conversion help...baby ape hangers to superbike

Greetings and thanx in advance for any help offered here.

My '84 KZ1000 LTD wants Superbike handlebars in place of the goofy baby ape hangers it came with. The Superbike bars are on and I have been routing the excess cabling around to find a good fit. It can be done, I am not the first to do this...so I come here to learn from others what works best and what does not.

So far, the cabling seems to be workable, however, if there are better ways than to route extra cable around, then do tell please.

I am having two issues...

first, The master cylinder seems to be designed to accept the angles presented on the baby ape hanger bars, when I put the front brake controls on the Superbike bars, the reservoir mounts at an undesirable angle...I anticipate air in the line later due to the crooked attitude of the thing and the location of the fluid holes within it. So...perhaps there is a more desirable front brake control assembly from a different year or after market that will mount better on the superbike bars?

Next is the blinkers...they wont fit on the bars anymore and there seems to be a number of ways folks have gotten around this...I only want to buy parts once so your input here is valuable and appreciated.

Basically, I am looking for any ideas associated with a handlebar swap and good proven ways of dealing with the challenges that it presents.


thanks again
peace

I too am changing my bars to superbike bars, they have not shown up in the mail yet.

I decided to start with shorter cables.
I have a KZ1100-D2 1983 but I ordered cables for a KZ1100-A1 1981 they are 3.5 inches shorter.

Thanx for the response Darryl.

I am going to try to put some pics up...bare with me.

Your master cylinder looks like it mey be different than mine in the one pic i saw. In my photos you can see the unpleasant angle that the reservoir winds up at.

My bars took more than six weeks to get from JC Whitney...back order upon back order...they must be a popular item.

I am interested in knowing how your project goes and if there is something that I can help with let me know. I wonder how spendy those cables were? and from where? did you get a clutch cable too? my re-route job is not going to be pretty, but it will work. If your blinkers were mounted on the bars be prepared to find a new way.

You can use any master cly from a model with lower bars, or go with a modern 1. I have both if u need 1 just holler.

hey mark...thanks for the input and the offer...i posted a picture...same one about 8 times...geez...i messed that up. Any way, how much would you charge for these cylinders and which one would you recommend? I need to be able to mount my mirrors from the brake control assembly.

Do you see any problems associated with the angle of the dangle of the resevoir from the picture?

thanx again
peace

for the turn signals, i bought shorter stalks from z1enterprises and ran them thru the headlight bucket.

i stayed w/ the original MC and the wierd routing. so far so good. if i upgrade to SS lines i will probably change out the MC at that point.

that looks good Freak...thanx...so the MC gives no problems mounted cockeyed then? I noticed that you went downward with the brake line...I didn't like that at the time i did it so I took off the banjo fitting, turned it upside down and backwards...it makes a nice smooth loop going upwards then down through the normal factory cable holder goodies. I still have not filled the brake fluid up so I don't know if the reversal there will cause a problem or not.

On those blinkers, you only had to buy the shaft and did not buy a complete blinker set...is that right? You used your original blinkers?

thanx

gnfreak wrote:

for the turn signals, i bought shorter stalks from z1enterprises and ran them thru the headlight bucket...

I did the same thing on my 650-CSR. Z1 has several stems to choose from. Someone on another Kaw forum used some Honda stems. You can use a front mc from just about any Jap bike w 7/8" bars. Get one that's got the dual disk bore. Some of them don't have a mirror orifice. You should be able to easily splice the brake lite switch if need be. There are probably some shorter Kaw throttle cables that'll swap. If the upper brake line is too long & you don't want to guess the needed length, an easy thing to do is to lower the pipe joint there at the forks until the line looks right, then measure the overage - simple (I'm assuming your brake lines are set up similar to the smaller bikes).

I have the same situation on my KZ 900 and the MC sits at a strange angle. I have had no problems with the same handle bars. I dont like the look of the stock mirrors so I am thinking about going to bar end mirrors...Russ

Imo, the tilted master cylinder increases risk of leaking brake fluid, which is very corrosive (except Dot5).

In the relatively level oem position, fluid is beneath the diaphragm and won't leak even with the cap removed, because it's not oriented in a constant overflow position.

When mounted in tilted position, the fluid is more apt to escape between the cap and reservoir. Diaphragms do go bad and they will leak. Imo, the diaphragm should not be so heavily relied upon to do what it's not designed to do.
The diaphragm may hold the fluid inside for awhile, but sooner or later the fluid will escape and damage whatever finishes it touches (quickly removes paint).

Same reason it's safer to keep refrigerated bottles in the upright position. If the cap leaks, the contents stay put. If stored laying down and the cap leaks . . . you know.

Remember the older bikes (think Brit) with vertically split crankcases that invariably leaked oil. Then the Japanese (mostly) came along with horizonally split crankcases that largely resolved the problem by having most if not all the crankcase oil situated below the crankcase seals.

Good Luck!

Excellent insight and splaination of the MC angle dilemma Patton...not only what you said, but it seems like a potential air bubble in the line as well...I don't want to find a bubble when I need to find a brake...ya know?

I haven't even tried to fit or route the throttle cable yet and forgot to ask you folks about what is good with that on this conversion. So far...i almost feel like I want to put the ape hangers back on and just ride the damn thing...they are so uncomfortable tho.

There is a vintage bike parts yard near me, I heven't been there yet but thanx to all of you I know better what to look for when I go.

It will be a few days before I get a chance to get back to project, but I appreciate all of these great bits of info...maybe this thread will even help out someone else.

peace, and thanx for the continuing support.

There's usually some air space between the fluid surface and the diaphragm, which doesn't enter the brake line unless the reservoir goes dry and allows the air to be sucked through the hole at bottom of the reservoir and into the bore.

Would concur that the tilted position orients the hole whereby it will suck air more quickly than the oem position even with the same volume of fluid in the reservoir.

Like going "dry" because remaining fluid is down at the banjo end instead of evenly distributed over bottom of the reservoir.

Good Luck!