Deacon's 1978 KZ650 Cafe Project

I've been meaning to do a write up of the project I worked on this past winter, but I never seemed to get time. Guess I'm too busy riding

I've been wanting a bike, especially a KZ, for some years now and last summer I finally had the time and means to be able to get one. I looked for a couple of months to no avail until a '78 650 SR went for sale just up the road, I wasn't too long snapping it up. It was rough around the edges and needed a lot of TLC. Also, at this time I never had my license so since I couldn't ride it, and winter was nearing, I started the cafe transformation the weekend after I bought it. Here are a couple of pics of how it looked when I got it.

As you can see, cosmetically it was a bit of a mess. The seat was horendous, the two side covers were different colours and missing their badges, the tank wasn't a SR tank and the paint was like sandpaper, exhaust was really rusty and dented, there were no tubes connecting the carbs to the air filter box,...and the list goes on. There was also a lot of black overspray where it looked like the seller tried his best to quickly cover up some bad spots. He did offer to paint the side covers to match the tank, but I told him not to bother since I would be painting it all anyway.

A lot of these things never deterred me from buying the bike because I know most of them would be changed during the cafe transformation.

Mechanically though it was pretty sound. It started with no issues, ran good, brakes were fine, etc.

The weekend after picking it up I started the fun part...dismantling part. Since this was my first street bike and first time I've worked on a bike I took lots of pics so that I could refer to them when the time came to put the bits back on. Here's a couple of pics of it getting stripped down. I only have a small garage and also park my car in there so I never totally took the bike apart since I never really had the room to put all the parts

Nice rusty, dented exhaust...but since I'm on a tight budget it will have to do for now. I'll think of someway to clean it up and make it presentable.

Few more things stripped off (carbs, headlight, turn signals, etc) and bike moved into it's winter resting place in the garage, ready to be worked on.

Carbs were a bit grimy on the outside. I never took them apart at this time to see how dirty they were inside. I did notice the choke lever and collar on the number one carb was broke. Will have to find or fab one up for that.

Dang, I can't even get one project finished and you're already on another... LOL!

A friend in Vegas contacted me to look up a KZ900 VIN number for him... In doing so I asked him how much does the guy want for it. Replies $200, bike is in parts but had run.

I informed my buddy to buy it immediately, turns out the VIN number is one that was built in Lincoln Nebraska! I also informed him whatever he does, do NOT modify this bike...

Some people just have all the luck!

Old Man Rock

Old Man Rock wrote:

Dang, I can't even get one project finished and you're already on another... LOL!

A friend in Vegas contacted me to look up a KZ900 VIN number for him... In doing so I asked him how much does the guy want for it. Replies $200, bike is in parts but had run.

I informed my buddy to buy it immediately, turns out the VIN number is one that was built in Lincoln Nebraska! I also informed him whatever he does, do NOT modify this bike...

Some people just have all the luck!

Old Man Rock

No, this is still my first, and only, bike. I just never had time to post the progress while I was doing it Just getting around to it now.

Pretty cool find OMR, I'd love to stumble on something like that.

Since the seat was basically trash and I knew I wouldn't be using it, I couldn't resist doing a rough carve to see how a KZ would look with a cafe tail

I took off the engine cover that covers the clutch and front sprocket to discover a huge mess of dirt, grass, twigs and grease...mmmmm. Looks like it hasn't been cleaned in quite some time. The same sort of heavy grime was underneath on the engine pan. Not too hard to clean just a pain.

One of the first things I wanted to get out of the way was painting the frame. It was in pretty good shape considering the rest of the bike. I only had to sand down a few little rust bubbles. I also, shaved away the seat hinges and helmet lock from the frame as I wouldn't be needing them with the new seat. I used a flap disc on the angle grinder for this, worked great.

I used Tremclad Semi-Gloss black to paint the frame, and it came out pretty good.

After getting the frame out of the way I moved on to the forks. They were very dull and the clear coat was peeling a lot. I stripped the clear and set in on polishing them. I first wet sanded; starting with 400 grit and worked my way up to 2000. At this time I never had my polisher I resorted to polishing by hand and the dremel. Pretty time consuming. I later picked up a bench grinder and polishing wheels to make the other tasks easier.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the forks.