1978 kz650 in need of a stock airbox

Hello my fellow kzrider members! I’ve been reading 1978 kz650 related conversations on this forum for a while and greatly appreciate all the knowledge its provided me.

I recently bought a 1978 Kawasaki kz650 that’d been sitting for a little over 5 years. The man I bought it from cleaned the carbs and got the bike running. Im going to do a lot of work on it just Incase there are any underlying problems that I’m unaware of.

(I worked all summer to save up the money for this bike, it is my first)

The bike currently has some crappy looking foam pods on it, and based on what I’ve read about pods vs a stock airbox, I want to play it safe and go back to the airbox. However, I’m having a lot of trouble finding one for sale.

Any advice on where I might be able to find a stock airbox for my 1978 kawasaki kz650? Are there other non kz650 model air boxes that the 1978 kz650 might be compatible with? I’ve checked eBay and Amazon, as well as revzilla and I’ve gotten nothing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Probably the airbox from any 1977-80 KZ650.
Related, the airbox ducts are still available & Z1Enterprises.com has them.

Within the realm of possibility. You might be able to use a KZ650-CSR or KZ750E/H airbox, but I'm not sure if the battery box mounting brackets are the same or in the same location, plus you'd have to get the 750-4 airbox ducts & make rubber donut spacers to fit the ducts to the VM24 carburetors. use radiator hose or something to make the donuts. The 750-4 ducts are larger to fit CV carbs.

Just an FYI: the 81-83 KZ650-CSR airbox holes are all the same size & are a different ID than the earlier 650s >> the 650-csr airbox is actually a 750-4 airbox as it's embossed with KZ750E/H. If the 650-CSR/KZ750E/H airbox fits, a guy could switch to CV carburetors >> the 82-83 KZ650 came stock with Mikuni BS32 carbs.

Eeeebay and Craig's List are the usual places to look. The info Martin provided should increase your chances. Be careful, there are untruthful folks out there trolling for people's money.
You can also put a notice in the Wanted forum here. Additionally, I suspect in your thread reading, you came across one or two who have removed their air box for one reason or another. You could try sending each of them a PM to see if one would be willing to sell.

You could try these guys. They had a bunch of kz parts in the past.

www.nobullusedmotorcycleparts.com/

Also, I agree that's it's likely any 77-80 kz650 airbox will fit, but the 79 & 80 box will have an extra hole for the air injection system hose. You could plug it, but i figured I'd point it out.

And one more thing. If you do find a box, you absolutely want to replace the rubber boots between the box and carbs. The carbs are incredibly frustrating to install with the airbox present, even with fresh soft boots. With hardened old boots you'll be inclined to push the whole bike off a cliff. I've been there. This is how so many of these bikes end up with pod filters.

Good to know! Thank you so much