Hey from Oregon!! Great to be here...

Hello! Great to be on this Forum. .. .

I bought this 1981 KZ550 C1 last fall for a pretty damn good price. It's a second bike, my first being a naked and modified 2002 Suzuki SV650 which is the purest source of joy in my life. This KZ is a bit of a fixer upper but it runs! or, it ran. I killed it.

not really. okay. So the petcock leaks and the carbs need lots of work and over time a near full gas tank will make its way empty just sitting. magic. And the brakes are rreeeaaallly squishy it leaks fork oil all over the rotors but WHATever, it's gorgeous right?I got it as a projecty endeavor and am here now to unveil to you all for the first time my total lack of experience and knowledge when it comes to actually working on bikes and having them come out BETTER than when I started

Approaching winter here in Portland, OR, it's time to rip it apart and fix it up and have it together by next riding season. FIRST: Petcock replacement or rebuild. THEN: Carb cleaning and rebuild. that might be it for the first round, it'll take me long enough to figure out.

I will have lots and lots of questions for the tech forum. a lot. beginning with tips on how to get the damn carbs off in the first place.

Thanks for having me! what I've read through here already seems like an awesome, informative forum and I look forward to being an active member.
Here it is the very night I got it home, still in the package.

Welcome I am in Troutdale, so if you need something that is local i might be able to help. Though I am a 900-1000 guy I have worked on the 650 for a guy. Welcome and so it begins!

Welcome Nunzi...glad you made it.

cool 550...welcome...i've asked a few sv650 owners for a review and it takes em ten minutes to tell me all the things they like...seems to be a great bike for a lot of doifferent skill levels too...

i am in the process of getting rid of a similiar petcock issue on one of my bikes...i boogered the threads on the econo petcock in the below link and am waiting on a new petcock...i should have dry traced the adapter plate and filed it with the plate off....simple instructions are included and i just rushed it...so i cant finish my review...but i'm told this is a cheap simple fix to those vacum style petcocks...see the link....welcome ...craig

www.z1enterprises.com/detail.aspx?ID=1742

Welcome. Another Oregonian rider here. Like School Teacher, I'm more familiar with the 900/1000 models, but I've helped a friend rebuild a KZ550 a couple years ago, so I've had some experience with it. I've got a 550 service manual in PDF format. If you need it, just PM me your email address and I'll send it to you.

Regarding the petcock, if you'd like to stick with the vacuum style petcock (rather than the manual solution suggested by Tri), this may be an option for you:

www.z1enterprises.com/detail.aspx?ID=1716

I used this on my KZ1000-B2 (with an A2A tank that had the bolt-on petcock), and it works great. I had to get a little creative with the fuel line routing (since the hose barb is pointed toward the back of the bike), but I was able to make it work. I think I may have also had to use a file to slightly enlarge the oval hole for the fuel sender post.

I wrote about how I did it (with pictures) in this thread.

If your tank has the bolt-on petcock, with the bolts spaced 44mm apart (which I think it does), this might work for you.

Hey thanks for the tips y'all! I'm sure I'll have many many specific questions that will come up as I dig further into the bike. for now, last night, I removed the tank and seat and spent entirely too much time and energy removing the carb assembly and air box. I'll post photos and move this discussion probably to the project section as soon as I take some and link to that here.

The petcock is bolt-on with 34mm spacing. It doesn't leak like actually drop gas out the petcock body as such, but there seems to be no setting (pri-on-res) that actually reliably restricts the flow of gas through the tap - - and then through to the carbs and then out the drain tubes onto my garage floor. without fail.

So now the carbs are off it's time to figure out how to clean them, which I found some very very useful threads on that around here somewhere. This is fun but a little nervous because while I've got a few solid years and tens of thousands of miles on bikes behind me, I really don't know what the s#!t I'm doing here when it comes to the maintenance and repair. Hooray for experimental project bikes.

I have a huge pile of questions already mounting up but I'll save them for the appropriate tech threads.

and thanks again for your help.

Welcome,

I'm originally from Oakridge. In fact my parents and brother are still there. After brief stints in Alabama and Nebraska I'm back in Florida for the second time. I kinda miss the NW Winters since I used to snowboard but I have found that Bodyboarding and a very long riding season are definately worth the trade off.