1981 KZ650 Basket Case

I was able to take it for a ride yesterday, and it ran great!!. I thought with the pods and 4-1 exhaust it would take a couple of tries to get the jetting right. I'll pull the plugs to confirm, but it think I hit it the first time. It idles smoothly and pulls hard all the way up. Once I get all the turn signals working, I'll spend some time on the road, but for now I'm pretty happy with the results.

One item to nit pick though, the Progressive shocks are STIFF!. The lack of a seat cushion may be part of the problem, but this thing is a rough ride. May need to work on that as the project progresses.

Forks or shocks?
Steve

swest wrote: Forks or shocks?
Steve

Shocks

Do you have them on the lowest setting?
Steve

swest wrote: Do you have them on the lowest setting?
Steve

Yep, lowest preload setting. That's the only adjustment.

We made some more progress over the weekend. I put my son to work cutting on the seat pan and frame, and we got a good start on the seat cowl. The hump still needs to be slimmed down quite a bit, but I want to have my tail light in hand before I finalize the shape. It's supposed to show up today. Hopefully we'll have the bulk of the fiberglass work done by the weekend.

The weather's supposed to warm up this weekend, so I may jump back on the Ninja and get it painted. The KZ may need to idle for a bit.

A little more progress on the seat pan.

Forget the seat for a moment. You really need to weld a cross member between the two ends of the frame you chopped off. Otherwise you bike will have independent rear suspension. That's great on a car but very bad on a bike! Ed

650ed wrote: Forget the seat for a moment. You really need to weld a cross member between the two ends of the frame you chopped off. Otherwise you bike will have independent rear suspension. That's great on a car but very bad on a bike! Ed

Yeah, that's not done yet. Mounting of the tail light will play into how all that works. I saved the original hoop in case I can make it work, but I think it will stick out too far.

I was able to get my ZX11 painted last weekend. Planning to buff it out this weekend, and then I can call that project complete. That will free time up to turn my attention back to the KZ.

I've been doing a little more fiberglass work on the seat, and it should be ready for filler and primer early next week. Looking forward to getting the KZ back on the road.

It's taking longer than I expected, but I've finally got most of the body work done on the seat pan. It was a lot more work than I thought. An easier route would have been to buy tail section off the net and bolt it to a trimmed down pan. It would have been quite a bit more expensive, but it would have gone a lot faster. My garage wouldn't be filled with dust either.

Next step is the seat cushion. I'll be using camping mat over a wood and fiberglass board. The pic below shows my progress so far. I started with a piece of 3/16" underlayment plywood cut to shape. I sawed some grooves in it so it would "curve" to match the shape of the seat pan. Then I bolted it down and put a couple of layers of fiberglass mat over the top. Hopefully, when it's unbolted, it will retain its shape. Wish I'd have taken more "in progress" photos, but I didn't think of it at the time.

Did you apply some resin to the wood?
Steve