My 79 kz1000st rebuild so far....

Here's a couple of photo's of my shaftie rebuild so far. When i bought the bike last April it looked OK/ tired, the PO had a Wiseco 1045 kit installed and a new Mac header.
I guess he never rode it and let it just sit for 4 years, then passed it off on a buddy to sell. When I bought it, he told me it would idle but not rev up. I assumed a fuel problem or ignition advancer but instead found the cam timing off by a tooth, although I have not run it since. I decided to do a total tear down, rebuilt starter clutch, bead blasted the engine and frame, also polished all the bare parts. The engine is painted with PJ1 satin engine paint and I think its great stuff. I painted the frame with PJ1 gloss black frame paint and I think that stuff is total garbage on so many levels. I ended up blasting off the paint and getting the frame powdercoated and am very pleased with the way it turned out. Lots of other stuff has been painted, polished, scrubbed clean etc etc... i just finished tearing apart the gauges to clean them up and dolly out some dents then repaint, as well as the triple clamps and headlight bucket. Next on the list is to have my buddy recut the wheels on his CNC wheel refacer after I paint them. At this point I think I'm about 80% done and have about 80% to go, hehehe.... I'm enjoying every minute of it!

...Looks good, looks like new!

...Did you do all the paint work yourself?

How did you process the wheels? Did you media blast and what kind of paint system?

Bike looks great! But me being me, I got to see the machine work on them wheels. :evil: I'm getting ready to order some billet wheel blanks to play with for a future build.

Les

I've done everything myself except for the powdercoating on the frame and swingarm. this was supposed to be my winter project but I can always find an excuse to do some parts of it now and then.
Thanks for the comps.

I havn't done anything with the wheels yet, just break them down and scrub them up with simple green. My buddy owns a wheel refinishing shop, he does great work but is pretty expensive. He does mostly car wheels, refinishing a bike wheel is twice as much work as a car wheel. I can't just drop them off and pay $800 to have them done, and I don't feel right about using up too many favors to do this with him at his shop on the weekend.
I may spray a satin acrylic black over the existing paint and then get him to cut the wheels and call it a day. Or I may bead blast the paint off and hit it with some etch primer and a black base, then get him to cut the wheels and I can clear them at home. That would be a bit iffy, I'm not the best painter and if I screw it up he will be pissed with me. He has an awesome painter and a beautiful booth, I just need to wait for him to offer them to me.

Yeh... Bob's CNC wheel machine is a sweet unit. The wheel is placed in the chuck and the CNC will automaticly measure the profile with a probe every .030" from the center of the wheel down the spoke to the outside of the bead. Once the profile is digitized you can set the pitch of the cut and let er rip. If the aluminium in the KZ wheel is good quality ( and I sort of doubt it) the end finish should be better than the factory ever was.