue). The tank by this point was outta the electron bath and I commenced to body working it. The tank had been "pinched" - usually the result when a rider says something to the effect "What this!" and shortly after, things don't go as planned and they're body constricts like a boa around a field mouse. KZombie was no exception. I have a dent puller in my shop which I used on the tank 10 years ago and got most of the minor/easy dents out but one of the two pinches (right side) was reluctant to pull out. The weld-on anchors would simply rip off. Yet the dent was still too deep for just slapping body filler on it so I developed a method which I used on cars before. It's akin to leading (as in lead sled body working) but I use my MIG welder. Drawing short lines of weld along the deepest area of the dent on KZombie's tank to essentially fill the dent with steel instead of bondo. Of course this tank had the added need to fill in all the pimple sized pock marks all over from the rust pitting too. I have to say of all the phases of automotive restoration, the one I groan the most about is body working. Sanding. Ugh! :pinch: Still, it's a necessary evil:
The tank is about 95% ready in this pic. I missed a small pock mark up front there and the back is a subtle flat spot. It's always been my method to smear the panel from front to back with bondo and then sand back, what doesn't belong. I have found that approach most successful personally, versus spot puttying here and there and here and there. Unless you are a genius at mixing body filler consistently then spot puttying is difficult because some spots will be harder than others and when you block sand it, the harder areas wear down slower and ultimately (again, in my experience only) I end up with a wavy panel. So just smear the whole dang side and then sand off all that isn't needed. You can see the bondo is less than the thickness of a credit car in most places.
Well, the tank being finally into body working phase meant my battery charger was liberated from evil duty and I filled KZombie's battery with acid and got it charged and installed into the bike. Yay! So close. So close!
Ba da bing. Ba da Boom!
Lights and action!
I had to replace the old flasher relays of course and new bulbs and a slight custom change to the front turn signals which are
currently only signals and not running lights too. This will change later as I have the bulb holders that support both running and turn but the holders were not present when I found KZombie and so it's been a collecting of absent bits thing. The front turn signal housings are made for a late model (I think it said 90's era) Kawasaki so they look the same but must be for a European market.
The only things KZombie hasn't done electrically yet is:
- beep it's horn (don't have one of those yet)
- charge it's battery (engine hasn't run yet)
- make bang in the suck,squish,bang,blow spaces (engine hasn't run yet)
Pretty short list of things it has yet to do though and I'm happy.
I'm waiting on the seat and I still need some fuel line, vacuum line and fuel filter bits which are kinda' tied in part to one other bothersome problem I discovered - the petcock -
I pulled the petcock outta the tub, wrapped in a baggie and on the baggie is a note to myself (my 10 year ago self wrote this) "Needs diaphram and diaphram spring, all other seals replaced.
Saweet. Thank goodness I labelled the crap out of all these parts so long ago! So I hopped online and applied my shit-at-best online shopping skills... FAIL.
I cannot find a rebuild kit for this petcock which includes the diaphram spring. Even when the picture shows a spring amid all the seals, the advert later says "stock image" or similar and the verbal description does not say "diaphram spring". Dare I buy it anyway and ASSuME that the kit will actually contain a part it specifically doesn't say it has?
So I changed track and thought maybe I should just replace the whole shootin' match. Search for "1979 Kawasaki KZ650C Petcock" and see what you find. I found lots of results and how sweet it is many of them were cheap. Like I'm talking under $20 cheap! Woot! :woohoo:
BUT (always has to be a frikken but butt)
Then in the fine print (BTW, Thanks Steve for pointing out you should always read the fine print in online adverts!) and see that the mounting holes for all these damn petcocks are 34mm c/c. So I go out and check my petcock. Hmmm? It's mounting holes are 44mm c/c. WTF over?
Stumped again by the simplest of things and while hoping for some insight from the good men and women here on the forum, I decided last night to finish up what I could - the brakes needed bleeding:
Nice! I actually got another task checked off the list without brain boggling problems or disaster. The front calipers are actually holding the original brake pads that I extracted from them. They look to have been barely scuffed while the rear pads were nearly worn down to the backing plates. I bought a complete brake pad set but ultimately chose to leave the originals up front and only replace the rear pads. All the calipers were rebuilt and so far (not under any real riding conditions or loading) all are working great. They bled out and hold pressure. The front MC is a new unit as KZombie's front end was pirated for most all of it's useful stuff including the front MC which was just cut off the hydraulic line. The inidignity this poor bike must have suffered through all those years ago.
So she's a stopper now. With fingers crossed and a wee bit more time, I'm hoping to make her a goer too!
Until next week my KZR colleagues!