TOPIC:

I am about to s**tcan the cases on my 78 KZ1000 and replace 'em with a set from a '79. My question is, since I also have a blown Z1 engine sitting in the shed, can I put the Z1 crank into the KZ1000? I've heard that the 900cc Z1 crank will accelerate faster but I really don't want to screw around with this thing forever to make it work.

It will drop right in. I believe some if not all the 900 have smaller and lighter pork chops making crank lighter and therefore more willing to accelerate. The only issue is the number of teeth on the cam chain drive. You may need to replace cam chain. I believe there are either 15 or 16 teeth on KZ cranks that determine cam chain length.

crank is a drop in through atleast 78 possibly 79 ltd,big pin mkII crank has more teeth than earlier cranks.whats wrong with your 78 cases?

If you change the number of teeth on the crank (by swapping cranks) then you need to change the number of teeth on the camshafts too.

Loud, you positive about that? If you don't do you get a mismatch in crank and cam timing or something?

yes, lou is right, think of it like a bicycle, your feet powering the "crank" and the rear wheel being the "cams" if you change gears (number of teeth), the "cams" will be spinning either faster or slower than the "crank", and timing will be off after 1 revolution......there, confusing enough?

Hummm, better look at my cam gears. Am in process of putting head on as we speak. Need to come up with correct set of idler gears and wheels. Thanks for heads up.

Cam has to have EXACTLY twice the number of teeth as on the crank.

Seems strange Kawasaki would have cranks with different numbers of teeth. Unless they went to a different type of chain or were incompatible some other way.

In 79 & 80, Kawasaki sold the Mk II's - these engines were an evolution of the Z1 engine - they beefed up the center section of the crank and switched to 16 teeth - changed the cam sprockets to 32 teeth and went with a 124 link chain. Other than that, the components will pretty much interchange.

The Mk II engines were in the 79 & 80 A models, the 80 B model, the 80 & 81 C models, the 80 D model, the 79 & 80 E models and the 80 G model.

so 79 ltd could still use older crank as long as nothing else is updated.

Ahhh, that is why it is a non-issue for me. All the parts I use to make my dragbike are 77 or older. I wish I had some MKII parts.