Hey There!
Just got back from the trip up to the shop where my '79 kz650c has been in resting in the barn.
The trip was pretty uneventful other than me acting like a teenager jumping up and down from the truck bed while loading the bike parts when I lost my footing on the bike ramp and fell hard on my arse. Thankfully the only things bruised and sore are hidden by my jeans and my helmet
On the bright side, I didn't drop my carbs during the fall and even my friend who was helping me load the bike noted "I saw you didn't let go of the carbs during that...graceful dismount..."
So it may be good to review this bike's progress (or lack there of).
I found this bike at an auction back in 2007:
Incredibly, I spotted this and managed to make my way to it without anyone else showing interest and without picking up any chiggers or ticks!
An hour or so and a gavel drop later and it was mine and brought back to the shop:
It was pretty ugly and obviously going to be a long-haul restoration but it had some good points.
Low(er) mileage:
It was "stock" black (or so I thought). It had some "extras" like engine guards and a luggage rack:
My son (pictured above) helped me get it rolling and brought it into the shop. He had picked up a Suzi and a Honda at the same auction so we had lots of hours wrenching together on them and managed to get his Honda actually running and functioning nicely in just a few days. The Suzi (was a GS550) wasn't so lucky.
This KZombie was...reluctant is probably just the term, so I began the long process of tearing it down completely because I just couldn't for some reason, give up on it:
I managed to get some things accomplished including ordering various parts (some I had totally forgotten about) and even got the carbs rebuilt:
The lad and I wrenched for a few days and I really enjoyed the hell out of it. I had high hopes for this '650 being on the road soon:
That was then. This is now. 2016. Almost 9 years later...
As I searched through the dusty shop, snapping a yardstick at various critters that have taken over. I found the ol' 650 covered in blankets and with some help extracted it back into the daylight:
Dayum! Time has NOT been nice to it. Of course I have more wrinkles than that tank still has
I re-discovered all the parts I had carefully chunked into a tub or left for the mice to play on:
And.... was so happy to see these carbs were still as clean as the day I rebuilt them:
Dragged the whole kit 'n caboodle back to my garage and unloaded it without a repeat stumble, fall, CrAsH on that dang slippery ramp, where it now sits with it's little brother that my son bought me a couple months ago:
Then, I got to thinking about what KZRon had shown me here on the forum when I asked about Stock Purist Paint. A chart showing that this '79 could not have been black, even while everything it had still was black. I mean look at this "stock" duck bill:
Surely, Kawasaki made an exception for THIS bike? That's stock paint. No? Stock stripes. No?
In a word. No:
So that was last evening. My arse is still sore from the fall. My carbs are still beautiful and undamaged. My head's a little woozy from the lack of coffee but finally things can get back to rolling again.
Oh yeah. So after I got the bike and all it's parts loaded on the truck yesterday morning. I decided to take one last walk through the shop and just peek and poke at things and found more parts I had ordered. Totally forgotten about but obviously my "then-self" knew more than my "now-self" about this project. I had a complete engine gasket set and a brand new battery with the acid tank unopened on that rebuilt shelf that self destructed on my kz440's paint job all those years ago.
So I'm stoked to get this puppy back to something worth looking at again. Fear the Rolling Dead!