kz750e Resto-Mod

Wow! I stumbled upon this thread trying to find out about the eBay Chinese 810 piston kit and now that I’ve read all the way thru I am positively blown away by your amazing piece of work that unfolded. Any more long term results of the 810 piston kit? Aside from the one oil ring mishap have you had any other troubles with the engine build? I have a 1980 750 engine in parts in a box I was going to use to power my latest stretched out chopper project but the cylinders have a good bit of rust and the only halfway affordable piston kit I have found is the eBay 810 kit. Thanks for building such a beautiful bike and for any info you can help me with!

First...Thank you for your positive comments on my build.

I have only just crossed over the 1100 mile mark on my engine, but *knock on wood* everything seems to be holding up just fine.
It always starts on the second revolution of the starter, has been running like a clock and has not burnt one ounce of oil since I started putting miles on it. Even in the weird-for-Minnesota-heat of 90°+ it starts instantly when rocket hot and pulls like a train. My very first oil change at 550 miles produced zero metal flakes or sheen in the used oil, so I can't say that my cheap Japanese (the printed labels on the parts themselves are all in Japanese and it ships from Japan so I have yet to see proof that these are actually made in China) pistons seem to be just fine. The build quality of the pistons themselves are just as good as Kawasaki's and 1000% better than all the used OEM pistons I have bought throughout the years. The wrist pins were also a perfect fit and were visually no different from OEM.
The composition and quality of the head gasket that came with the kit is virtually indistinguishable from the OEM MLS Kawasaki gasket I used on my zr550.
I have read one instance of the rings wearing prematurely (500miles) but I have also read hundreds of posts of Honda guys using them will little to no issues.
If I had to do it again, "maybe" I would have Total-Seal make me some custom rings to go with the cheap pistons. But they would probably charge me more than a new piston kit from Wiseco.

Only time will tell if I end up eating my words.

So in the span of a week I got a set of vintage Yoshimura cams and a gpz750 Bassani Superbike exhaust system for my bike.
I am still waiting for my degree wheel to show up in the mail so I can bench measure my cams.
I measured the lift with a dial indicator and the lift numbers don’t match any of the numbers I have found in my research. They are almost the exact same lift as my current zx750 cams which is a relief in a weird way. But I need to get a better idea of what the duration and lobe centers are. (More on those later)

But I have been waiting 5 years for the opportunity to buy this exhaust and today it is finally mine. The header even has all the spigots still on it. (They are almost always missing) The muffler and mid-pipe was absolutely destroyed in a crash, but I found a mint condition Bassani muffler from a gs1100 on eBay one night. So I have all winter to restore it and perfect any fitment issues the Suzuki rear section might cause.

Damn, I sold a blank, unstamped Bassani Superbike plaque sometime last year!!!

Didn't go for that much either.

I think I heard Bassani had a few of those plaques for sale just a few months back. I would give them a call!!!

I wish I had know! I would have definitely bought that. But as you mentioned, Bassani is selling reproduction name plates on their website.

I also have an original name plate, but it isn’t the giant one like you have. It’s way smaller so it doesn’t look quite right.

Nice score there Rusty.
That will be super sweet on your 750E.
I found a complete 2 hand hardly used Delcevic for a Zephyr the other day that I will cut up and follow your previous 4-1
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scubaanders wrote: Nice score there Rusty.
That will be super sweet on your 750E.
I found a complete 2 han, hardly used Delcevic for a Zephyr the other day that I will cut up and follow your previous 4-1
/A

Nice! That is exactly what I should have done instead of cutting up that insanely expensive Kerker. But it turned out exactly the way I wanted and at least I have a spare exhaust for another project.

Rusty!
The ZR750 rim is 110 mm across.

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scubaanders wrote: Rusty!
The ZR750 rim is 110 mm across.

/A

Thank you!! I really appreciate you doing that for me. I measured my spare zr550 front wheel and it is 100mm, so I will have 5mm on each side to deal with. So I will need to research brake disks that don’t have so much offset.

I test fit the Bassani exhaust on the bike and the gs1100 rear section wasn’t all that far off. But there is only 2mm between the muffler and my swingarm and I don’t like how straight back it goes. So I had to cut the mid-pipe to space it out from the swingarm and give it some upsweep.
So this is my current mock-up after two days of continuous measuring, thinking, cutting and fitting.

Before:


After:

Your rework on your Bassani looks fantastic!!!

I remember spending hours cutting up my Bassani, and rolling the pieces around to form the upsweep part of my pipe.

What month is your Kz750 going to be Bike Of The Month???

Dr. Gamma wrote: Your rework on your Bassani looks fantastic!!!

I remember spending hours cutting up my Bassani, and rolling the pieces around to form the upsweep part of my pipe.

What month is your Kz750 going to be Bike Of The Month???

Thanks Dr. Gamma! I find it poor form to nominate myself for BOTM, but maybe once I get everything back together others will like it enough to give me a nod.

It was nerve-wracking cutting into the pipe for the first time. I cut it right on a factory weld seam and ended up taking a pie-cut section out of the crushed gpz pipe to create the proper upsweep bend.
Right now I’m having trouble getting the spigots off the header. They are fused to the header with rust, so I am heating them and drenching them with PB Blaster and a atf/acetone mix. I need to be certain that these stuck spigots won’t cause a situation that affects the fitment of the muffler section. Once I know that there are no surprises, I can take the pipe to be TIG welded together.
But right now I’m in a holding pattern waiting to get these spigots off and my degree wheel to arrive.

Found this product years ago and have been using it ever since to loosen up frozen rusted metal parts.

Not easy to find, but I have never found anything that even comes close to this stuff!!!

Aerokoil