YIKES. . .yes, it's kinda easy stuff

Since I am now buried in this project, I might as well miss even MORE good riding weather. . .

. . .while trying to find even more parts.

Turns out, upon further investigation, that something had gotten lodged inside the plunger cylinder, and had blocked the teeney vent hole that is supposed to remain open in order for the plunger to not get vacuum locked during compression. Probably a piece of broken spring from the first time the clutch was broken. . . and I thought I had cleaned everything good enough, but silly me got caught by careless prep work.

I can now pass a wire the size of a small paper clip through the vent hole. That didn't happen until I was able to force a safty pin needle through the hole at first.

While waiting for the parts order to arrive, I went ahead and pulled the valve cover and checked clearances.

Glad I did that. . .

Turns out 3 valves need adjustment; so off come the cams. This is tedious stuff. . .LOTS of really long 6mm bolts. That and the valve cover bolts makes for a chore.

So today I discover that I have a 13mm shim which none of the three motorcycle shops I visited today have. All three shops would have swapped one for one if they had carried them. 10mm, and 29mm, no 13's

I am going to be able to swap a couple shims internally to compenstate for two of the range issue valves, but now I need something thinner that the 270 (.106) I have, in order to get the valve clearance off the .003.

I don't want to have to think about having to reset valve clearances once the weather gets hot later this year.

I am so mad at myself for misplacing the spare eight I had from two years ago when I moved last time.

Ideas welcome. . .

Process update. . .

Had a cam chain in the wings ready for "someday." Had heard some rattling and just could not seem to get rid of it, even after adjustment.

How long can I expect a bicycle chain to last anyway, right?

So now I have a non-kinking, non-slack chain in place. Horay for some progress!

Figured now was the time to do it, since the oil pan is off, just in case I dropped a bitty part.

About the time I was admiring the handiwork, I discover . . .

. . .the rattle wasn't really from the chain. . .

. . .it was from the front idler sprocket that had delaminated. . .

. . .bearing's good. . .

sprocket is flippy floppy. . .

So after removing the head. . .



I get to buy more parts. . .

Robert at J&R Cycle to the rescue!

He had a used idler sprocket. . .and get this:

a broken Z1 head. . .

So now I'm going to swap out the retainers, buckets, and shims, for overbucket stuff.



This pulling cams for valve clearance maintenance is going the way of points on this iron pony.

1,200 miles later. . .I wanted to verify the fix before I made this post. . .

The rollers helped a LOT, but apparently the best repair would have involved replacing the gear that the rollers contact. It's noisy, but it works more than it doesn't.

Engine is a lot quieter with a new chain and functional idler sprocket.

I found out that Vesrah gaskets delaminate once they are tightened and then loosened. I needed to take the head off due to a stripped chain tunnel bolt. It was the last bolt to tighten, and the hole stripped. . .so. . .that was no fun to fix.

I didn't want to wait a week for a new head gasket so I got creative. I used copper spray a gasket on the steel original gasket and the new Vesrah oil galley seals.

That was a really bad idea. . .

As it turns out, the Vesrah seals are slightly taller than the stock Kawasaki seals, so when I torqued the head, the oil galleys started leaking within 100 miles.

Retorquing it made it worse. I had oil pouring out of both sides of my cylinder block head joint.

So I ordered the correct seals from the dealer and kept the bike together until the seals arrived. Upon removal, the Vesrah seals were kidney bean deformed.

I ruined a pair of shoes because of the oil. What fun.

The new cam/bucket setup seems to have been worth all the aggravation getting it set up. The shims were not coincidental. The over bucket shims needed to be a lttle thinner in order to obtain the clearances that the prior underbucket shims were correct at.

I had a Fiat cam shim tool from years ago that I modified slightly and that little prize civilizes adjustment proceedures.

I may have a digital picture or two to include with this thread.

I found out that BMW motorcycles use 29mm shims. And that they keep some in stock, plus the mechanic there was generous to swap one. That was pretty cool.

But in the meantime I'm getting 43 miles per gallon.