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I never liked automatic tensioners. With the Liska rollers and APE tensioner, you can hear the cam chain. It has a distinctive sound. Kawasaki had rubberized rollers to quiet the cam chain sound. They don't stay "rubberized" for long. I like the whirring sound and don't mind adjusting it from time to time as needed. There must have been a weak part in there. Sounds like someone's been in the motor. That's the problem buying used especially MOTORCYCLES. The shifting problem might be in the gear select area behind the counter shaft sprocket. The select arm ,spring etc. Might as well split the cases and inspect everything. I had my crank welded, back cut the tranny dogs and went through the oil pump. The one thing I didn't do was the oil gate to prevent all the oil going to the back of the pan on hard acceleration. I can drop the pan to do this later. I'd look closely at the pistons. They might be OK but if in doubt, you can buy some on eBay or get some 10.25/1 Wiseco's. They're expensive but worth it. The cam differences suggest a oiling issue. My Andrews cams are still good after 20+ years and they don't make them anymore. There is another source I've used. It's theoldkawman on the web. He's sent me what I needed at good prices. Good luck
Steve

Doesn't seem that I could do cams without getting new pistons and higher displacement.

www.pitstopperformance.com/kawasaki-z1-k...82-deg-030-lift-p-25

I'm going to be out of state for Thanksgiving week so I'll open it up after and upgrade based on the wear and damage. By then I will hopefully have my other bike street worthy so I can take my time on the KZ to make it really nice.

swest seems to think this is an older model. 1981 - 2005 used a HyVo chain.

Your right, then why did it break?

swest wrote: Your right, then why did it break?

Good question!

Sorry to hear about the timing chain. It's a nice build though. Thanks for sharing.
Do you have a rear tire on the front? If so, how does it handle? It seem s like it would turn in differently.

They are stock size Bridgestone Battlax tires. The rear is a little wider than the front.

Progress! I pulled my first engine today. It took 2 hours. It wasn't hard, although I had had an expert near by with all the right tools. I'm liking the new shop, much more space.



So I start stripping it down.





Now the engine is ready to come out.







After some help lifting it out and attaching it to the engine stand it's finished.













Here is everything I took off. I left as many threaded things on the engine and frame as I could so I know where they go.



Now that I have all this space to work on the frame I'm going to start cutting everything off it, rewire it, and mount the rear-sets. First I need to open the engine and figure out what the damage is.

well on your way .

keep us posted i wanna watch as you transform it !

leon

531blackbanshee wrote: well on your way .

keep us posted i wanna watch as you transform it !

leon

Ditto.
Steve

The valve cover was removed today and it seems that one of the intake valve shims exploded and this may have caused the chain to break. Another possibility is that the chain broke first causing the piston to smash into the valve causing the shim to shatter although this seems unlikely based on my helmet cam video because there were two stages to it dying. This was one of the original shims and not a new one that I sanded down so it may have been brittle. The rest of it fell down into the case so I'll need to pull everything apart to see what damage it did to the bottom end.



You can see where the shim shattered and scraped up the head (right center intake valve in the picture). Another valve shim had way too much clearance (far left intake valve), not sure what happened to that one but it moved way out of spec.





I'm wondering if I should replace the cylinder head and cam shafts. I can tell it was abused in the past and the cam shafts were not perfectly round (although they were still within spec).

Here is the chain and probably the rest of the shim.



I'm going into the shop late Saturday to start pulling the rest apart.

Doesn't look too bad. When you get more pic's, we'd like to see them.
Steve