1980 kz1000st Thoughts?

Hey C5C, how bad a beating did you take on that red shafty? Did anyone ever buy ti?

z1kzonly wrote: Hey C5C, how bad a beating did you take on that red shafty? Did anyone ever buy ti?

I didn't understand you were asking me. I sold it OK, I made OK profit, not great, but OK.
I am a car guy, so bikes are kind of for fun, but $1000 profit doesn't hurt. That is what bikes usually bring me. And I ride them for a few months.
I really liked my KZ and miss it. I'll get KZ1100shaft. Lucky me shafts go cheaper and 80+ bikes too.
I don't see a reason to ride 80 HP 900 chain if I can get 110HP 1100 shaft for less.
Some guy was trying to sell running 1100 shaft for $1000 for a month!!!! Stupid me, I didn't buy it.

Ok that deal was a bust but I found this today and drove a few hours to pick it up. 83 KZ1100 shaft. Brought it home, stuck a temp battery in and it started! Only running on 2 3 and 4 but it ran! Now the fun stuff. All lights seemed to work so I'm just looking at cleaning carbs for now. Oh... gave $700 for it. Missing the right side battery cover.

Forgot to mention. Those are Vance and Hines 4 into 1. PO says it was running last summer and I believe him. Another unexpected feature is the carb boots are soft! Going to tear into it tonight. For now it's 80 Deg and sunny... I"m ridding something somewhere.

car5car wrote:

z1kzonly wrote: Hey C5C, how bad a beating did you take on that red shafty? Did anyone ever buy ti?

I didn't understand you were asking me. I sold it OK, I made OK profit, not great, but OK.
I am a car guy, so bikes are kind of for fun, but $1000 profit doesn't hurt. That is what bikes usually bring me. And I ride them for a few months.
I really liked my KZ and miss it. I'll get KZ1100shaft. Lucky me shafts go cheaper and 80+ bikes too.
I don't see a reason to ride 80 HP 900 chain if I can get 110HP 1100 shaft for less.
Some guy was trying to sell running 1100 shaft for $1000 for a month!!!! Stupid me, I didn't buy it.
900 bikes are for beginners, after you learned to ride, you can buy 1100. :evil: :evil: :evil:
Am I going to get banned?

A grand profit is usually what i get for the old bikes. Sometimes more sometimes less. But last KZ I sold made 1100 and prior KZ 1200... I'm retired so that is just money I use to go buy some more bikes.

jdvorchak wrote: But last KZ I sold made 1100 and prior KZ 1200..

You probably wash bikes before selling them... :laugh:
Great deal! Easy 1500?

car5car wrote:

jdvorchak wrote: But last KZ I sold made 1100 and prior KZ 1200..

You probably wash bikes before selling them... :laugh:
Great deal! Easy 1500?

Yeah lots of clean up on them before they roll out. Usually I'm rebuilding so many different parts the bike kinda just gets clean. Besides my brother in law is constantly saying to me "That will look good when you get it cleaned up"..He is a very fastidious person and a perfectionist. His bike always looks like it just rolled out of the showroom. And he rides almost as much as I do. About 10 to 20k miles per year.

car5car wrote:

z1kzonly wrote: Hey C5C, how bad a beating did you take on that red shafty? Did anyone ever buy ti?

I didn't understand you were asking me. I sold it OK, I made OK profit, not great, but OK.
I am a car guy, so bikes are kind of for fun, but $1000 profit doesn't hurt. That is what bikes usually bring me. And I ride them for a few months.
I really liked my KZ and miss it. I'll get KZ1100shaft. Lucky me shafts go cheaper and 80+ bikes too.
I don't see a reason to ride 80 HP 900 chain if I can get 110HP 1100 shaft for less.
Some guy was trying to sell running 1100 shaft for $1000 for a month!!!! Stupid me, I didn't buy it.
900 bikes are for beginners, after you learned to ride, you can buy 1100. :evil: :evil: :evil:
Am I going to get banned?

All I can say about what you've said is,
You don't know what you are talking about. :blink: :lol:
Steve

I would start with valve clearance check. you don't want to run it with 0 clearance.

car5car wrote: I would start with valve clearance check. you don't want to run it with 0 clearance.

Thanks for the suggestion. Yes that will be part of the revival of this, and any other new to you bike. I like to go in this order when I revive one.
1. pull carbs and start rebuild/clean and usually a few days to chem dip the carbs because I can only handle one carb at a time in my dip.
2. With carbs off it's easy to do the compression check for the baseline.
3. Pull valve covers and check cam chain and valve lash. This one has leaking valve/cam covers gaskets. Also a good time to re-torque head bolts.
4. Check brakes and fluids. FYI this one has brake fluid that looks like stale coffee.. so I'll have to pull everything apart and rebuild MC and all calipers and may even have to replace brake lines.
5. Start addressing electrical and misc problems.

I do the tasks in this order because I can confirm I have a running engine before I spend a penny on anything.

Once I have a running and stopping bike then I'll start spending money on stuff like tires, rubber parts, missing parts, gaskets etc. I'm sure I'm forgetting something but that is the general order I use.

I don't remember which bike I was repairing, I found matching brake hose in autoparts store. It was slightly longer.

my son started cleaning it up after we pulled the carbs. I'm teaching him all I know about cleaning and tuning carbs. There seems to be so few folks who really know how to get carbs clean and tuned. I did the first one then told him to do the other three. He really did a good job including getting the float levels set. While I was working on another bike he started cleaning up the KZ... I have to say he is like a madman when it comes to cleaning and polishing.

Check out the left side covers:

This was before I told him I had a buffer pad to put on the electric drill... Went today and bought him a 6 inch buffer pad and some compound for the bench grinder.