Z650 - from standard to...?

I'd made a stainless steel flange for the Rajay turbo outlet ages ago, so it was high time that I did something with it.
With a 90 degree stainless bend, with one leg shortened, it was squeezed into the flange like so.

And you can see some cut-down stainless bends on the bench as well, which got tacked together...

And then bolted back on to see if they looked something like...

I'm going to slash cut the exit, although I'm still not 100% sure about it. I'm going to make another, baffled, pipe that runs to the rear of the bike that I can use when the bike is MoT tested and also if I ever decide to take it on track (either at a noise-limited run-what-ya-brung, or a track day might be fun...)

I got a grown up to TIG it all together properly.

So, ages ago I mentioned that the carb wouldn't fit in a manner that would allow it to work very well...

Usually the carb slips into this flange that bolts onto the turbo body

So I needed to find a way of offsetting that flange forwards and outwards...
After some thought... I decided that a piece of bend tubing could do the trick, but this pesky Pingle could end up pissing on my chips...

I got a cast aluminium bend, and marked it up where I guesstimated would work...

And cut it. The piece of paper is a template for the flanges to go on each end of the pipe to A) bolt to the turbo and hold the flange for the carb

And if it was wrong I still had the other piece of bend
And, welded together with a pair of flanges

It needed some material trimming off, but it was looking close...

Tadaa! The carb flange mounted (with holes redrilled and tapped to take 5mm allen head bolts) and the carb slipped into place.

As you can see, that pesky Pingle has been sent to hang its head in shame in the corner of the shed, and has been replaced by a billet tap made to suit by a bloke on the other side of the country.
Note, however, that the tank actually has to come down a bit yet as it's being held falsely high by the rose-jointed brace that steadies the turbo... We're not finished here.

Good to see some more progress on the beast, allways plenty to keep one busy with a special

Looks great, nice work.
Steve

Meanwhile, things were happening. Only little things, but at least something was being done. Small steps, but all in the right direction. Mostly.
The swinging arm shock mounts on the Martek arm were further apart (across the bike) than the standard Z650 mounts, but then you'd expect that when upgrading to a 180 section tyre I guess. I had originally been happy with the Maxton shocks sitting angled inwards from the new mounts to the standard upper ones, but over the last few years I'd grown less happy with them, so wanted the upper mounts moving outwards to match.

I found that a bloke on the Z1 Owners club forum was making adaptors that extended the shock mounts outwards, and somewhat conveniently they happened to be exactly the right dimensions to suit the shock mounts on the Martek arm. Yippee!

They'll need to be welded onto the frame, but that can happen when I do the frame mods for the chain run (oh, did I not mention the chain run issues...)
I was never happy with the bolts in the lower shock mounts, as they had threads running through the mounts, so I got a couple of bolts with long 'shoulders' that I re-threaded so that the shoulders ran through the shock and mounts and the thread was only up to the inside face of the mount.

As I mentioned previously, I had a rose-jointed support to hold the weight of the Rajay hanging from the standard tank mount, but it was too chunmky and got in the way of the Tank Shop alloy tank...

So I took it off and threw it into the 'might come in handy one day' pile.
Measuring up for a more svelte bracket, it was clear that it wouldn't just be a straight piece of steel that'd do the job.

I found a pice of angled steel and, with a bit of chopping, bending and welding, made a bracket that fitted something like.

Hopefully it'll help support the weight of the turbo and give a bit more life to header gaskets etc.

I'd got the offset sprocket from Debben Preformance, and chucked it on (with a straight edge held against it for chain clearance reference).

And after routing through my drawers (madam!), I found a part-used 530 chain that originally came with the GSX-R1000 swinging arm that I have for another project, so popped that on too.

You can see that it hits the frame... Bugger.
Here's where I'll need to be pocketing the inside of the frame rails.

And, while I was here, I made up a cardboard mock-up of the oil tank for the turbo (I'll be running a seperate electric oil pump to oil the turbo, given that the air-cooled Kawasakis don't have great oil pressure)

Super nice work! will be watching this one

Amazing job wow! Really loved reading the posts and seeing this develop, thanks for sharing and amazing fab work wow!

Brett