Fouled lobes?

A good set of drop in cams will compliment all the work you've done.
Steve

Damn!!
I'm suffering severe withdrawal right now...., without having to wait another week or more for parts!!
I had to put that X-country trip through Colorado and Utah with my bike bros until late next week and one of the other four can't make then. Last week was perfect....
And, I have not been riding for about 10 days now ... JEEZE it's the dead of riding season!!
UGH!!!
It's a fairly simple fix for me. A two three hour job to swap out the head gasket and those sprockets.
if I had an extra Wiseco 1075cc head gasket I'd consider ordering the LIska stuff right now and mild set of cams.
Then just put it together tonight as is, ride for a couple three week again.... and then redo it, like when it cools down a bit some evening.
But alas, my finances are not that robust! LOL
There's another reason to own two big road bikes.

You can reuse the head gasket like I did. I had to buy parts piece by piece but I was riding while I waited for the parts.
Steve

I sure like the idea of using a real roller bearing sprocket on the tensioner assembly!! Although potentially noisier, I'm not sure why Kawasaki did not do that from the start.
That flakey rubber wheel and that flat slider guide on the front had always been the source of 95% of the ground up junk I've found in the oil pan in every Z1 through any KZ I've rebuilt or worked on.

I'm not a fan of Rotella as a source of ZDDP. Rotella is designed for diesel engines and has a different kind of ZDDP than oil for cars.

I don't remember which is which but there's zinc diaryldithiophosphate and zinc dialkyldithiophosphate. One is use in oil for cars, the other for diesel engines. I only use the stuff intended for cars.

Kz900Pablo wrote: I'm not a fan of Rotella as a source of ZDDP. Rotella is designed for diesel engines and has a different kind of ZDDP than oil for cars.

I don't remember which is which but there's zinc diaryldithiophosphate and zinc dialkyldithiophosphate. One is use in oil for cars, the other for diesel engines. I only use the stuff intended for cars.

I have never heard of this before. Do you have a source for this information? On Bob is the Oil Guy the guys in the forum love Rotella as much as we do here, and you won't find many guys more knowledgeable about oil than those guys.

I made my own back in the 70's because of the cost. I just bought the stock rollers, put them in the adjuster and top idler brackets. That still left the issue of the rubber centers coming apart. I used the marginal one in the idler. Changed it later. That still left the center roller and front guide. I think the safest bet is when the adjuster push rod is at the end, it's time to change them. Not the Liska's. I made the mistake back then of using a Honda 450 push rod. It was longer and worked until I broke a cam chain. Now I watch closely when I change my oil and don't use a aftermarket adjuster. I learned that last year too.
Steve

Nessism wrote:

Kz900Pablo wrote: I'm not a fan of Rotella as a source of ZDDP. Rotella is designed for diesel engines and has a different kind of ZDDP than oil for cars.

I don't remember which is which but there's zinc diaryldithiophosphate and zinc dialkyldithiophosphate. One is use in oil for cars, the other for diesel engines. I only use the stuff intended for cars.

I have never heard of this before. Do you have a source for this information? On Bob is the Oil Guy the guys in the forum love Rotella as much as we do here, and you won't find many guys more knowledgeable about oil than those guys.

Me neither. I suspect "diaryldithiophosphate " is simply a typo. I can find no reference to it on the internet. Ed

650ed wrote:

Nessism wrote:

Kz900Pablo wrote: I'm not a fan of Rotella as a source of ZDDP. Rotella is designed for diesel engines and has a different kind of ZDDP than oil for cars.

I don't remember which is which but there's zinc diaryldithiophosphate and zinc dialkyldithiophosphate. One is use in oil for cars, the other for diesel engines. I only use the stuff intended for cars.

I have never heard of this before. Do you have a source for this information? On Bob is the Oil Guy the guys in the forum love Rotella as much as we do here, and you won't find many guys more knowledgeable about oil than those guys.

Me neither. I suspect "diaryldithiophosphate " is simply a typo. I can find no reference to it on the internet. Ed

Go read some oil analysis reports on Bob is the Oil guy, as performed by Blackstone labs, and they make no distinction between different types of Zinc or Phosphorus. They list both of these ingredients separately too. The better oils come in at 1200 ppm for these two ingredients.

I know of several very high mileage Kawasaki Concours 1000's that use Rotellea. Not talking about 50,000 miles here. Try a 100K +. Even 100K for a C10 is easy to do. I know of at least one C10 with verifiable 300K. Rotella is popular C10 oil. I must admit I have not used Rotellea in my C14.
As mentioned before the early C10 cams were soft and looked pretty bad after a number of miles. But they kept on running and running well. Guys would finally change cams when they could not stand the looks of them anymore. What is pictured in this thread is really pretty minor compared to some C10 cams I've seen.

I am monitoring the cam lobes that are in my Z1B. Slight scoring so far at 24K.

Only knock on diesel engine oils like rotella is they have a lot more detergent than gas oil and that occupies volume. But I never heard of any performance problems.

I know we get tired of oil threads at Cog-online.org. I think the best bet is to use the oil weight Kawasaki recommends and change it and the filter often. I know Rotella 5/40 is popular and I understand motor internals are very clean. I know Kawasaki recommended changing the oil filter every other oil chage on the Z1 which I thought was nuts since 1974 when I got my first Z1A.