KZ1100A Top End Refresh

You push in the tool with your palm. The wedge goes in the same side. The cam lobe points away from the other cam. You will notice it will be at TDC.
Steve

Well I found the time this weekend to get back to work on the KZ1100. The top cover went on okay. I put a light coat of copper gasket maker around each of the new end seals. Slid a bolt through them and engaged a couple threads to ensure the seal holes line up properly. After letting the seals sit like that for about an hour I installed the cover and torqued all 452 of the cover bolts down.

Thanks to this site I knew I had to remove the tensioner before I installed the cover. I had that off before hand and while I had it out I was able to separate the tensioner and give everything a good clean both inside and outside. A word to the wise, there is a very small guide pin inside the tensioner that can fall out if you push on the tensioner rod. Make sure you keep track of that little guy.

After assembly I spun the engine around and everything seemed to spin smoothly. Now it's onto the carburators.

Does anyone know what the stock main jet and pilot jet? The PO said he went 4 over on the main and 1 over on the pilot and I'd like to be able to confirm if that is the case.

I've seen that main jet sizes other than 120 are 'for race use only' so I assume that 120 is the factory main jet but if anyone knows for sure please share. I've not seen anything about the pilot jets.

Have you done the valves? Looks like the valves were leaking.
Steve

SWest wrote: Have you done the valves? Looks like the valves were leaking.
Steve

I lapped the valves when I had the head off. Bought a compression tester and a leak down tester and plan to check everything this week. I did not test prior to assembly so I have no baseline to compare.

From what I've read the engine should be warm to do a proper compression test but I suspect that I will learn something if the engine's cold, no?

The main jets were 127.5s and the pilots were 40s. The needles were also shimed up with a washer under the clip. From what I can gather these jets are bigger than stock. The mains are 3 sizes bigger than stock (120) and the pilot is 1 size bigger than stock (37.5).

Given that the spark plug threads were pretty black I'm going to assume that this setup is too rich. So now I get to start the experimental process of getting the carbs setup right.

The bike has air pods and a 4-1 exhaust. I plan on converting back to a factory air box and keeping the 4-1 exhaust. With that setup I think a good first attempt is to leave the pilots and shimed needles and drop the mains to one size over (122.5). I don't want to change more than one variable at a time to drill down the proper setup.

If there is any wisdom out there, other than a good luck wish, I'm willing to listen.

Well the carbs are rebuilt and back on the bike. I didn't have all the right hardware to mount my factory air box so I put the pods back on for the maiden voyage after the rebuild.

I connected a fuel hose to the inlet of the carbs and filled the bowls for a test fire. To my great joy she fired up without much trouble. That is after she backfired through the carbs once and I realized I reversed the wiring on the coils :blink:

I kept enough fuel in the carbs to warm up the engine for the compression test. Shut her down, pulled the plugs and completed the test. My readings were low, between 110-120 psi. That is much less that spec of 150-180 so that's not so great.

The bike still seems to run well. Pulls strong around 5k RPM and runs smooth. Maybe I can live with the low compress. Unfortunately I don't have pre rebuild compression results with which I can compare but I have not noticed a degradation of performance.

The smaller mains have also not seemed to dimish performance. I am getting no lean backfiring on deceleration and the bike seems to run well on startup and after warming up. I'll have to check the plugs after a bit to see how they look but I'm hopeful the ratio's correct, or at least better than before.

The oil leak appears to also have gone away and since that was one of the primary reasons for the rebuild, I'd say it has been a success.

When the airbox hardware comes in I'll install the factory air system, minus the vacuum part, and see if the performance changes.

Thanks for the help, tips, and suggestions. It's always nice to have people who've been there before point out some of the landmines.

daveo wrote: Never happened again after doing this...

this is gold. I have about 6 helicoils in mine. some from me, some from the previous owner