So I bought a KZ1000...

I recently picked up a 1981 KZ1000 for a project. As you can see, she is 100% complete 



The plan is to build an electric bike and this frame has so much room for activities batteries. It does have all of the brake and footpeg hardware, mirrors, decent tires, and it came with a really nice tank as well. $200 with a clean title

The funny thing is the VIN says it's a 1000CSR but it has LTD wheels; from what I've read, it looks like the CSR should have spoked wheels. Oh well.

Interesting project, watching

Nerdy wrote:

The plan is to build an electric bike and this frame has so much room for activities batteries. 

That's a really cool project.  Do you have an electric conversion kit in mind, or are you going to try to invent something?

Looks much nicer than several of mine 

If the seventh letter of the frame number is K, it is an LTD. If the seventh letter is an M, it is a CSR.

TexasKZ wrote:

If the seventh letter of the frame number is K, it is an LTD. If the seventh letter is an M, it is a CSR.
 

Appreciate the info - yep, it's an M.

DOHC wrote:

That's a really cool project.  Do you have an electric conversion kit in mind, or are you going to try to invent something?

That's a good question. There are some really interesting kits but for v1.0 I should probably keep it simple.

The planned max speed is about 55-60mph, so I made a spreadsheet to calculate final drive ratio in relation to the motor's RPM range, etc.

Nerdy wrote:

The funny thing is the VIN says it's a 1000CSR but it has LTD wheels; from what I've read, it looks like the CSR should have spoked wheels. Oh well.

if the cast alloy wheels are lighter than the spoked, then that would be a good thing, especially on an electric motorcycle.

Looking around I didn't see a lot of options.  It seems like a lot of the kits are quite small, either for bicycles for dirt bikes.  Pretty much the only site I found with larger options was this one:

www.miromax.lt/en/electric-motorcycle-co...ion-kits#to_products

They have a range of motors from 5hp to 50hp, and the motor controller to drive it.  But the cost is quite high.  And the battery pack and the rest of the electronics would still need to be found.  

I had sort of guessed that there might be more options for kits out there, but I guess it's still pretty specialized technology currently.

H1Vindicator wrote:

if the cast alloy wheels are lighter than the spoked, then that would be a good thing, especially on an electric motorcycle.

That's also a good question. I bought the frame from the father of a guy who was planning to do a diesel conversion. I don't know if that was part of the wheel-swap decision, or maybe he bought it that way originally.

DOHC wrote:

Looking around I didn't see a lot of options.  It seems like a lot of the kits are quite small, either for bicycles for dirt bikes.  Pretty much the only site I found with larger options was this one:

www.miromax.lt/en/electric-motorcycle-co...ion-kits#to_products

They have a range of motors from 5hp to 50hp, and the motor controller to drive it.  But the cost is quite high.  And the battery pack and the rest of the electronics would still need to be found.  

For the first one I'm thinking about a golf cart motor and motor accessories. There are kits on ebay that have for example 6000W 72VDC motors, controllers, and everything that are tempting but can get expensive quickly.

You could also consider a hub motor. Either a cast wheel with integrated motor, or one that you lace to a rim. For some perspective, I used one of these on a fat tire bicycle www.cnqsmotor.com/product/qs205-hub-moto...electric-bike-motor/ it did wheelies with a 45mph top speed 🤣 nuts! I think it did 11kw or so peak.

This is a good brand of affordable motor, since you're still looking. I think i paid $800us for the motor and controller shipped in 2018ish.

If you go down the route of building your own lithium cell battery pack, be sure to use a good quality cell and BMS.