1980 KZ440 LTD EFI Conversion

Whaddup!

My brother, KZ_chris, recently convinced me to document the process of modernizing my 1980 KA440 LTD, with a major focus on fuel injection. Buckle up, it's gonna be a wild ride.

Some quick background on the bike: It's been in my possession for just under five years now, and in that time has seen an engine rebuild on a college budget (like $150), 3000 mile road trip around Florida, multiple trips from LA-SF along both the 5 and PCH, riding to Canada in my truck bed, Rocky Mtn twisties, and a wholeee lot of other crazy life that this bike didn't expect when I picked it up off a college buddy for $1250 with ~20k miles all those years ago.

The crux of my resto-mod plan is to incorporate a motogadget m.unit and fuel injection using a DIYautoparts Micro Squirt. I want the bike to blend retro/cafe/original looks with the modern convenience of starting at the push of a button every time (just like my 2009 ZX6R, Kawa till I dieeee), regardless of altitude or temp. Well actually, I want to walk up to the bike, have my phone connect to it via low power Bluetooth, have running lights turn on as I'm still walking up and have the fuel pump prime so that I can hop on, hit the switch, and ride out. And have the ability to tune while I ride from my phone...I'm getting too deep too quick here.

Currently the m-unit is slapped together on a bench and mostly shaken down/set up, the micro squirt is apart to modify it to have Bluetooth capabilities, and the bike is chilling in the garage needing a mid-block swap due to a broken intake boot female thread. I'll post more details and current pics later this week, but just wanted to start this thread and get to documenting my journey! Enjoy some snap shots of the bike's life below, and stay chill!

Nice bike! following

Welcome aboard. This should be interesting.

By the way, if you click the Insert All button when posting pictures, they will show up as large high-res pics instead of thumbnails.

Cool project, following too.
i´m new here to btw. :silly:

Hmmm. No news since July.

He's still working on the project! He's been focusing on building a really solid test cart that we can use for all our future EFI projects. So far he has a cart with microsquirt and M.unit mounted, along with a 12v modified PSU which has enough amps to crank a bike. He also bought and assembled a jim stim unit and we've both spent time in the tuner studio software. His next big objective is integrating a fuel cell/pump combo onto his test cart so that it can truly be a plug and play solution for our following bikes.

His work can get really busy sometimes, I'll remind him to carve out some time and write a proper update!

Yo yo, I'm back!
Apologies for the long spell of no updates! Work has been a WILD ride this year to say the least.


The cart that my brother mentioned below is 95% complete, and already bitchin.
The idea behind it is to have a cart that can be wheeled around (or put in a truck bed) that can supply projects with all inputs needed: fuel, and power/controls (air not included since it's available everywhere;)). This will allow us to quickly and repeatably EFI/customize as many bikes as we want and stay focused on each motorcycle and not the BS.


So far the cart has a 750watt PSU hacked and mounted on it, a 5gallon fuel cell in place with all fittings/plumbing arriving next week (s/o to Summit and JEGS), and a nice clean layout.
Once fitting come in and I plumb up the fuel cell cart will be 100% complete.



The cart can supply 12, 5, and 3.3v with the 12v rails together outputting 80amps and able to crank/run some big bois (can crank the 440 all day, I've tried).


It's come in handy for practice tuning,testing wiring, etc. with kz_chris using the JimStim board. That board was a really fun solder job, highly recommended to build it yourself!



It's also been killer to have while developing a plug_n_play Bluetooth module to tune the ECU wireless (even using an Android phone!) I'll eventually be adding a 90degree amp connector (no pics, still on the way from China) and 3d-printing a new top case for the MS that will incorporate room for adding the module internally like these guides have done makestuff.66ghz.com/2016/01/31/adding-bluetooth-to-microsquirt/
This will only be for my personal builds (KZ 440 and a 75' CB550) where I'm trying to package minimally and have everything as clean as possible.
These little mint modules will work with any ECU, no internal mods which is what makes them nice for dev/rapidly iterating through some builds.










Anyway, that's my quick dump. I hope to write more often/better update everyone!
If there are questions about the work I've done, please ask! I think my build will end up super nice, and all of this information should be out there to help others accomplish their goals!

Thanks for the update. Sure wish I could see the pictures.

TexasKZ wrote: Thanks for the update. Sure wish I could see the pictures.

Ditto.
Here is a little inspiration.
A KZ400 with a KZ440 engine.




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Photos should be correctly updated now!

Thanks for teaching me how to insert them correctly, Tex, I don't now what error happened with the original upload.

Things I've learned from posting so far are:
1) I need to work on my picture taking skills
2) I need to work on post flow, lol. That was a bit all over the place. Hopefully increased post frequency will help out