76 KZ900A rescue / project

I found this poor KZ900 a couple of years ago in a corner of a motorcycle repair shop. It was left there by the previous owner when it stopped running on him. He had rode it from Oklahoma to California. I bought it from the guy and dragged it home. It was HACKED, he had tried to make into the "Billy" bike from Easy Rider but wow he failed. Nothing worked on it the swingarm had been stretched and butt welded together. Engine did not run and the brakes did not work. I have no idea why he did not crash while riding it. Anyway onto the project.

Stripped the it down and realized the frame was bent and I mean BENT. Took it to a frame shop and they spent a day bending it all back to straight. I spent a week cleaning up some really bad welds and removing tabs and tubing the PO had hacked up. Sent it to the powder coaters where they coated it in what they called a Hammer tone finish. Really cool looking.

While waiting for the frame to get back I scrounged up a 1982 Suzuki GS1100E swingarm. Cleaned it up and found out the finish was in really bad shape so I sent it to the powder coaters for an aluminum finish.

While waiting for the powder coaters to get done I took the engine apart. What a MESS, every cam cap bolt holt was stripped. The PO had drilled the holes all the way thru the head and installed 1/4" bolts with nuts and where he couldn't drill thru he simply epoxied the bolts in place. I decided that head was wasted to I used a spare I had.
when I took the clutch basket off I found two of the large captured springs were missing. I found their remains in the pan. I also found where they had went thru the tranny gears while running. This destroyed several tranny gears. This poor engine must had been making some serious noises right before it stopped running. I have a spare tranny so I will be using that one.
I sent the head, 1015cc cylinder block and cases to Joe Hooper at Pit Stop Performance. He ported, installed bronze guides, valve job, bored and honed the cylinders for MTC 1075cc, 10.5-1 comp pistons. He also worked his magic on the cases. I got everything bac k from him and all my parts looked museum quality, Wow!

Engine went back together pretty easily. Really nice to work on clean and fresh parts.

All the cam tensioner parts were toast so I installed all Liska parts, pricey but really nice. I have been hanging onto a set of NOS Yosh ST1 camshafts so they also went in finally. Engine all done, took about 1 1/2 days taking my time.

More to come later.

WOW! That looks fantastic! The motor looks better than new.

Looks great!

Thanks. Got more work done. Put on Torrazi rearsets, oil cooler, forks and wheels.

Added my home brewed cam chain tensioner and cooler fittings.

Getting frame ready for engine

Engine in

Looks Fantastic! Motor is Beautiful. Planning to do a complete frame off in the near future on my '76 900...

Did the same cam chain tensioner mod like you today but have to ask about how much torque on the manual tensioner i should give?
I only turn it in with two fingers until the slack knocking vibrations disapears on the screw. Don´t want to over tight the cam chain.

That's how I tighten it down just use my fingers until I can feel the slack gone. Been doing it this way since 1978 and haven't hurt a timing chain. The way I figure it is there is no way you can over tighten it by just using your hand just dont use a wrench.