81 Kz1000K1 Piston Rings

Hi fellow KzRiders.. I need to buy some new rings for my 81 Kz1000K1 with 22K miles.. I tried doing a search on this site, in order to not rehash piston rings, but it appears that this is a new subject here, since the only search hits I got for "piston rings" was mentioning them in old test ride articles from 1981. (sarcasm!)
All kidding aside, I am looking to source some good quality, affordable, standard bore piston rings for my bike..

While fixing my head gasket oil leak, taking a close look at the rings, the top ring looks like it is worn into a "T" configuration within the ring land of the piston. The rest look good, just the top ring is showing wear. I will post some pics later.. I am STILL scraping on the cylinder base gasket from HEELL.

No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configurationOEM rings are the safest best... www.partzilla.com/parts/detail/kawasaki/KP-13008-5035.html

Aftermarket rings are a bit of a crap shoot. These seem to be Japanese though...

Best to get OEM Kawasaki gaskets and seals too. And be sure to change out the valve stem seals.

No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configuration

Nessism wrote: OEM rings are the safest best... www.partzilla.com/parts/detail/kawasaki/KP-13008-5035.html

Aftermarket rings are a bit of a crap shoot. These seem to be Japanese though...

Best to get OEM Kawasaki gaskets and seals too. And be sure to change out the valve stem seals.

WOW, you guys are GREAT! Thanks! I read good things on these rings in my google searches. I was looking for these Nippon Piston Rings, but it wasn't popping on any searches. Google or otherwise. For $103.00 and free shipping.. it's a done deal, I ordered them immediately after I saw your post..
I know Z1 shows some aftermarket rings for this bike, but no specifics are given that I saw, and the lack of a phone number to find out anything is kind of a turn off for me.
www.z1enterprises.com/695mm-piston-rings-kz1000-81-up.html

I am big on OEM parts my friend. AND.. some new viton valve seals are already sitting here. Check out the valve spring adapter I made for my valve spring compressor out of a short piece of 1" EMT. I may tack weld it to my valve spring compressor, depending on how things go when I get to the head / valve lapping. I am STILL spending every waking moment cleaning, ordering, scraping, stripping cylinder base gaskets.

Here are a couple of pics took of the rings last nite. I tried to get in focus good enough to see the top ring wear. This is a new one on me finding a ring wearing like this. It had acceptable compression ranging from 135-155.#. 1 & 2 were the lowest with 2 being ~135#. This bike has 22K miles. I have been running Rotella full synthetic 5W40 oil for maybe 5K miles or so. The cylinder walls look fine and will deglaze well,. I hope.

What do the piston ring lands look like?
Steve

SWest wrote: What do the piston ring lands look like?
Steve

Well, I spent the afternoon cleaning / inspecting the pistons, and did a light hone on the jugs. It's really hard to tell if the ring lands are out of tolerance without having the rings here yet, but visual inspection.. they look ok, and no visible wear is showing in the land areas. I tried to get some good close up focused pics of the ring lands I am posting below.
The cylinders seemed to clean up well, and did show some upper and lower ring ridge, but not much. I did hit them all a few times until the ring ridge shading was no longer visible. Whatever the ring ridge was (I don't have the tools to measure the bores), it was negligible. I feel the cylinder assembly and pistons are ready for reassembly.

Oh.. I noticed after I ordered the rings.. "Item location: Oak Hill, Florida, United States", so I guess I am contributing to hurricane relief.. We shall see it the rain, sleet or hurricane saying holds true.