Deacon's 1978 KZ650 Cafe Project

Wow, nice work. I started polishing mine by hand as well, you have much more patience than I do, I ended up painting mine!

Nice work so far, can't wait to see the progress.

Thanks NightScreams, believe me a little while into it I was considering painting them , but I told myself that they needed to be polished for the look I had in my head.

Next up was the controls. They were not in too bad a shape but the paint was dull and the letters were dirty and hard to read. I again used Tremclad semi-gloss black and then Tremclad gloss white, yellow and red for the lettering. For the lettering I just painted the over the letters and then wiped off the excess. The result is not perfect but much better than before.

Nice job painting the light control. Those tiny letters scare me:ohmy:
That clutch cover pic is a reminder of my last weekends work on my project. So much chain-oil and dirt.

How much you got left to do?

Thanks John, yeah the dirt really accumulates there. Actually, the bike is pretty much finished and I've been riding it the past two months, but I'm only now getting to posting the process. Never seemed to have time when I was working on it.

Well get to posting man, 'cause this is very good.

-KR

:lol:

Bad Kaw wrote:

Well get to posting man, 'cause this is very good.

-KR
:lol:

Thanks for the prodding

After taking off the side covers multiple times during the project I noticed cracks starting to appear where the posts were. I first noticed the cracks from the front but they have gone all the way through the side cover. Looking at the design of these posts I figured it was only a matter of time before they all just cracked off. Not sure why Kawasaki never gave the piece more support in these areas.

Since this is an extreme budget build I had to set about fixing them instead of buying new ones. So, I cut up some small sections of ABS pipe and glued them behind each post to act as a strut. This made the world of difference, piece seems much more solid. I also made a mixture of ABS shavings and acetone to make a black goo, which I used to fill in and fix the hair line cracks. I can now take them off without worrying about snapping a post off.

Here is a pic of one of the struts. They are not pretty but I didn't want to spend much time on something that will not be seen.

Next up for the side covers was dealing with the missing emblems. Both of the covers that came with the bike were missing the emblems so the PO gave me some stickers that he sourced. The appear to have been made just for this purpose as they were exactly the same size and look of the real ones. First I've seen of stickers for these parts though. I didn't think they would look that good and the real emblems that I priced were far too much for me, so I decided to go ahead and shave them.

I just used body filler to cover over the indents and sanded it smooth. Seemed to work well enough.

After getting the side covers smoothed out enough I primed and painted them. I was planning on going with a flat black scheme to the bike and so I used Dupli-color High Heat engine paint to paint the side covers. As you'll see, when I got to painting the tank and seat I changed direction

Next up was the rear shocks. You could tell that the PO did a quick spray with black paint to try and cover up the rust and flaking chrome. I didn't bother dismantling the shocks so I just cleaned off all the rust and chrome and painted them with Tremclad semi-gloss black. I didn't want to get any overspray on the rod so I cut up a few McDonalds straws and slid them in between the springs to snap them on over the rods. Worked really well.

Here's a shot of one of the shocks almost ready for paint.

...and a side-by-side.

I got a few goodies in the mail from Z1, among which were my new clubman handlebars and also new headlight ears. I couldn't resist quickly throwing them on to see how they looked. I liked the look but now they really make the stock gauges look extremely high. I didn't modify them for this iteration but plan on doing something this coming winter (either new guages, or fab up another lower bracket).

Been a bit too busy riding to post anything lately

The next thing I started in on was the exhaust. This was an exreme budget build so even though the exhaust that came with the bike was in rough shape I had to make do with it and make it as presentable as I could. There was nothing really structurally wrong with the exhaust, just the chromoe was pitted and exrememly rusty. Also, both tailpipes had rather large dents in them.

Here are a few pics of the the headers before I started in on them: