1979 KZ1300 carburetor difficulty!

Hey everyone!

So I have a 1979 Kawasaki KZ1300, which I just got a week ago, in non running condition, and have been fixing her up all week. Got her starting, then got her idling, and have been fixing various things all over it.

I have been posting a lot about my progress on another forum, at Custom Fighters. You can view everything i've done over at www.customfighters.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37731 if you want to get the full history of my progress :)

Anyway, I'm a little stumped on the carbs. I've got a lot of popping coming from the carbs, and I've been adjusting them in many ways, but I can't successfully eliminate the popping yet. It WAS running realllly rich, and i managed to fix that. It also will only idle for a few minutes, then it will slow down in RPM and die eventually.

And every now and then, it will be idling, and all the sudden jump to like 8000 rpm on its own without me touching anything. I have to run over and hit the kill switch in a panic haha.

So, anyone have any advice on getting the carburetors working perfectly?

I'm pretty sure the jets are stock right now, because there is no markings or anything on them and they look pretty plain. I'm considering upgrading to a Dynajet jet system. Anyone have any experience with them, or any advice on that?

Thanks in advance for taking time to read, and for any help!!

everybody ive ever talked to says you need to run a stock airbox to make them run right

Thanks for the tip! However, it has the stock airbox still. Any other ideas?

looks like pods in your picture to me anyway,did you do anything to compensate for the header on there?

Yeah the air filters are high flow aftermarket... Is that what you meant by airbox?

I don't know what the original owner did and did not do... I know he wasn't perfect, because he didnt know to remove the ballast resistor upon installing the 3 ohm accel ignition coils. it was ohming at 5 ohms, and causing my weak spark problem.

What adjustment would be necessary for the header?

try sending a pm to kzcsi,hes got atleast 1 hes been riding a long time

ahhh I don't know what I was thinking, the stock airbox is definitely not installed, and I don't have it. No vacuum lines either. Just k&n pods.

Popping back through the carbs or popping out the exhaust?

Look for missing vacuum caps. They were oddball carbs for sure.

No markings on the jets and no airbox tends to make me think they might have DynoJet jets in there already. Some of their old jets were not marked.

I would think the OE jets would have numbers easily seen.

Bet that header isn't easy to find these days :laugh:

Popping back through the carbs. A popping noise and a quick puff of visible vapor out a single throat on one of the three carbs. Does it on two or three throats.

No missing vacuum caps...

I performed a valve clearance test and a cylinder leak down test. Everything checked out fine. So I think the problem is still with the air flow in the carbs... Bleh!