Purist Paint?

So, the past month that I've been playing with this cool kz550 my son gave me has got me itching to pull the old '78 kz650 out of mothballs where it's been sitting for ... geez, like over 5 years now.
The '650 needs a lot of work though, pretty much everything ground-up and includes needing to be repainted, frame et al.
So there's my dilemma, the paint. The stock color on the parts still showing it seem to be browns/brown metallic (so 70's right?) but I was thinking of mixing things up a bit and going for like gunmetal gray frame and possibly that super light blue metallic seen on same era z1000's.
Is there a problem painting an otherwise stock bike a completely radical, or non-stock color? I tend to be a stock purist when or where possible but I always did like that Stardust metallic silver... hmmm

Unless you bob or hardtail it, I don't think you'll hurt the value. I'd say paint it whatever color you like.

I'm not aware of any 650s having brown paint. The Z1 & maybe the KZ900 had rootbeer brown or something like that.
You might want to verify what the stock color was before choosing anything. I would keep the frame black, especially if there's a chance of selling the bike later. other colors can look just wrong. just opinions of course.

Model identification. KZ650.Info or jarlef z650 . also, cyclechaos.com. or Kawasaki.com. or Partzilla. Zedder software.

It is your motorcycle...do whatever you like...but realize that whenever you decide to sell, potential buyers will not have the same tastes you do (unless you keep it bone stock, in which case they have nothing to whine about )

Ha! Martin, you are correct. My '650 is not brown even though my aging memory sees it that way. The bike isn't even near me right now so I had to go back into some old photographs and this is what I found:



Maybe this is why I remembered it being brown? :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

It must be a factory color. I see a lot of Kaws like that. :laugh:

If you are thinking you will sell the bike then all original color etc. will increase it's value. However, if you are keeping the bike then it's important, IMO, to have it how you want it. That's why with my 78 KZ1000A2 I ended up painting black, which is a 78 color but using the tank striping from the 77 A1. It gave me the bike I wanted in terms of looks rather than me sticking with the original look that I don't like as much. However I'm currently getting my KZ650 painted in the original Emerald Green, partly because it's a very original bike, but mainly because of the options that's the one I like best unless I went with something completely custom, like a Z1 paint job.

A lot depends on cost too, I'm getting my bikes done for $350-$400, so if I really needed to revert to original on my KZ1000 because that would increase it's value by thousands, it would be easy enough to revert back. I don't intend to sell any of them any time soon, so having what I want is more important to me than having what Kawasaki made. Other than the Z1's, a lot of the factory colors and decals were not particularly exciting to my tastes.

wrenchmonkey wrote: Is there a problem painting an otherwise stock bike a completely radical, or non-stock color? I tend to be a stock purist when or where possible but I always did like that Stardust metallic silver... hmmm

Like Mcdroid mentioned... if you do a neutral paint job and ever decide to sell the bike, it will be easier. But, your bike, your call...

LOL, brown he remembers! BTW, looks like it was black, at one point? The only factory black KZ650's came out of Lincoln NE, IIRC. If your vin has a 5 in front of the main grouping of #'s, this is another Lincoln signature. Not a big deal, just saying...

wrenchmonkey wrote: Ha! Martin, you are correct. My '650 is not brown even though my aging memory sees it that way. The bike isn't even near me right now so I had to go back into some old photographs and this is what I found:

Maybe this is why I remembered it being brown? :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

When it was time, I picked a car color that was very similar to the original and just fixed the nicks and bruises, painted it all... shot it with three coats of clear and re stripped it with that real thin tape stripe spools you can find at most any auto parts store.
I'm happy with it and doubt it negatively impacted the value of the bike by much.

Here's mine




As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, who's to say what effect it has on value in the real world, because what will sell a bike is someone wanting it, the more it appeals to them the more they will pay within reason. It depends if the buyer is a purist or just buying something that fuels their imagination. these bikes are not yet so rare that there isn't room to accommodate both camps. Some of the younger people in my neighborhood who get excited about my bike, have no idea whether it's stock or not, but would buy it, without a thought to what color it should be..

While I have hankered after a KZ1000A since I was 17 or so, I actually like what I have put together more than a stock one, it's a mix of various things that have appealed to me over the years on other bikes I've seen. I kept the stock parts I had, so I could go back closer to stock, but I don't see that ever happening. Bikes were also modified back in the day, one of the first Z1's I ever saw had already had a repaint and frame bracing modifications in 1978. One thing to bare in mind is, if it's repainted it's not original any way.

Here is mine, back in an original paint job painted in the US on US made parts.
Of course there are a few mods.

Wow!
Nice work gentlemen. Really. All of these are beautiful in my eye. Stock or not, it's the quality of work and the overall esthetic that catches my eye. I appreciate nice paint work. I know what it takes to pull off the "shoot some color" part of a resto. I think I have had just about every conceivable problem happen to me while in the booth. Spray gun self destructing in the middle of a metallic pearl once being the worst. I also remember painting my 440, fresh out of the booth and having a shelf of misc parts, fluids etc serendipitously fall over and ... (head scratching moment that one...really? Now? After all the years it stood there, now it's going to fail?).

I don't have any problems with the stock looks my bike must have once had.
As it turns out, the 550 my son just gave me looks like the 650's little brother and nearly identical in every way and I love it. I think it's the idea of that blue as I remember it from my youth when a school friend used to own a kz1000 in this color and I always thought it was "bitchin".

So the silvery or gun metal gray frame... I'm not sold on this yet either but I have seen some bikes done this way (many contemporary motorcycles use silver frames I've noticed). Anyway, I don't know yet. I'd want it to be esthetically pleasing and only do it if, when done, you could stand back and think it was always that way..

I noticed in Blue's's post (I don't know why, but I always end up looking around other guy's shop first and then the subject bike...) that he had a can of beer upside down on the floor and it made me laugh. I read somewhere here on the forum that beer lubricates more manual labor that any other fluid or grease. LMAO