I got a ~new~ '79 KZ650. What now?

heheh, seriously this puppy is in rough shape. i wouldn't have normally even looked at such a thing but it was the only KZ in a dealer's whole "bone yard" at an auction I went to Monday. Besides that, nobody bid against me so it was like another ugly puppy nobody wanted (snif) I couldn't resist :lol:

Oh yeah. The question. What now?

As this thing is rough, I wanted to appeal to all the 650 owners for advise of what to do first.

- Anything I should do directly?
- Anything I should check for now before restoration?
- What are common problems for the '79 KZ650?
- Is there something you would have done differently, knowing what you know now?

Oh yeah. One more thing.
What is missing here:
(be kind. i'm a n00b at this) :dry:

The entire top cover was not even bolted onto the cylinder head so I'm guessing it might get uglier since I haven't attempted to lift the cover off yet...

They auctioned-off the ol' man's whole dealership - he retired so the auction scene was actually cool and the old guy even answered any questions like mine "would these spark plugs fit my kz440?" but I could probably have picked-up the missing parts in this picture for cheap if I only knew this bike was going to call my name later in the day.

Thanks in advance for any advise!

The first thing to do is get a shop maunual for it, you can find them on ebay if not in the post here with them. The missing parts on the valve cover are two caps with hose fittings for the emissions. They can be capped off though.
The thing that I would be concerned about though is under the valve cover. I would check under there to see if anything is missing or worn out. There has to be a reason for the cover being loose, he may have started repairing it and decided it wasn't worth the money or effort.

if it came from a bone yard auction then there is going to be a bunch of stuff missing, depending on the condition of the motor it is kind of hard to tell how much work is going to be needed, and the valve cover just needs a couple of block off plates put on it, you dont want that crap on there anyway

Hi wrenchmonkey,

What's missing is your reed valve covers. There should be two aluinum covers with one port coming out of the top of each. Rubber hoses connect to each port which meet at a center junction block and connect to your airbox. This system is supposed to feed fresh air into your exhaust to prevent backfiring. If I were you, I'd look for some cheap replacements off of ebay, get some vacuum hose, and hook it up the way it originally was. Just remember to clean off those reed valves before installing the covers. They have a tendancy to get sticky.

Hope this helps.

Thanks guys.

I managed to surf around the 'net after posting that and found a few pix of kz650's (got a new desktop image out of the deal too! :laugh: ) and saw a close-up of a complete engine with those cyl.head ports.
I figured those hoses were some kind of PCV system but whatever it ain't on mine yet :dry:

I rolled the ol' beater into the shop today and started workin' it over. The gas tank (ugh) is a mess. I've already pulled the dents and will have it media blasted but I may not use it ultimately. The pet cock was dismantled and needs a rebuild the diaphram spring was roached, otherwise everything else was alright if dirty.

I cleaned and removed alot of "stuff" off the bike that was in the way of further investigation - drive-chain is worn-out and clicking, luggage rack is nice but it's outta here, ratted-out seat will survive, exhaust, foot pegs, etc and finally got to that loose cylinder head cover... Lifted it up expecting to see bugs and rodents, rust and crud but found it amazingly clean and even oily? :huh:

So with higher hopes, I kept cleaning and tearing it down a bit further until i got the gen cover off and used a 14mm socket on the flywheel to rotate the engine and watch in amazement at the complexity of that opened-up head at work ... until the engine came to a sudden hault

Me thinks of two things:
- The cam chain would jump or so it seemed to me and so possibly there is something out of sync I cannot easily see yet causing a jam?
- Something more sinister down below like a con-rod self destructed?
Whatever it is, it's a hard lock-up when it happens and I could only rotate the engine in the opposite direction about 360 degrees until it happened again. So unless something has fallen into the engine and is jamming-up an internal gear I dunno for sure yet what the major malfunction is.

Looking into the plug holes I couldn't see anything seriously wrong (pistons tops looked ok, the valves i could see looked ok), the plugs themselves were dark but not damaged and they were not tight in the head so someone else musta been curious at some point too.

Oh well.
I wanted a project.
Guess I got one now for good or bad :lol: