Hello fellas, three months since my last post. Hope you guys enjoy the holidays and I hope you're all having a great 2025. Happy new year! I have been busy with work and family, my son is now six months old and he crawls. He he assaulted me a few times by trying to rip my beard off of my face or to simply rip my face off of my skull. He has very strong hands and sharp nails. I have been working on the bike. Here are the updates: 

The head is finally back from the machine shop!! They gutted me with a 2,000$ bill, apparently the head was not cooperative. Lesson learned, should've just bought a new engine, I saw some upgraded ones for around 2,500$. Oh well, you live and you learn. It does feel good to have a "Brand New" head though. I painted it too.

 


I also rebuilt and painted my brake calipers and brackets :

 

The powder coating guys took too long so I took back my frame, reinforced it in a few places and painted it myself with the coolest brown/copper I could find. Chrysler Saddle Brown

 



I also brought the engine casing in which I had broken 2 bolts to the machine shop. I was unable to take them out and they are well known in our area for taking out broken bolts. They did a really good job and cleaned up the casing as well.

 

And that's all for now, I will keep going with the painting & reassembly. A member of the forum that lives around my city named Steve might help me for the engine rebuild. I'm super excited about that. Oh I also bought LTD wheels from him

 

Couple of questions for the next projects :

1- Where do I get bearings for the wheels?
2- Any tire recommendations? Sizes? I would like a sporty look but don't mind a sprinkle of off road
3- The swing arm seems to have bearings inside as well, should I replace them? Where do I get some?
4- Any ideas for ignition upgrades? Parts are probably old, coils and such.

Thanks for the help! Wish you all a great 2025 again

Then last thing to do, was removing the old chain guard brackets that I have been meaning to before repolishing the swing arm.  They have cause some minor scratches in my rear wheel and I am done with it...  I liked how it came out on my ZRX with the DAEG, so some careful cutting, filing, and sanding, and they came off.

Well that is all for now....

Cory

So not many updates, alot of work, but not many updates.  So where we left off is I realized I had a wrong set of carbs that I purchased years ago.  VM26SS's instead of the VM28SS's.  So I ended up finding a good deal (well see when they finally get here!) of VM29 Smoothbores.  So waiting on them....

Then it was time to turn to the final things I could do:

- Pull the masters and calipers and rebuild them.
- Clean up and polish the rear wheel components and swing arm.
- Learn how to Nickel plate parts.

So the masters are going pretty well.  They were low mile take offs and the seals were in excellent condition, but still rebuilt them.

I started and broke out the bench polisher and microfibers and polished the RH rearset and bolted on the freshly rebuilt master.

The calipers I have torn apart, but wanted a special tool to remove the pistons, so I am waiting on the tool to arrive, then I'll pull the pistons and begin glass beading them before I can start to powder coat them.

Cory

Over the course of the week, I have been scrounging up as many parts as I can think of that I want to take to the powder coating outfit. The frame is ready to go, new VIN label has been ordered, steering races knocked out and removed from stem... I have been feeling pretty ready to get this thing coated and back on wheels / rolling around. Enter the stick in my spokes - the cursed swingarm. The one that was on the frame has a big old dent in the side of it, almost looks like it is from a center stand at some point? Not sure if that's possible because I've never kept one on a bike. In any event, it's too ugly to piddle around with and pay to have PC'd. I found a smoking deal on Ebay on a very nice-looking swingarm, which arrived very promptly. After work last night, I set my sights on removing the bearings. My first mistake was to try and do this after a 10+ hour work day. This is a task that requires all of one's physical and mental strength- as I'd soon find out. I've had good success with renewing bushings in old Honda swingarms, that's easy. The roller bearings in these KZ swingarms are going appear in my nightmares for the rest of my years, I am certain. First I gave the bearing end a good long and hot run in the Ultrasonic to remove all of the grime. Secondly, I filled a smaller container with Evaporust and gave it another run. It came out looking promising- but this was false assurance as it would turn out! I heated and beat that thing until my arms were noodles, it mocked all of my attempts with a blind bearing puller / slide hammer. I finally succumbed to grinding the shells out with a carbide bit. This worked TOO well and I put some hideous gouges in it, but finally they surrendered. The photos that follow are not my proudest work- but this is where I am at. It's probably not necessary to fill in the craters that I left behind, as long as the new bearings go in tightly, that's all that really matters. But, I felt like it was the right thing to do, even if it's just so that the powder coating people didn't see the results of my ham-handedness.   Next time, I will probably bash the cages out and let a machine shop figure out how to get the damned things out. I can do most things to a pretty high standard of precision and finish, but this was not a job I am built for. I am an absolute lout with a grinder in hand. Lesson learned!

