1979 KZ1000 ST Project UPDATE 12/30/07

Ok this bike has been on the back burner until this past May. The bike had about 24k on the clock and had been owned by a less than kind previous owner. I decided to make it a bit more of a streetfighterish (if that is a word) bike. I didn't crack the engine open except to replace the shims to open the tolerances up a bit (still have to order them from Z1).

Things done so far:
Down to frame strip of everything
Had frame, tank and swing arm dipped to bare metal
Frame, tank, side covers, tail piece and scoop, base and clear coated (4 coats of clear on frame); custom tank artwork too.
Cut down front fender (about 4" off each end)
Had upholstery shop custom recover the seat (Ron's)
Replaced and high temp painted rear drive unit (lower miles than original unit)
New shocks (not what I want but they have worked well for me in the past)
New Timken swing arm roller bearings
New Dunlop GT501's, 130 on the rear (Sport Tour)
New organic brake pads on both front & rear (Z1E)
Replaced all engine bolts with SS socket heads plus most frame bolts too
HEL SS brake lines with black sheathing front only
New AGM battery (OBB )
Stripped and repaints battery box, NOS metal battery retainer
Unwrap, clean, inspect and repair entire wire loom, new stock fuse box.
New DYNA coils (Z1E)and yellow DYNA wires (Z1E)
Cleaned & rebuilt 28 pumper carbs, NOS float needles, re-jetted (Z1E), rebuild kit (Z1E) complete cracking of the rack, replaced all screws & bolt with SS socket heads
New EMGO pods (Z1E)
New carb boots (GeorgeFix's)
New super bike bars (Z1E)
New Oury grips (Z1E)
NOS head light rim
New Halogen 55 headlight
Bead blasted valve cover and repaint it with engine paint along with entire engine (unfortunately it takes about 20 hours to clean and tape off an assembled engine to prep for paint)
Replaced tach drive housing and seals (GeorgeFix's)
New speedo, tach, clutch and both throttle cables from MotionPro (Z1E)
Rebuilt front forks (Z1E) & Painted
WOLO Bad Boy Air Horn
Replaced all tank rubbers, foot peg rubbers and side cover rubbers (mostly Z1E)
New bar end mirrors (Z1E)
Replacement headlight ears
Numerous gaskets and O-rings
NOS oil filter cover & bolt, new drain plug and filter spring, washer as spring was missing (Z1E)
New Drag Specialties front and rear turn signals
Polished out most of the discoloring in the MAC header and drilled first set of holes in baffle to begin the hunt for the HP to noise sweet-spot
Painted tons of misc. brackets, covers, etc.
Hand buffed engine covers, ends of valve cover, every reused bolt nut and washer
New exhaust flanges
1980 Side cover emblems set
Front brake master complete
Carb-Tune

Things to do:
Besides installing the remaining parts, fill and purge the brake systems, fill the rear unit and engine, set float level, static balance carbs and then dynamic balance. Set rear shocks to correct preload and adjust front forks to a lower in the trees setting as shocks are 3/4" shorter than stock. Build (have all the parts) the relay box for the headlight and coil relays for direct power. Lastly will be to do a total recheck of all bolt torques and wiring & cables clearances then hopefully get to ride the damn thing a couple of times before the snow season gets here!

I know I'm forgetting things bought or done to it but I'm trying not to add up the money spent so far. It's a sickness I'm sure to keep pouring money into something like this but what the hell I'm happy, insanely happy! :blink: :woohoo:

First photo is when I bought it... trust me the photo looks a lot better than it really did for real.

Post edited by: KZ_Rage, at: 2007/09/26 21:13

Post edited by: KZ_Rage, at: 2007/11/15 20:22

Post edited by: KZ_Rage, at: 2007/12/30 12:08

After a lot of buffing...

Cleaned and painted


Back in the frame.

Reassembly starts


Tail piece is just a spare one, the one for the bike is still at the painters



Post edited by: KZ_Rage, at: 2007/09/26 21:11

Post edited by: KZ_Rage, at: 2007/10/05 18:41

Thats looking great!

I for one can appreciate all the hard work that went in to that bike. Nice work, your effort really shows.

looks great Your doing what I have planned for my 79.

It looks great...but dammit Jim, we need more pics!

8trackmind wrote:

It looks great...but dammit Jim, we need more pics!

:laugh: Yes!!! More pics, I say!!!

Went through pretty much the same stuff with the rebuild of my 79 ST except I powdercoated the engine... that means I had it totally disassembled and rebuilt the engine when I put it back together. Curious about the seat recover job... who did it? Looks pretty nice.

Local guy did the work, think it was about $75. Pretty soft vinyl, will have to see how it holds up.

Wow! Powder coated! Who did all the work bead blasting to coating it? If I might ask, what did that cost you George? I have heard that that kind of work in Texas is much better priced that around here. I'd like to see a close up of how it turned out as that should look really smooth and clean.

OK here are some more photos. This is the relay box I built for the two relay's for the halogen head light and the coil power relay. Just reused some old side cover grommets to make the wire pass-thru's grommets.

Since I'm using Dyna coils I had to eliminate the resistor and just ended up routing the wires into the box that had gone to the resistor. Makes for having a nice disconnect in the line if i ever need to take the box out for any reason. I mounted the box using the bottom mounting point for the old air cleaner box.

Edited: lost a bunch of photos on the VP site so trying to find these or will update with some new ones

Well I had it running some what, needed to dial in the carbs when #4 carb started overflowing. I thought I had the float too high, turned out to be what most everyone else that has seen it as water contamination. Odd thing is though that I had just cleaned them 2 months earlier and sat them aside. The fuel was new Shell gas and in a brand new aux tank. The floats actually left some material behind where they were sticking to the inside of the bowls.

Yet another delay, will can Z1 tomorrow and get new bowl gaskets, hope can have them back on the bike soon.


Post edited by: KZ_Rage, at: 2007/11/15 20:18

Bowl...