Swapping my KZ1000 master cylinder onto my KZ550

Hi, my 1983 550 spectre that I am preparing to sell has a siezed master cylinder. I am thinking that instead of spending money on a bike I am not going to use I would buy a new aftermarket master cylinder for my 1982 1000 LTD and put the 1000's cylinder on the 550. Barring any fitting issues, would using a master cylinder from a bigger bike with 2 rotors be a problem for a smaller single rotor bike?

9am53 wrote:

Hi, my 1983 550 spectre that I am preparing to sell has a siezed master cylinder. I am thinking that instead of spending money on a bike I am not going to use I would buy a new aftermarket master cylinder for my 1982 1000 LTD and put the 1000's cylinder on the 550. Barring any fitting issues, would using a master cylinder from a bigger bike with 2 rotors be a problem for a smaller single rotor bike?

Might consider first disassembling the siezed master cylinder to determine whether it might possibly be resurrected without any new parts.

Good Luck!

9am, Some thoughts, As I recall, the Specter used high riser muliple bend hbars, and its master was cocked & mounted at an angle. the flat master of your' 1000 may have fluid level probs. 2nd the bore diametres of single/dual brake masters are different. and will probly result in a poor feel at lever and likely be overly sensitive to pressure. luck g

Well, my 1000 is an LTD, so the bars are similar enough, but you may have a point about the feel of the lever. I suppose I may as well take apart the old master cylinder and see what gives. I tried to change brake fluid because it was really old and had little brake pressure, and once I pumped once I could get no more pressure, and the lever was completely limp...like the piston was jammed and the spring wasn't pushing it out to suck up more fluid.

Just an update...which I could have put up a week ago, but whatever...

PATTON, thanks for planting the seed of wise frugality in my head, I took the master apart and it was surely never cleaned before. There was so much crap in there that the piston was not being pushed back out after brake actuation. I cleaned the bugger out and changed fluid, and it works great! It cost me a total of 45 minutes, and no money, and since I fixed the brake the bike sold yesterday.