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Hey Guys. Starting a performance upgrade project for my '82 KZ1100A. Last winter I stripped her down and built her how I wanted her cosmetically. Its been a good season, and got a bit left in it, but I've decided I want to give her a little more zip.
My plan currently is to bore out the stock 72 mm sleeves to 74mm MTC pistons. That'll give her 10.5:1 compression.
Before I even get started with that though and while I'm waiting for the weather to turn cold here I'm rebuilding a head I picked up from a salvage yard. Standard Hemi style J head.
The plan with that is to drop a set of .410 lift cams (250 duration if you're interested) from Megacycle. upgrade the springs, oversize the intake valves to 38.6 mm and exhaust valves to 33 mm. Top it all off with a nice port job from Cavanaugh and somewhere near the end slap some flatside rs carbs on her. possibly a couple ofther upgrades while I've got it apart. Welded crank and HD cam chain and all. We'll see where she takes me!

Already Started in on the head. Took her apart and Cleaned up the combustion chambers with a rotary tool and brass wire brush.
btw if you go to disassemble one of these, I'd highly reccomend the 60 dollar valve spring compressor tool from Z1. Made it a breeze.

Spent some tome today chasing all my threads inside and out! even cleaned up the spark plug threads with a 14 x 1.25 tap. Everything's smooth like butter now.

Photos of that valve show the shims were not attended to properly; the sealing face is all black which means the valve wasn't seating properly.

Makes sense. That was the exhaust valve off the worst looking cylinder. (#1 it so happens) None of them were particularly good looking. Good thing shes getting a valve job and new oversize ss valves.

Been out of it for a while but I've started back at it and I figured I'd thrown an update in here.
I've blasted and decked the head, shes basically spotless now and later today I'm shipping it off to Larry to cut the new valve seats and do some port work for me!

Back again after a long bout of being in and out of town for work. Got my cylinders bored, cleaned and resurfaced. Set of MTC 10.5:1 pistons to match will bring my displacement up to 1135. Gaskets and few other nifty parts like APE manual tensioner and APE cylinder studs arrive tomorrow to begin reassembly. Just waiting on Larry to get to my head done and I'll be able to take this monster out on the streets pretty soon!

Got the pistons in! I used the reverse method and put pistons in the cylinders then pushed them down and slid the wrist pins in the pistons. Seemed easier, but what do I know? MTC instructions say to leave piston rings dry because 'it helps seal better' but idk if I'm a believer of all that jazz so I did wipe a bit of assembly lube on the cyl walls. We'll see how it goes I guess!
Everything is in place now. Just waiting on the head! Getting antsy, riding season is here in Kansas! In the mean time I'm going to take off my carbs and install a stage 3 Dynajet kit. Should help feed her a little better while I'm running the bs carbs.

What did you use for piston pin retention, clips or buttons?

As part of their piston kit MTC supplies teflon buttons so that's what I used. I have no fears of them coming out or disintegrating in my engine or any of that. I think they'll work great.

They do work great I have them in my kz900. I was wondering if you had used clips how you managed to get them in place using your method of piston install which by the way works great using buttons.

Good to know! haha yeah that would be a bit more difficult. If you put one circlip in each piston side facing the cam chain galley prior to installation it'd be doable; though definitely a PITA.