1000 to 900

I just pulled the head of of my z1 900 engine and it is a 1000 head (im pretty sure it is a 1980 or newer head because is has the smog things on the vavle cover) the bike was never started with this head (because a mechanic striped a cam cap bolt) but every thing inside of the head is new. I want to take the valves, cam caps and bearings and put them in my 900 head.

will that work?

Be a lot easier to plug the smog ports and run the head you got.you wont gain any performance advantage with the 900 head.APE has some nice caps that just bolt on the valve cover and eliminate the smog stuff.

the guy I got the bike from wants the head back

but the 900 head had bad bearings and some of the valves and things to go to it are pretty rough...also i want to use the buckets and shims from the 1000 head on the 900 head.


what are valve stem seals and where do the go?

are the little black rubber pieces with spings on them?

if it's a J model head wouldn't it make more power then a 900 head? i thought the 900's intake valve was only 33mm as apposed to the J heads 36.5mm? correct me if i'm wrong.

i think its just a 79-80 smog motor head not a j.the cam caps are machined matched to each head,they dont interchange unless you have a whole pile of cam caps and a lot of time to check clearances you might get lucky.if the valves were junk in the 900 head the guides probably are also.the 900 and 1000 useto differant style valves and keepers if you keep the valves and keepers matched it shouldnt be a problem since youll want to do a valve job anyway

It can be done but its gonna hafta have the valve seats redone for the new valves and you will hafta reshim all your valves.then you may need new guides.in other words it aint gonna be cheap.if you didnt make a deal with the guy for the head before you bought the bike i would keep it.

dang it would have rocked if it was a j head

the 900 head is all good the guides are fine someone had completely disassembeled it pit it in a crate and stuck it in a shed and all of the valves has surface rust on them so i dint want to use them. I just got done pulling all of the valves out of the 1000 head and I put them in the 900 and lapped them all of them fit good. yeah i had read on here that the keepers were diffrent on the 1000 head so i will be sure to use them with the valves. and i will use the regular cam caps for the 900 to be sure it will work.

how do the valve stem seals come off and how important are they?


how do you reshim valves?

The seal go on the valve before you put the springs and stuff on. They keep oil off the valve when the valve is pushed down into the combustion chamber. They are cheap and easy to install. When you take them off make sure you get all of the little bits of rubber that break off and the spring that goes around the seal.

To shim the valves you will need the special tool from z1enterprises.com. You rotate the motor by hand until the lobe is pointing away from the angle of whatever valve your working on. Check the clearence with a gfeeler gauge. It should be between .002 and .004 inches. Some people will go as loose as .006. If it too loose or too tight, you turn the crank so the valve is pressed all the weay down and put the tool in to hold the bucket down. Make sure you have the little slot positioned to where you can get at it with a little screwdriver. Pop out the shim with a small screwdriver and use a magnet to get it out. The size of the shim will be on it somewhere and will probably be 260 or 270 something like that. Put the correct size shim in and go back to step one to measure. It takes a while to do and you probably need some shims but it needs to be done. BTW you should get a manual. Try to get a factory service manual from Kawi.