 

Typical swingarm bearing condition for a 45 year old bike I'm sure -- The rollers barely rolled and this side of the shaft is JUNK.

 

Ultrasonic bath in Evaporust -- This works incredibly. Cleans rusted parts in about 15 minutes most of the time! Try it!

 

Looking promising, and the rollers actually roll now - But they still need to come out...



What I am doing today!  As mentioned, this is probably not really necessary in the grand scheme of things, but it eases my neurotic brain enough to make it worth the time and effort. 
Once I screw something up, I get hyper fixated on at least making it less awful to look at....

 
Swingarm restoration kit... 

 
One gouge filled, now to sand, sand, sand.

 
Not what I envisioned when I started the bearing removal project, but I'll have to live with it!








 

For the assembly lube I used some Penrite cam assembly lube which seems to be fairly thick, close in consitancy to grease you'd use for swingarm bushings.

Still have to put my carbs back together and sort the ignition out so might be a while before it's ready to start. Which is why I was wondering if I'd be able to flush the grease out whith just the starter and plus would prefer if clearance were in tolerance before starting it.

As for measuring the cam clearances I did it as per the Kawasaki workshop manual where you line up the Ex marks on the cams to the surface of the head.

I am a bit bigger at 6'1 240lbs.   I have a suzuki gs1100 swing arm and 13" shocks to go with it.  I love the height for when I'm commuting (i was riding this 20 miles each way for a while this summer to work - it was a blast!) or just out riding about. But we will need to get lower this next year. As we chase speed it does seem to come with some style and preference sacrifices ...I have been looking at heads, seems with the passing of Jay  - ape is no longer offering all the head services. I have been keeping an eye on the marketplace.

The community arround the salt is great we had lots of advice given and one that caught me by suprise was how many people said don't stress over weight, it's the correlation to acceleration that makes weight savings important, but once you have momentum... It appeared less important to those guys idk 🤷‍♂️ 

I will look up that book this afternoon !

Centered the rear wheel and do write ups for the axle spacer.
Next step is to get the chain alignment, just 10 mm offset now.
So the rear sprocket carrier need some time on the lathe and the rubber damper elements have to modify.
The mono shock linkage to the swing arm mount need some adjustments.
My goal is no weldings to the frame, so all parts should be bolt on only.
Sure, thinks (probs) will show up during the progress everytime but should not be a big obstacle for me.

Thanks guys, it was a lot of work over a long time (more than a couple of things were done more than once...) but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

@Buzz: The swingarm wasn't much work for me - there are some guys here that have adapted a load of gixxer 750 swingarms for the old Z's and they did the work for me
Basically the central shock mount needed to be milled off and the mounts for the stereo shocks welded on (I think they come ready made from PMC or Sanctuary). The front tube had to be milled down to fit in the frame and the bushings for the needle bearings and axle are slightly thicker (I think the swingarm axle on the gixxer was 20mm and the KZ's only 16mm?). Not really too much work if you have a decent mill and can weld aluminium - it's a no from me on both of those...
I also ended up getting another guy that lives close by and makes swingarms for old bikes (K & J) to weld on a couple of brackets for the chain guard.

The work that I put into it was just getting the wheel centered and the chain lined up. The swingarm is assymetrical so getting the wheel in the middle took a bit of messing around. The rear hub is custom made and the offset from the center to the sproket carrier was quite a bit off spec so that didn't make it much easier.