TOPIC:

My 28's have duel fuel inlets.
Steve

swest wrote: My 28's have duel fuel inlets.
Steve

Great stuff, super helpful, thank you guys very much.

They are definitely 26s, have dual fuel inlets, and the petcock has dual outputs obviously. They are in very good condition, and they have the common throttle shaft that some folks seem to think makes it easier to keep them in sync from what I read. So I'm gonna stick with them, give them a full strip, ultrasonic clean, swap the main jets for a smaller size and make sure the needle and air screws are adjusted correctly.

I got halfway frustrated trying to run it today, stupid stuff. The petcock is leaking, so I intended to run it off the little aux bottle, but I didn't have a tee large enough to fit in that monster fuel line, so that was leaky too. I got the carbs back in and fired it anyway, ran a float bowl worth of gas through it and it ran 10 times better than it had during the year I've had it kicking around. When the dripping gas made it to the header collector I relented and shut if off, ordered every possible tee and adapter I could ever need and as soon as Brown Santa drops those off I'll get to run it longer, run a proper compression test and make the call about what I do or do not do to the engine before I remove it from the frame.

Did sort out the janky coil wires though. When I was fiddling with it yesterday I could easily hear *SNAP* *SNAP**SNAP* from up near the coils, sure enough, giant sparks were flying out from the Dyna coil terminals, and that was when I discovered it was only running on three anyway. I pulled off the coil wires to discover that they had been assembled like so:



Fortunately they had been crimped so poorly I was able to reuse the terminals, stripped them back properly, trimmed them clean and put a little shrink tubing to insulate. I have some boots inbound, but this did the trick for the time being, no more cool spark show and it ran on all 4, Bonus!





Contented myself for the rest of the afternoon chasing an oil leak and replacing the oil line on the H2, cleaning and lubing the tach cable, fitting some side cover grommets, stuff like that.

More tomorrow...

Nils

coming right along !

leon

NobleHops wrote: Hello!

Second post here, glad to be here.

I posted a new member intro elsewhere, so let's get to the goods, namely my Z1. I am about to restore it, and I will probably need some help along the way. In return for your kindness and contributions I will try to contribute some entertaining and hopefully useful content to go along with my bloody knuckles and tales of excessive chemical inhalation. Square deal?

Here's the bike:

That's a 1975 US-spec Kawasaki Z1 900. I bought in San Jose, California a year or so ago, and drug it here to Arizona when we moved here last summer. We're calling it "The Friendship Bike" because I'm restoring it for fun and then I am shipping it to my friend Pius in Switzerland. I met Pius in 2011 on an Edelweiss tour of South Africa, and we've since toured the Alps and Dolomites together, plus a giant loop of California last year. My hope is to finish this restoration in time to ship it to him before our next adventure this July in Europe.

Looks like there is some oil leakage coming from the O ring around the cam chain area. That means the top end needs to come off. Depending on the mileage you might need a valve job, definitely valve guide seals. Viton ones. They can be had on eBay for $26. While I was in there, I replaced the valves, springs and valve guide seals. My springs were 40 years old and shot. They can test good but in use, can cause noise, flutter and even a nicked valve on a misshift. / Best to replace them. $68 eBay.

Be sure to use Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) screwdriver bits on the crosshead screws. They are NOT Phillips despite their appearance. If you're not familiar with the JIS bits just ask and I'll post a link showing how to very eaisily convert Phillips bits to JIS. Ed

650ed wrote: Be sure to use Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) screwdriver bits on the crosshead screws. They are NOT Phillips despite their appearance. If you're not familiar with the JIS bits just ask and I'll post a link showing how to very eaisily convert Phillips bits to JIS. Ed

Thank you kindly Ed, I was turned onto this particular bit of tool porn recently, and what a difference they make:



That said, I'd LOVE to read that info, please do post that link, that would be awesome content for sure.

