A Newbies Adventures in Maintenanceland!

Just got off the horn with my auto mechanic. I am going to get my head and block soda blasted. For the price off all the solvents and cleaners and crap I have bought to clean the burnt on grime I could have had it done already. It pays to be on good terms with your techs!

I can't wait to sit down with my dremel and a CLEAN cylinder head to spiffy it up...

Lesson learned - letting someone else do some of the work is not cheating.

Perhaps would not be sufficiently aggressive, but am wondering if a fine wire wheel on dremmel tool might help remove remnants of base gasket without damaging the machined surfaces on crankcase and cylinder base.

Good Luck!

The gasket cleaner got the stuff that still resembled paper in between 1+2 and 3+4 off pretty good, but the black residue can't be shook. I got a plastic brush wheel attachment for my dremel which I will try, I'll post results when I get 'um.

I might not need to try this though as I am getting my head and block soda blasted...so we'll see

I got into Stargate. Even tho I'm Canadian I think McGiver is such a dweeb. And besides, the Cylon babes are way too hot. I get enough grief around here for Battlestar. I honestly don't know any other scifi fans.

Your project is tremendously interesting to me I've never dismantled an engine before. I can see a black oily mess on top of the #1 piston thru the spark plug holeon my kz900. All the others are shiny, but compression is way down in #1 & 2. Suspect piston rings in 1 & 2, and valve guide in #1.

My problem is I know just enough mechanical stuff to get myself into trouble. I hope to pick up a '78 kz650 in the next couple of days to practice on before attempting it on Galactica. Yes it has a name. It was my wife's idea.

Yeah, I tried BSG, but I couldn't deal with it. I found it to be a preachy pretentious drama set in space, I like my scifi cheasey, like SG1 or SGA. I find SGU to be a super obvious rip off of BSG, kinda bugs me cause I will watch it just cause I am a fan of the franchise.

Anyways, yeah I am in the same boat as you regarding skill level; I am handy and resourceful and have enough knowledge of how things work to feel comfortable and mess things up! I hope this thread will give you some pointers and tips (like OMR's gasket tips above) so you don't have to go through the process of wondering and asking and taking a whole winter to figure it out. To be honest, and this is being said before I have done any of the re-assembly, it is not as bad as I thought. I expected this to be a simple head gasket and valve adjustment, look at me now I am getting my head soda blasted and am preparing to re-ring my pistons and lap my valves! Never thought it would end up this way but it's not too hard. Take your time and stay organized. I am mildly obsessive so all I do these days is work on it and read my manual, so it's not too hard for me to stay focused, but I am sure you can do it too.

Like I said before it will certainly take longer than you thought, and will cost much more than you expect. My budget for this was 3-400$, I am almost double that already and still need ss brake lines and some misc stuff from Z1E, not to mention a new front tire...damn.

Here is what I got in the mail today! Like Mitch Hedberg once said "The UPS man is a drug dealer and he doesn't even know it..." It's soooo true, and Jeff Saunders is Pablo Escobar!

i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll231/9am53/c.jpg

I almost have all the gaskets cleaned off real good, and I got my Flex-Hone in the mail a few days ago, so I am ready to hone the muthaphuqa!

BTW: For all newbies doing this sort of this for the first time, I found that the Permatex gasket remover did an ok job at loosening the big chunks, but the black goo that was stuck to the cylinder block and crankcase from the base gasket would not budge. I found the best way to remove that stuff was to simple work on it with a razor, I found trying to keep the razor flat (to reduce gouging the aluminum) and at about 45* angle got the majority off, then once it was looking pretty decent I started holding the razor vertical and spcraping that way. It sounds aweful but it removed the last remaining bits and got it done. I have been working on it for a couple weeks on and off...but it's worth it for sure, hopefully I won't have any leaks now!

I digress, now that I am ready to start rebuilding everything back so that I can turn my attention to other aspects of the bike, I have a dumba$$ question about my drill! How can I find out the rotating speed of my drill? There is a range of acceptable speeds that the hone works best at, and I want to make sure that my drill works within the range. Secondly, my reverse is slower than my forward drill drive, would it be a good idea to just flip the block over instead of switching to reverse to get the cross hatching pattern? I am nervous about the honing process! :blush: I'll just keep everything lubed up and follow the instructions. I think I will be doing this either this weekend or early next week and I'll try to take a vid and link it in from youtube.

