No oil to top end, help please

Ok, so I recently tried firing my motor up and released I'm not getting oil to the top end.
I'll start off with what I did to it to narrow down on the troubleshooting.

-Bike is a 1981 kz650 csr

Motor was running in fall, 30,000 miles. I took it out to do valve shims and clean it up a bit. Painted the block and I had the head vapor blasted.
I made sure to power wash the head to remove all trace of left over particulate.
Lapped the valves, and washed the head again. installed new valve shims, and a stainless bolt kit and athena gasket kit, I did not split the cases just had from the base gasket up apart. I was having trouble with my cam chain tensioner sticking open so I installed a manual one from APE as well.
I made sure to put engine assembly lube on the cams and were else it was needed.

The Start-up. When I started the bike up and got it running I had a squeaking noise, realized I had the wrong valve cover gasket and that blowby air was coming from my engine and escaping ( I have block off plates to get rid of the vacume hoses). Put in a new valve cover gasket, no more blowby air but still the squeak.
Pull the valve cover off and turn the motor over with the starter. Squeak is coming from my cam on the bucket. I put some oil on it and the noise goes away.
Now this is where I feel stupid. I should have noticed that my top end should have been getting oil to stop that noise. I then start up the bike and run it till it is warm and then some, bike isn't running right and sounds noisy by I'm still diagnosing other problems like the cam chain tensioner...

Pull the valve cover off and I realized my top end looked really dry, turn the motor over with the starter and I realize I should be getting more oil than that. take a closer look and see that oil is only coming up from the cam chain, and what little pools of oil there are are filled with aluminum dust. :pinch:

my cam looks fine, journals might be out of spec now, will have to measure.

I have the head and cylinders off now but didn't see any clogs in any of the passages, or any gasket that would be in the way. My filter is installed correctly, and I'm all out of ideas. If I recall my engine oil light was coming on at first, but went off after the rpms got up.

Could my pump have gone bad while the motor sat for a few months without oil?
Can I drill out the oil passage thing in picture 2 to increase flow?

Think I may have a solution. I put on a new oil pan as my drain plug was shot.

I'm not sure if I installed the o-rings in the first picture. I will pull the pan tomorrow and check.

I definitely would NOT drill out those nozzles. Make sure they are clean, and if they are damaged replace them. According to Kawasaki.com they are still available.

I would check the oil pump screen to see that it is clean, especially since you found aluminum debris in the engine. Ed

650ed wrote: I definitely would NOT drill out those nozzles. Make sure they are clean, and if they are damaged replace them.

AMEN Their function is to be a restrictor in line with the oil flow to keep the oil pressure up at lower points along the path of flow and meter how much oil goes up to the top. Opening up the holes will cause the system pressure to be lower and that is very bad news.

I would say the oil pump should be fine although you should check it as mentioned. I would be most circumspect about the new stuff you have done like the vapor blasting to the head. That can really jam particulate into recesses and not too easy to dislodge. Also double check all new gaskets for inadvertent blockage. If you have performed all the basic checks and are comfortable with taking the head off again, I would do that and check if the pump is getting oil up past the cylinders, if so then the problem is in the head (hope I explained it well enough). Another possibility is in replacing your oil pan there may be an O-ring you forgot to install, I don't know enough about the 650's to say for sure.

Id be a little concerned about the cam journals in the after seeing aluminum particles in the oil.
The smaller motors like that one dont have cam bearings, just a little oil between cams and head surface.
Yet another advantage to those expensive bearing inserts on the bigger 900-1000-1100 motors.

Update:
pulled the pan on the motor today, the two small o-rings were installed but the big obvious one that I'm holding in the picture was not.

I will be looking at the head and inspecting all the damage from the lack of oil pressure tomorrow. Hopefully I can run it, and look into getting a low mileage 750 motor to swap in over the winter.

The big obvious one would not be the issue......that one prevents oil from leaking out of the motor from the filter location, hope all is well with the cam journals as Plummen is. You know those 650's are one of the most tractable motors Kawasaki made, very strong and well balanced, you would be hard pressed to beat them

Thanks for the advice on cleaning the oil passages. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't this o-ring i was missing seal of the camber that the filter is in. It's in-between the pan and the block. There is another o-ring the same size that holds the filter the the pan underneath. So this allows the filter chamber to be pressurized, or vacuumed depending on which way the pump works. Without it it dumps the oil back into the pan and doesn't build pressure.

Haven't opened up a 650 yet but I believe it is the same principle as in a 1000 and in that bike the pump is a mechanical device which is submerged in the oil, picks up that oil (through a mesh filter) and pumps it up through the motor via two rotating gears run off the crankshaft. This system does not rely on any pressurization/vacuum to operate. One test you can do is install the big O-ring you missed, make sure there's the right amount of oil in your bike, put it on the center stand, take off the valve cover and spin the motor and see if any oil comes through........might get a bit messy but at least you will know the oil path is clear......please correct me if I am wrong any 650 owners!!

bluezbike wrote: Haven't opened up a 650 yet but I believe it is the same principle as in a 1000 and in that bike the pump is a mechanical device which is submerged in the oil, picks up that oil (through a mesh filter) and pumps it up through the motor via two rotating gears run off the crankshaft. This system does not rely on any pressurization/vacuum to operate. One test you can do is install the big O-ring you missed, make sure there's the right amount of oil in your bike, put it on the center stand, take off the valve cover and spin the motor and see if any oil comes through........might get a bit messy but at least you will know the oil path is clear......please correct me if I am wrong any 650 owners!!

I'm sure that's the way the oil system works. Every oring on my kz650s has hardened like plastic, and only problem ever encountered was oil leaks. I've had all these pan to case orings go bad and got oil drips on the floor, but oil to topend was fine. I've never heard of a 650 not getting oil to the top end until now.

Thanks everyone for the advice, I have evaluated the damage and my cams and head are toast and will only be good for art. I've ordered new cams and head, and will be testing the pump before installing them to make sure that my missing o-ring is hopefully the fix and making sure that all oil passages in the new head are clear.
I will update as soon as I can get to the next step.