New from SW Utah, USA

Hello All,

Glad to see such an active forum with such good information. I just picked up a 1980 KZ650 LTD (08/79 build date) with 14k miles on it this past weekend that runs and drives (in the loosest sense) albeit a bit rough and leaks like a sieve from the petcock and carbs. So already pulled the carbs and plan on doing a rebuild once the parts all come in. Altogether its a complete bike other than some minor modifications from the previous owner (weird switch activated marker lights on the tailpipes) and the original rack/passenger backrest is gone. As you can see, it was the candy red color but my guess is that the bike just sat out in the desert sun for a long while which resulted in the major fading. Minimal rust except in the mirrors (losing backing and rusting out) and one of the turn signals has the reflector plate completely eaten away by rust. Everything else looks to be in good shape. My plan is to do a minor restoration into something that looks fairly OEM or OEM+ with minor, tasteful modifications to update the look without removing the OEM quality of the bike (not hacking it up into a Cafe type bike).

So far, my major plans are to swap the LTD handlebars for something closer to the standard bikes (a Euro bend bar), recover the seat with more of a brown leather tuck-and-roll style, replace all of the aged and hard rubber bits with fresh rubber, swap the cast wheels for spoked wheels with some good modern tires, add a second rotor and caliper up front (along with a new or rebuilt master cylinder from a twin rotor bike) for better stopping, and finally paint it preferably something a little more on the dark green scale with an off-white two-tone and some gold pinstriping.

Any tips, tricks, or pitfalls that folks have run into on their own builds are always appreciated but I will be looking through the forum posts with any questions I have! Thank you again and looking forward to learning!

-Hayden

Welcome Hayden.

Sounds like you've got a good idea what to do with her.
Try to stick with genuine Mikuni carb parts.
Better to clean the stock jets than use aftermarket odd sized jets.

Not a lot of miles on her, so that's a bonus.
Not sure if spoke wheels are a dirrect swap, as the forks and the swingarm are a little different over the years.
I prefer Mag wheels.





 

Welcome to the forum!

Welcome from the UK Hayden

Welcome to an awesome forum,
Rich.
New Zealand.
 

Welcome Hayden...welcome to KZRider.

Welcome to the fun, Hayden

rstnick wrote:

Welcome Hayden.

Sounds like you've got a good idea what to do with her.
Try to stick with genuine Mikuni carb parts.
Better to clean the stock jets than use aftermarket odd sized jets.

Not a lot of miles on her, so that's a bonus.
Not sure if spoke wheels are a dirrect swap, as the forks and the swingarm are a little different over the years.
I prefer Mag wheels.






 

Thank you for the advice on the Mikuni carbs! Probably good advice for all parts where proper function is key to the bike working!

Thank you all for the warm welcome! Looking forward to learning and getting this bike back on the road!

Welcome.

A friend of mine restored a '78 SR a few years back. His was missing the gas cap, and that was the hardest part to find for him on his whole build.