Thirdly, this is kind of jumping the gun, but once I get my ring gaps set and everything ready for reassembly would I spray my gasket glue on my base gasket, put the block on, then just place the head on top and torque it down with all the head nuts? or do you just need to torque the outside ones for pressure?

i'd stick to working on the zk900 rather then trying to practice on a 650 it believe it or not is more complex than the 900 it has a plain bearing crank instead of the old stand by awesomely simple rollor bearing set-up like the 900 has. it's not that it anyworse just that it mat be a bit much for a relitivly new mechanic to wrap there heads around making sure you have proper main journal and rod journal clearances can be a real pain if your doing it for the first time.

9am53 wrote:

Here is what I got in the mail today! Like Mitch Hedberg once said "The UPS man is a drug dealer and he doesn't even know it..." It's soooo true, and Jeff Saunders is Pablo Escobar!

i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll231/9am53/c.jpg

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: Nice box o' loot!



...and yeah, the 650's are PITA to work on compared to 900/1000's!

I just got the head back from the shop after soda blasting, it looks great!

i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll231/9am53/d001.jpg
i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll231/9am53/d002.jpg
i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll231/9am53/d003.jpg
i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll231/9am53/d004.jpg

The chambers and ports used to be black as poo, and I was not prepared to spend the next 2 months cleaning them out ever so carefully, so I took it to the shop and it took them like half an hour to get it all off. Some of the fins still have some crap on them, it is not 100% perfect, but the important parts are perfect so I am happy.

I took the head home and noticed some baking soda residue so I did the most logical thing...took it in the shower with me :blush: My girlfriend is jealous of my bike, and I think she may have good reason to be! Anyways, I got it really nice and clean and I put some Vaseline on the valve seats to keep them rust free till I get the head to the garage and lap them. I thought the valve guides were bronze (they have a bronzy tinge) but they are in fact steel.

NEWB NOTE: valve guides will rust, I found a very slight amount of surface rust on the tops and inside the guides. It was kind of scary, but I cleaned them out really well, and like I said it was very slight and it came off readily. I took a Qtip and put Vaseline all over them to keep them clean for the time being till I put it all together. I will brake clean the Vaseline off and assembly lube them once I get to the garage tomorrow after work. Regarding assembly lube, how much does one use? I thought I would put a nice even layer on the guides, stems, and seals to make sure they are all protected. Other than just globbing a whole bottle all over the place is there a such thing as too much assembly lube for the top end? I don't want to overdo it, but I don't want things to be too unprotected.

Any tips on how much assembly lube to use? Tonight I would like to clean all the Vaseline off and start lapping / rebuilding my head. For lapping I was thinking I could put the grinding compound on the seat and valve, then put the valve through the guide and hook up my drill to the end on the valve stem. This way I could just use the slow speed of the drill to do the work, do a few spins one way, then reverse. Has anyone done this, or is this not adviseable for some reason?

My kz550 manual says that in a pinch you can use a hose clamp in place of a piston ring compressor, seems like a good idea! How long would the clamp remain on the rings before I can try to slide the pistons in the cylinders?

So I went ahead and lapped the valves in. I cleaned everything off really well, put some assembly lube on the valve stems and some grinding compound on the valve seating surface, slowly inserted the stem into the guide spinning it to properly coat the stem and guide. Then I cleaned off the bottom of the valve and started lapping. I just used my hands keeping everything clean of oil so that I got a good grip and lapped each one till my hands were tired, then I cleaned it all up and checked my seal. I put my plugs back in and poured some gas into the chambers, none of them leaked. I had the gas in the chambers for 15 minutes with no leaks, so I poured the gas out and figured I did a good job for my first time with no lapping stick tool! I proceeded to re-assemble the valve train and had my first "DOH" moment. In the manual it explains how to put everything together again, I must have misinterpreted it but I could swear it said to put the seal in and then put the bottom retainer back in. This is WRONG, and I couldn't get the seal off of the guide without damaging it. SO I have 7 valves all back together, one is going to need a new seal. Ah well, could have been worse!

This week I have a buddy coming down who has rebuilt his fair share of cb's (mostly 750s) and we are going to be honing the block and putting the motor back together. I figure although all his bikes are SOHC his experience will be useful. Wish me luck!

ive never been a believer in lapping valves ,but doing it with a drill! you da man :woohoo: