TOPIC:

I recently bought 92 Zephyr 1100 that's in visual good state. While riding it home (2 hour drive)_ I noticed that I couldn's really find the 100hp that in there somewhere. Aditionally the bike didn't respond well on acceleration (a bit jerkey) and driving higher speed and keeping constant throttle position at 130km\h (80mph) and higher the bike felt it was going to stall, but it immediately picked up again. This was very intermittend, but it gave me the feeling I would be left stranded on the side of the road. It kept doing it the whole ride home. Lower speeds didn't show this phenomenom.

Currently taking the bike appart because of the winter. My first suspect was the carburetor, however it is looking just fine! I did buy a rebuild kit anyway since it's inexpensive.

While the bike's apart, I'm also checking sparkplugs, ignitioncoils and ignition module. And this is where things get weird. My workshop manual says the ignition coils should be between 14.5 and 15.5 kOhm on the secondary side. However all my coils are 25Ohm?!

While checking my Ignition module I got a surprise as well. I am measuring impedance according to my workshop manual and I find that the 8 pin connector fails on almost every measurement. Most measurements are infinite resistance and I only measure a c value between pin 7 and 8 (The correct value). The 10 pin connector is just fine.

I am only working from the manual and do not have enough experiance to say whats going on here, Sooo I hope there are some folk on the forum who can tell me whats happenin or who have some spare coils/ignition module to verify my measurements.

I dumped a ton of pics below, I would greatly appriciate any input!

Saving driving, and have a good day!
Jarno

Welcome to KZR
I fixed all your pictures so folks could see them
Next time please click the insert all tab and all your pictures will load properly
Dave

Mine is a 750. At this point with this old bike, I'd be more concerned with cleaning thoroughly the carbs, and changing everything rubber. Make sure also you get proper level on the bowls.

About the electrics. It is hard to read these things. In spite of what factory says, my coils, with caps on, read in the Mohms on secondaries. The caps have resistance, I believe 5Kohms, still not enough to add to Mhoms, but that is what they read. I have used different instruments.

About the ignitor. I have two, and both don't quite read as in the factory, yet they work. When it comes to very low Ohms, it depends on instrument accuracy, and you may need more like a micro-ohmmeter, not the garden variety instruments we use at home.

. You may not find many answers about the Zephyr 1100 because it was an odd ball. This forum is for KZs, and all were air cooled originals. The Zephyr 550 and 750 were remakes of the KZ engines in the '90s, thus they are still KZ, but the Zeph 1100 is more related to the ZX liquid cooled. The bottom end came from the ZX1100 and the cylinder barrels and head were back engineered into air cooling, for the sake of retro. Thus is not related to the air cooled 900/1000/1100 KZs....other than being Kawasakis.

.....and to make things more complex, they multiplied everything on the ignition system x 2, in the name of 'better flame propagation'

oohps, posted double. Moderator would you please delete this. Thanks.

I would clean the carbs first then evaluate when everything is back together.
If you look at too many things at the same time, you may not know what the problem is.