1981 KZ440 - New Winter Project

As soon as I am finished a few house renovations, I'll be starting a frame up restoration on this bike. The bike is all there, appears to be original and paint and seat are great but has some rusty issues. So far things that I will be trying to find better or have to get re-chromed are, handle bars, rear grab bar and signal light bars. Also the right handle bar control is pretty corroded, might be saved but better is always better. I'm not sure if the instrument cluster/ignition decals can be bought but these are not the best. I have a question about the mirrors. I have seen these on a few KZ's online, but are they OEM?  Enjoy the photos and I will update as I progress.

Nice find - I like the B models.

Partzilla will be your friend: www.partzilla.com/catalog/kawasaki/motor...0-b2/handlebar-81-b2

Normally there will be line drawings of the parts in question, but you can take the part numbers and search on those. I haven't seen those mirrors - the 400/440Bs I've had came with plain mirrors (no pattern thing on the back).

Nice bike. Probably the best looking tank of any of the 400/440s.
Well, either become good friends with your local chrome shop or start looking on eBay for good used replacements. 

I've been looking on eBay for a over a month and the local chrome shop is 800km away. But I'll figure it out. I'm not about to paint any of the chrome because I'm a stickler for originality. Looking on the Kawasaki parts breakdown lists and diagrams, it doesn't show the grab bar on any of them. Might have been dealer installed options?? These mirrors can be cleaned and polished but I bought brand new OEM mirrors for the H1 I restored. I haven't been able to confirm if these were Kawasaki mirrors (as I've seen them on other 400/440's) or a dealer option?

If you search eBay for the part number which partzilla has as  you get  80 KAWASAKI KZ440 KZ 440 LEFT REAR VIEW MIRROR | eBay
Not a very good specimen but this might be the type of mirror you are looking for. The ones in your pic don't look like factory Kawasaki mirrors.

If the ones I have were sold as OEM's I can refinish those. If not, I know I can get that eBay type from my local Kawasaki Dealer for about $50 a piece. The guy I bought this from said those mirrors were on it when he bought it new????

Looks like you have an interesting winter project coming ahead. 

Hi, cool project indeed. 
My KZ1000LTD is in a similar crusty state and I have been amazed at the miracles that Evaporust could do. I ordered a 5gal bucket on HomeDepot and been throwing lots of parts into it... most of it came out shiny after 12/24/48 hours. The pitting on chrome is like a volcano of rust coming from the steel underneath through a pin prick hole in the chrome, and much can be erased. Not all, but much. Advice: remove parts (bolts for example) one section at a time, prepare a ziplock and insert a piece of paper on which you write the name of the location they came from, then throw the parts/bolts in small cup-size containers of evaporust with the ziplock under the cup (you can do a bunch of batches in parallel rather than throwing it all in the bucket). When they're ripe and clean, maybe a bit of WD40 for Water Displacement and rust prevention and into the bag with the paper label. Otherwise, so many bolts, so little clarity on where they came from, unless you're an expert like that Digital Pizza dude...

I've also just ordered a Quikglo polish which also has wax inside so (according to Jay Leno) it works well at plugging such pin holes and preventing ongoing water ingress and rust egress.

Anyway, good luck with the project.
I'm rushing to finish this KZ1000 so I can grab a KZ440LTD in Oregon for my wife who wants to go riding again but probably needs a lighter beast to get into riding again...

 

I am looking forward to watching this.

Well so far its been a blast. This is not my first rodeo. After doing a few rotisserie restorations on old 914 Porsches, doing bikes is a blast. So far the bike has been completely dismantled and moved into my basement piece by piece for the restore. The engine and carbs are still complete but almost every other nut bolt and screw has been removed, cleaned polished or lubricated and ready for installation. Just slowly picking away at it. It's funny, the only parts on the bike not needing de-rustification or polish are the painted parts and the seat.(The 2 biggest parts of my H1 Restoration last year)  I've been searching evilbay for better chrome parts than I have but it's hard to buy a $25 part and pay $30 shipping to get it to Canada. The other problem is that there were very few 440 B2's made. most of them were LTD's.
Here are some photos of corrosion issues.

So far I have been able to restore everything on the bike to keep it original.
Throttle side switch, before and after.
 

Dash lights and Key area. I tried to make new decals but they didn't turn out very well yet. Even using AutoCAD it is hard to get them to print to exact scale. For now, I just went nuts with a fine Sharpie.
Does anyone know of aftermarket decals for these?