OK, I'm gonna stand down on the whole idea of not taking the jugs off, I think Steve's idea was the right one. Those valve guide seals are bound to be old and punky and i'm sure the cylinders would benefit from a rehone at the minimum, and the valves and springs ought to be inspected too.

So I am doing the carbs today - have soda blasted them and stripped them down to little bits, and it's all making trips through the ultrasonic cleaner today.



And then I will start taking the bike apart in earnest,

OK, I owe this thread an update.

Thanks first off to Stein, for maintaining and restoring this forum after it was attacked. It's mystifying to me how people could find hacking community websites like this one to be a worthwhile use of their skills.

Much progress to report. As prior, the carbs are all the way apart and blasted and ultrasonally cleaned, and my rebuild kits arrived a few days ago. Will tackle that shortly, but at the moment I am concentrating on disassembly so I can get some stuff sent out for coating, plating, etc.

I had some good conscripted labor to work with, and so we did most of the primary disassemblh early last week - got the engine out and safely on a dolly, good to go.

Broke it down a little further, extracted the steering head and swingarm bearings, photo'd the motor mounts and battery box assemblies, and got all the black bits together, and down to a local powdercoater.

Have been evolving my system a bit on this project - laying out the subassemblies as I disassemble them, measuring and noting the fasteners, then into the bins for replating. I'll have a half-day of sorting to do to get them back together at reassembly, but I'm going to save a bloody fortune on fasteners on this project and the nice replaced zinc stuff looks amazing.

We are very nearly all the way apart at this point - need to get the plating sent out ASAP, I am of course making a list of parts I need as I go, have another big parts order to make. I need to get the rims off the hubs next so I can evaluate them for replating or repainting, and then I'll be ready to start getting the chassis back to a roller and turn my attention to the engine.

There is a big pile of boxes in the foyer as I type this from Z1parts.net and it is taking all my self control to not tear them open and unpack and fondle the new bodywork. I won't last forever though .

Here's a last minute method to positively assure that the pilot circuit is as-new clean, and assure the critical flow of fuel mixture into the carb bore via the pilot circuit.

www.kzrider.com/forum/3-carburetor/48928...pilot-circuit#489287

Good Fortune!

Good luck with the rebuild! I restored 1 1/2 Z1-B's. the first one was my fathers bike he bought off the showroom floor. The second I bought to restore as an investment then got stressed out and sold it 1/2 way through.

As far as tuning, my Dads bike had pods on it and it ran like crap. I installed the stock airbox (which he thankfully saved) and it was like a brand new bike. So IMO, I would set everything as far as the engine goes to stock. I still need to buy emulators but I do have a set of modified ZRX shock I throw on every so often. They really help on the highway. The stock looking reproduction shocks suck to ride on.

If you strip the frame I'm the guy that makes exact replicas of the steer tube sticker.

My Dads Z1B. I ride it like I stole it. haha


Project I bought from the original owner. Blue Z1B

Greetings Kid, and thanks for the good info. Wish I knew you did the frame stickers a week ago - I ordered one up from a company in Switzerland already.

I will look you up next time!

N.

OK, time for a quick update, fits and starts as usual as I wait for suppliers and parts.

All the zinc stuff is back from plating, looks A-. I could have prepared it a little better, pre-polishing or tumbling a few items that had galling on the surface, but it's relatively few items, the rest look awesome and frankly so do they. Don't seem to have a pic but I'll take one, Reconditioned parts look so blingy .

All the powdercoat is done, and I will pick it up tomorrow. Unfortunately I neglected to order swingarm bushings, so that's a hold-up to getting that back together, but I did get started on the wheels. There is tool damage on the rims, and I debated repairing it and rechroming, but there are going to be so many repro parts on this bike I decided it was not worth it, so a new set of DID are inbound and so as soon as those arrive I will relace the wheels and install new bearings. So the hubs got cleaned up and the bearings extracted, and that's on tap for this week.

Need one more push early this week, to order a few key parts like those bushings and get a small batch of chrome replated, and then reassembly of the chassis will begin in earnest.