The Shady KZ1000 Restomod

Hi, My name is Souleymane and I live in Canada (Gatineau - Ottawa area)

I started working on cars in 2014 in my parent's driveway. Had a 2001 Subaru Impreza coupé and a 1991 Toyota MR2. Life was great until my father decided he was done with me colonizing his driveway. He gave me an ultimatum that I ignored so he got my MR2 towed behind my back and I had to give up my Subaru a couple of years later. We're on good terms now. Life is too short for grudges.

  Although I never lost my passion for wrenching, I stopped doing it. I was mad. I wanted my own piece of land with my own garage so that no one could tell me anything about my toys. I guess the saying is true, Men never grow up, their toys do.I looked for myself for a long time, different jobs, different programs in school, different failed businesses. Lots of lessons learned and experience gained. I finally had a breakthrough in 2019 with my real estate career, I also started a property management company two years later. I enjoy what I do but it comes with a great deal of stress and not a lot of free time.I needed a project this year. It was long overdue. I had just started getting into motorcycles, at 30. Early mid-life crisis ? Perhaps. After watching Great Teacher Onizuka for the 10th time in my life I decided a KZ would be the perfect bike for me. But not any KZ, A broken KZ so that I could fix it in my garage. So my impulsive self pulled the trigger on a 900$ 1981 Kawasaki KZ 1000 sold by two shady gentlemen. I was able to get the price down to 800$ which I now realize was way too much considering all the problems the bike has and the fact that it has no registration... I know I'm crazy and impulsive sometimes. It can be a good thing but also a bad one.I checked the Carfax report as well as the police database and it is not stolen so I should be able to register it once it is restored. If not I'm fucked but at least I got to wrench on something and that was the point!

Here is an image of the bike the day I fell in love with it :

 

Hopefully you can see this, it's my first time posting a project on a forum.

Got the bike in the backyard temporarily:

 

Visible damage so far :

• bent handlebars
• brake calipers dangling off the brake line
• dented fuel tank
• headlight dangling off the wires
• Ignition assembly dangling
• gauge wires, you gessed it, dangling... 

And to top it all off, a broken spark plug that someone tried fixing with clear caulking 

I was able to get the spark plug out without damaging the threads! 

 

I noticed scoring on the cylinder wall where the spark plug repair attempt was made. The more I investigate the issues on the KZ, the more my dreams of riding it this summer are fading away. At least I am practicing with my driving school so there's that!

Compression time!

 

The results are:

1. 130 PSI
2. 140 PSI
3. 15 PSI (Broken plug one)
4. 65 PSI (I was surprised by this one)

with oil in the last two cylinders :

3. 180 PSI
4. 135 PSI

- More to come when I get time-


 

Welcome from the UK, looks like you got some work to do there (plenty of info and support here) I have been working on my 82 for a couple of years now 

Hi Wookie thanks for the welcome message! I believe I have stumbled upon your build and the way you modified your air box! Great stuff! I believe the bike is yellow right?

Cheers!

That's the one, the yellow is "high build" primer

Welcome Souleymane!
You are a brave man...but I admire you.  Welcome to KZRider.

Nice! I will keep a close eye on your build!

Thank you sir! There is a thin line between bravery and craziness, not always sure on which side of the line I fall onto. 

Welcome to the fun!

Time for an update!!

What's new since the last update? Well, I'm a dad now 

Since the engine was clearly not going to start, I started taking everything apart.

Head

 

Carbs



The head had some obvious damage, I did the fuel test and 3 out of 4 cylinders were leaking like crazy. I took it to the machine shop right away for a rebuild and a resurface.

 

The more I dug in this Shady KZ, the more I understood  why they were selling it. I started rebuilding the carb.

   


But before I could finished my attention shifted to one of the DIRTY pistons.



Number 3 of course, the one with the broken spark plug glued with caulk. Previous owner probably ran it like this for a bit with the broken spark plug tip in the cylinder. The result? Scored cylinder wall, seized rings on the piston and a broken piston. Here are photos of the damage.

 




Sooo.. I started looking at a big bore piston kit   Turning a negative into more cc's! Then I figured with new pistons why not new carburetor?? The exhaust was pretty rusty too, I could'n find 4 into 2 so I had to settle for a 4 into 1. Basically I ordered a bunch of things off of Z1 Enterprises. Here is a cool photo I took.

 

The pistons are not in the image as they were at my local machine shop so they could bore out those cylinders and take out the scoring from #3.

I started digging more into the bike and figured I might as well start from scratch. My bike was basically on shelves now haha 

 





More in the next post!



 

Good progress, what piston kit did you decide on?

Here is the missing attachement from the other post

 

Once I had the bare frame, I started cleaning it and noticed another reason why the bike was sold to me lol. I have never seen a worse welding job and I'm not even that good of a welder . A good excuse to pull out the welder though! I started repairing the frame!

 







 
 
 


This was actually pretty fun to do but the metal on this frame is super thin which was a real challenge. I took the frame to a local powder coating shop with other parts I want coated. I am basically bike less aside from my oil burning KLR650. I am waiting on some parts on eBay to get the powder coating started and I just got the parts to fix the head today, some seals, a new valve and guides. Things should start moving soon.

Had a bad luck when digging in deeper into the engine... TWO BROKEN CRANKSHAFT BOLTS.. And I can't find replacements online anywhere. Let me know if you know where to get some. I thought ARP made bolts for everything!?

 

 

See you on the next update!

Thanks!