New Owner - 1981 GPZ, KZ1100GP, KZ1100-B1

trianglelaguna:

I followed your tip and bought an oil pan off of Ebay. All told, the total cost was around $40. That included the pan, S&H, and the pan gasket. A whole lot of elbow grease too. The Ebay oil pan was filthy, and the old gasket took what seemed an eternity to remove.

New to me threads now though.

Thanks.
Marty

GPZ1100_Rider wrote:

Hello:

I became the proud owner of a 1981 GPZ 1100 yesterday. It is my second one, as I had owned one in the mid-late eighties before regretfully selling it. Reliving my youth, another mid-life crisis, whatever label.

The new one is a great find. I bought it from the original owner, it came with a factory service manual, and only has 16,300 miles on it. Paint, seat and rubber components are in great condition. Came with a Kerker exhaust, but I also got the stock one, and it's in good shape.

The last owner was a good owner, but not too mechanically-inclined. He took it to the dealer on occasion for routine work, and at one point, put a new RKO o-ring chain on it, and would winterize it with Stabil.

The bike was last tagged in '08, but the owner said that it really wasn't ridden that year too much.

It ran, but according to old posts, it suffers from the same malady that someone else had... It would start and idle rough, and stumble all over itself, till RPM's got above 3.5K, then take off. I rode it home at highway speeds 65- 75 MPH, and occasionally it would miss. The gas in it smelled extremely stale.

When I got home, I let it cool, then took off all of the plastic, drained the gas tank, removed the chain (soaked it in kerosene), and gave it a much needed bath.

One bad thing happened while disassembling it, and I hope that someone can steer me towards an easy fix... When I broke the oil drain plug loose to drain the old black stuff in the engine, it broke free easily, but when I backed it out, it was rough going. And I've worked on enough cars and bikes to know what that was going to turn into. The internal threads in the engine came out with the drain plug!

Outside of the aforementioned stripped threads in the drain plug hole, the bike is in great shape. The front fork seals leak, an easy fix, and although the brakes work all right, the brake fluid in the reserviors is the color of molasses, so the whole brake system needs to be flushed out and refilled with new fluid.

Since I am going to be going over it well, I was wondering if you guys can provide some advice on how to tackle the stripped drain plug hole and the engine running so bad. Just to let you know, I plan on keeping the bike stock, so the fuel injection is going to stay on it. The way I see it, and with the low miles and knowledge of the bike's history, that I can get it running all right with the EFI on it. I figure a good cleaning of the fuel system and air box parts, new gas and filter, SeaFoam or equivalent, a synch of the throttle valves, and cleaning and checking the ignition pick up and timing advancer should be good steps in the right direction.

One last thing, where are some of the best places to buy parts from online?

Thanks in advance, and I look forward to your responses.

Marty

From one "DFI" lover to another.... "great find" ! You have some resto work ahead of you, but nothing out of the ordinary for a 30 year old bike. The great thing about your bike is it's NOT been "molested". I have the original DFI on my GPz1100, and it runs mint, but I did have to do a simple mod to get the system to perform correctly with our new $hitty E10 oxygenated fuel. I have solid understanding of the DFI system, so DON'T swap to carbs ! Keep it OEM. The only issue with the '81's is the injectors are bolted right into the cyl heads and were problematic with "cooking" the injectors from excessive heat. Keep this in mind if you get stuck in traffic on a hot day....

Rich