1979 KZ650 Restoration

kzmk2 wrote:

Bill, here is the best photo I have of the engine fixture. It works really good, I have used it on KZ650/750 engines and a KZ1100 engine. The engine stand is a Larin from Fleet Farm.

Neat, thanks.

If I can find my camera I'll share my homemade KZ650 Engine Adapter. Mine grabs from the rear two engine bolt points.

Best of success,
Bill

I have been away from the computer for a while, but not the garage. I still have not figured out how I am going to refinish my engine cases. But the weather was nice so I decided to start work on my frame. I bought a sandblaster from Harbor freight and have set up a “blasting booth” in my garden shed. Actually it is my paint booth that serves as garden shed when I am not painting in it. Here is the frame ready for blasting.

I am surprised at how well the Harbor Freight blaster worked. Here is the blasted frame. Paint is next!

I decided to make a fixture for rotating the frame to make it easier paint the underside and all the nooks and crannies. Here is a pictre of the fixture that mounts to my engine stand. I can now rotate the frame to any position to make painting easier. Did not take very long to make.

Here is the frame underside up.

Handy looking job there , should make life easier and less chance of unwanted marks as well.

Nice one

C3

That's some good thinking there. I'm looking forward to seeing it complete.

I had a chance to get a little more done on the bike this past week. I had some PPG epoxy primer left over fom a different project so I decided to put a coat of that on the frame before painting. I hope I can get the frame painted this coming week.

Some of the other frame parts with the primer coat.

Which media type did you use to blast the frame?

Love the "frame stand"! The bottoms and insides of the frame gave me no end of grief when I painted mine! Luckily...I need to do it again sometime in the future.

Also, just out of curiosity, where are you located?

In an earlier post I mentioned I was ging to experiment with soda, walnut shells and glass bead blasting for the crankcase clean up. Walnut shells would not clean up the oxidized cases, these might be good for paint removal and that is about it.

Soda blasting left a nice finish, if the aluminum was not coroded. My cases had a lot of "2-tone" from some type of corosion and the soda would not remove the darker spots.

I ended up using glass beads and am fairly happy with the results. After blasting I did go over the cases with a metal polish and a brass wire brush, I then used the pressure washer to remove the blacked metal polish. This gave the cases a little more brightness than the plain glass bead finish.

I used Black Diamond fine grit from Tractor Supply. I live in nothwestern Wi. Not to far from Minneapolis.