KZ 200 question

First post, nice site. I've never owned or driven a cycle :S but I love tinkering and working on small engines. Love a good challenge. I was given a 78 (i think) KZ 200, blue. Appears to be complete. 1st problem though, motor is locked solid. It has been sitting underneath a deck for at least 15 years. Tried putting some pressure to the kickstart with no budge. What do you recommend doing to free this thing up? Should I start by taking the motor out of the frame and just start disassembling from the top down? My quess is this is a steel cylinder and the piston has rusted to the cylinder. Your opinions on where to start please.

Get a good penetrating oil, SeaFoam Deep Creep, B-12 Chemtool, etc and spray through the spark plug hole. Let it sit like that overnight to (hopefully) free up some of the rusted parts. Don't try to hard or you could score the cylinder wall and/or trash the pistons. If that doesn't work I would start tearing it apart.

Leave the motor in the frame. It serves as a solid platform for freeing the cylinder. I think your bike is a single? OK, what happened is that moisture got in the combustion chamber from sitting and wept down the cylinder wall where it met the piston ring. The result is that the piston ring is now rusted to the iron cylinder liner wall. It won't do much good to put anything but penetrating oil down the plug hole as suggested. Let it set for a couple days and try the kicker again. If it doesn't break loose the rusted piston ring, don't try the 17mm nut on the end of the crankshaft under the points cover as you will just end up sheering off the locating pin beneath the mechanical advance. I have done this...

Problem with the rust is that it penetrates the iron and basically will ruin the liner. Time to look for a new cylinder and piston as well as piston ring set.

Remove the cylinder head (cams come out and don't let the chain drop in the crankcase). Note on a Kaw cylinder block there are pry points. Tap with a rubber mallet and then pry. Pry again (and again and again). You may end up ruining the piston and cylinder but as I noted, the cylinder will have rust penetration and no hone will get the rust out. I have had this problem in the past a couple times and the solution is a larger pry bar usually. If the engine does break loose using the kicker, the rust must not have been to terrible and you might get lucky and just be able to start up and ride.

wiredgeorge wrote:

Leave the motor in the frame. It serves as a solid platform for freeing the cylinder. I think your bike is a single? OK, what happened is that moisture got in the combustion chamber from sitting and wept down the cylinder wall where it met the piston ring. The result is that the piston ring is now rusted to the iron cylinder liner wall. It won't do much good to put anything but penetrating oil down the plug hole as suggested. Let it set for a couple days and try the kicker again. If it doesn't break loose the rusted piston ring, don't try the 17mm nut on the end of the crankshaft under the points cover as you will just end up sheering off the locating pin beneath the mechanical advance. I have done this...

Problem with the rust is that it penetrates the iron and basically will ruin the liner. Time to look for a new cylinder and piston as well as piston ring set.

Remove the cylinder head (cams come out and don't let the chain drop in the crankcase). Note on a Kaw cylinder block there are pry points. Tap with a rubber mallet and then pry. Pry again (and again and again). You may end up ruining the piston and cylinder but as I noted, the cylinder will have rust penetration and no hone will get the rust out. I have had this problem in the past a couple times and the solution is a larger pry bar usually. If the engine does break loose using the kicker, the rust must not have been to terrible and you might get lucky and just be able to start up and ride.

good info, this is what I was looking for, thanks!!
yes it is a single cylinder.