New member 1976 kz400

Hi all,
My name is Zach I'm 27 and a full time college student. I just started working on my grandfathers 1976 kz400. He passed away recently and I thought it would be a nice tribute to him to get his old bike running. He had it stored in his garage since the 80's and I'm not sure as to the extent he prepared it for such a long hibernation. About six years ago he and I started working on it but we didn't get much further then getting a new battery and spark plugs. Just yesterday I cleaned up the chrome with some fine steel wool, as it all had some slight surface rust. I also took off the tank and used the por-15 motorcycle tank repair kit to clean out the slight surface rust and seal it with the tank sealer included. I have very little to no mechanical experience but I am inquisitive, eager to learn, and (maybe) mechanically inclined. If anyone has some pointers or ideas on where to begin it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for having me as a member. I have to say I'm glad to find a forum like this. Thanks in advance for your words.

Nice bike!
Definitely worth restoring,to many good bikes getting chopped up these days.
The carbs on the early KZ400s can be a bear to get working right.
Carbs and petcock are likely to be all crudded up.
I suggest you get a repair manual,either factory service,Clymer,or downloaded.
Then start with basics,check the oil,compression test,ignition,then carbs

Welcome Zach.
Sorry to hear about your Grandfather.
Looks to be a very nice kz400.
As mentioned, get yourself a service manual and start reading.
Doesn't take much to maintaine these bikes, and being old school technology, not to difficult to work on.

Welcome aboard; pretty bike! Ed

I restored my Fathers bike, nice to keep it in the family.

Be careful sitting the bike outside, my Z1's paint faded very quickly after pulling it out of storage. Besides that, dont throw anything out. A bike like that original is best.

@Nebr_Rex- Yeh I'm definitely planning on keeping the bike as original as possible. And thanks for the info. I'm looking into a manual right now. Any preference as to Clymer or Haynes? One website I found claimed that Haynes had more illustrations and more color pages. Anyways thanks for the warm welcome

@rstnick- Thanks for your kind words. Looking forward to learning on this great piece of old school tech.

@650ed- Thanks Ed!

@Kidkawie- I'll keep that in mind about the paint, thanks for the heads up. I plan on keeping everything original on the bike if I can. It's already factory original (not counting the roll bar) and that's the way I like it. Thanks for the advice.

And thank you all for looking and the warm welcome.

Free manual download --
home.comcast.net/~loudgpz/GPZweb/Mnls/Kz...ase99924_1018_06.pdf

More info:

www.armbell.com/forum/index.php?c=6&sid=...571a51a&mforum=kz400

www.kz400.com/

home.comcast.net/~loudgpz/GPZweb/Mnls/Mnls.html

Good Fortune!