VERY oxidized engine.

My bike is not a z1 but a 81 gpz 1100. my motor came from the factory with the whole engine painted or powdercoated black. I live in Florida where right now its pretty hot. I ride mine pretty much every day and havent noticed anything??I will say I plan on installing a oil cooler.

Take a look at the 4th posting down in the link. Those pieces were vapor blasted and they look better than new:

forums.kz650.info/index.php?topic=5475.45

Must be registered to see what you linked to...

Got ya covered.....

What is vapor blasted?

I never heard of Vapor blasting either, I'd like to know more.
Interested to see how the engine comes out.
Trees are easy, remove, blast, paint or powdercoat.

Checked mine with a magnet the other day, did not stick, so I was considering polishing mine. Not sure of the materials used on them throughout the years, I bet Ed knows...

If you're that concerned with it, I would just replace the cam cover. Looks too far gone to mess with, you can find decent used ones for $50. On the other hand, the head, cylinder and block look pretty decent. Unless you're going to do a full blown resto, I would either polish by hand or hit it with a soda blaster.

Here's my engine after I soda blasted it in the frame. When I did my resto I hadn't built my own soda blaster yet and polished, or tried to polish, my engine. I spent two long days with wire wheels, rags, etc. And it never looked as good as 30 minutes with a box of baking soda.

When I had my free 1105 motor shipped up to Montana {$4500 SBM motor in 77} it looked like it had been used as an anchor for a S Fl fishing boat. I wire brushed every inch of it & painted it black and bought an Ebay valve cover & clutch cover for it. If I had it to do over again Id look at the soda blasting but they didnt have that when I did mine. It came out pretty good but was a ton of work

Rotten Egg wrote: I never heard of Vapor blasting either, I'd like to know more.
Interested to see how the engine comes out.
Trees are easy, remove, blast, paint or powdercoat.

Checked mine with a magnet the other day, did not stick, so I was considering polishing mine. Not sure of the materials used on them throughout the years, I bet Ed knows...

On my tree the top clamp is a non-magnetic alloy but the bottom clamp is magnetic so it's either steel or cast iron. Ed

The bottom clamps are cast steel. The top is aluminum.

WOW! I have to try this. It looks great!

Yes, the top tree is aluminum, and it does polish up very nicely.