The Friendship Bike - NobleHops restores a 75 Z1

swest wrote: The pilot jets are correct and the main should be 112.5 but the 26's were on the KZ 900 and KZ 1000. Too bad they're not 29's. They were the hot setup for the bike. You can get stock 28's if you want to keep it stock. That will depend on how much has been changed. Z1E has a chart of codes. I'd compare the parts to see if it's a clone or not.
Steve

Great info, thanks a bunch.

I am not shooting for a highly original result, it's going to have a bunch of repro parts on it and it has a Dyna ignition already. Going to get Cartridge emulators, better shocks, etc. It might make sense for me to see if I can find a set of 29s before I rebuild these - I'm going to be buying jets and and and.

I'll go look at that carb info in more depth tonight, see what years had what carbs and see what I'm shopping for.

Yeah, all research says these are KZ900 carbs, and a quick skim of eBay shows that the 29mm smoothbores fetch as much as $500 for a set, Probably not in the cards,



This page had good reference data and identifying info:

www.z1enterprises.com/Z1carbguide.aspx

And now I smell like gas...

No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configurationHey-O, whaddya think about these?

1978 KZ1000-D1 (cafe racer) and 1979 KZ1000-A3 (Mark II) and 1979 KZ1000-D2 (cafe racer) came with Mikuni VM28SS carbs (being the 28 mm carbs with three-screw top caps).

1976 KZ900 came with Mikuni 26 mm carbs.

28 mm carbs were not stock carbs on KZ900.

Good Fortune!

Those look like 26's not 28's.



If your not concerned about being original, the 26's will work. 28's would be good but the 29's are best. Don't fall for phony's on eBay.They just want your money.
Steve

KZ900 26 mm carbs came with the dual fuel lines as shown in the ebay ad.

I might be mistaken, but thinking the 28 mm carbs came with a single fuel line.

Good Fortune!

Didn't the good 28's come with a accelerator pump on one bowl?
Steve

VM29 smoothbore would NOT be a good choice for what you're doing.
they were designed as a full on race carb. for road racing
and don't really have good idle/off idle manner's.
I run a set on my GPz750 motor and they have been a pain in the ass
to tune at idle/off idle.
Unless your building a hot rod motor they'd be a waste of money
VM28's would be a way better carb for the bike.

My 28's have duel fuel inlets.
Steve

swest wrote: My 28's have duel fuel inlets.
Steve

Great stuff, super helpful, thank you guys very much.

They are definitely 26s, have dual fuel inlets, and the petcock has dual outputs obviously. They are in very good condition, and they have the common throttle shaft that some folks seem to think makes it easier to keep them in sync from what I read. So I'm gonna stick with them, give them a full strip, ultrasonic clean, swap the main jets for a smaller size and make sure the needle and air screws are adjusted correctly.

I got halfway frustrated trying to run it today, stupid stuff. The petcock is leaking, so I intended to run it off the little aux bottle, but I didn't have a tee large enough to fit in that monster fuel line, so that was leaky too. I got the carbs back in and fired it anyway, ran a float bowl worth of gas through it and it ran 10 times better than it had during the year I've had it kicking around. When the dripping gas made it to the header collector I relented and shut if off, ordered every possible tee and adapter I could ever need and as soon as Brown Santa drops those off I'll get to run it longer, run a proper compression test and make the call about what I do or do not do to the engine before I remove it from the frame.

Did sort out the janky coil wires though. When I was fiddling with it yesterday I could easily hear *SNAP* *SNAP**SNAP* from up near the coils, sure enough, giant sparks were flying out from the Dyna coil terminals, and that was when I discovered it was only running on three anyway. I pulled off the coil wires to discover that they had been assembled like so:



Fortunately they had been crimped so poorly I was able to reuse the terminals, stripped them back properly, trimmed them clean and put a little shrink tubing to insulate. I have some boots inbound, but this did the trick for the time being, no more cool spark show and it ran on all 4, Bonus!





Contented myself for the rest of the afternoon chasing an oil leak and replacing the oil line on the H2, cleaning and lubing the tach cable, fitting some side cover grommets, stuff like that.

More tomorrow...

Nils

coming right along !

leon

NobleHops wrote: Hello!

Second post here, glad to be here.

I posted a new member intro elsewhere, so let's get to the goods, namely my Z1. I am about to restore it, and I will probably need some help along the way. In return for your kindness and contributions I will try to contribute some entertaining and hopefully useful content to go along with my bloody knuckles and tales of excessive chemical inhalation. Square deal?

Here's the bike:

That's a 1975 US-spec Kawasaki Z1 900. I bought in San Jose, California a year or so ago, and drug it here to Arizona when we moved here last summer. We're calling it "The Friendship Bike" because I'm restoring it for fun and then I am shipping it to my friend Pius in Switzerland. I met Pius in 2011 on an Edelweiss tour of South Africa, and we've since toured the Alps and Dolomites together, plus a giant loop of California last year. My hope is to finish this restoration in time to ship it to him before our next adventure this July in Europe.

Looks like there is some oil leakage coming from the O ring around the cam chain area. That means the top end needs to come off. Depending on the mileage you might need a valve job, definitely valve guide seals. Viton ones. They can be had on eBay for $26. While I was in there, I replaced the valves, springs and valve guide seals. My springs were 40 years old and shot. They can test good but in use, can cause noise, flutter and even a nicked valve on a misshift. / :evil: Best to replace them. $68 eBay.