chain to belt swap

I have a kz440a it is a chain drive I want to change it to a belt drive I have both the front and rear pullies and a belt. But when I put it all together the belt is either to short or the swing arm is to long. Do I have the wrong belt or swing arm or is this swap possilbe?
Thank you
jon49337

Hi Jon. Welcome to KZR. You need to give more details, then the smart guys here can help you out. What year 440? Where did you get the belt and pulleys? How many teeth on them?

Hi Jon and welcome. I'm guessing you have the pullies and belt off a KZ440 LTD that you are trying to install. The LTD used a 16" rear wheel while your bike should have an 18" rear wheel. I'm going from memory (and that is not always a good thing to do) but I think the swingarm on the LTD is shorter than the one on your bike. Looking up the part number at the Kawasaki website won't really tell you much about the swingarms because if there is any change at all in a part from one model to another Kawasaki will give it a different part # even if the difference is very minor. The best thing I could suggest is to measure your swingarm and then try to locate a 440 LTD and measure its swingarm and then compare lenghts. Or maybe someone here with a 440 LTD could measure their swingarm and post the measurements for you.

The KZ440A(chain driven), and the KZ440D(belt driven) share the same swingarm, used on all LTD's between 1980 and 1983, and they both have an 16" rear wheel, also used on all LTD models. Converting from chain to belt between them should be a direct bolt on. The only thing that differs is the chain/belt guard. If your bike is a 440A, and the belt and pulleys you have came from a 440D, the swingarm on your bike probably has been replaced at one point. But if your bike is a 440B model, the swingarm have got a different length than the A and D model.
All the 440D models used the same drive belt, a 125T belt. The only 440 model that had a different drive belt is the 1982 KZ440G (Custom), which had a 129T belt. The 440G also had it's own unike swing arm used on that model only, and I belive longer than the LTD swingarm.

Since you are new here, you are probably not aware that ibsen22000 is "The Expert" on the 400/440 Kawasaki's.

Click the link in his signature to see the best 400/440 site on the net.

'Dems the Smart Guys I was talkin' about, Jon!

My bad, after I wrote that post I went to the Kawasaki site and was going to check the number of links for the chain used on the LTD vs. the standard model figuring that would tell me if there was a difference in the swingarm lengths. It was then I realized that on a 440 the A model is the LTD and the B is the standard model. I guess in my aging brain I must have been thinking of the 1000, where the B is the LTD and the A is the standard. It sucks getting old.:sick:

Thanks for your reply. Sofar I have found out that there where two belts made a 1 inch belt with 125 teeth and a 1 1/4 inch belt with 129 teeth. The bike is a 1983 KZ440a ltd. The pullies I have are for the 1 1/4 inch belt. I think the extra four teeth may do the trick. Im going to put everything back together with the pullies and measure aroud the pullies to see how long the belt needs to be then divide the lenght by the number of teeth per inch to see if the 129 tooth belt would work. Any other suggestions?
Thank You
jon49337

I did it.

But I had some problems with the clutch and it took me a lot of time to get all the parts I needed for the change.

If you are familiar with German language, look here. If not, maybe the pics can help:

www.bytekillers.de/umbau

GOOGLE LANGUAGE TOOOLLL !!! YESSSS

well that looks simple enough,ive got a truckload of those copper caps if ya need 1!