Unleaded gas rebuild.

Just a quick question. Should I be worried about the heads on my 82 GPz750 and running unleaded gas, should I just pull them and have rebuilt with hardened valve seats?

The bike odom showed just shy of 30k but the speedo wasn't working but the odom supposedly was. However, I have my doubts after removing the clock and inspecting it. It was also hard to start so I've pulled my carbs and have ordered rebuild kits.

Don't worry about the seats.
Steve

Your bike was designed for unleaded fuel. Of much greater concern is the condition of the valves due to neglected valve adjustment. A lot of people don't ever adjust the valves on their bike, and eventually the clearance goes away and the valves hang open and suffer heat damage. Not good.

Carb rebuild kits are typically full of inferior aftermarket parts which may or may not match the original Mikuni parts that came in your carbs. Recycling all the various brass jets and such is advised, after a good cleaning, assuming they are not overly corroded or damaged in some way. Z1 Enterprises sells the various O-rings you will need, or get a Mikuni BS CV carb kit from cycleorings.com

Carb rebuild tutorial here... www.mtsac.edu/~cliff/storage/gs/Mikuni_B...Rebuild_Tutorial.pdf
This tutorial was made for Suzuki GS's but the core of what's there is same as the Kawasaki Mikuni carbs.

Good luck

Nessism is absolutely correct; your bike was designed to run on unleaded fuel. By 1973, the Environmental Protection Agency demanded the phasing-out of the fuel additive tetraethyl lead. By the early 1980s, leaded fuel was completely phased out. This was not a surprise to manufacturers, so they built machines that ran on unleaded fuel before leaded fuel was phased out. Ed

Thanks guys I just wasn't sure. I'll be extra careful with the carbs.

I'll be checking the valve clearance and doing a compression test next.

Good man.
Steve