83 KZ1100ltd Rebuild

Enjoy following!
Keep up the good work you doing!

I've been neglegent in documenting the progress of the rebuild so the images are mostly of completed steps.

Good progress on the Ltd this weekend. Got most of the mechanical and electrical parts at least positioned. Got the master cylinders disassembled, cleaned, rebuilt, and reassembled. Mounted the handlebars, levers, and controls. Lubricated and mounted the clutch cable, seems to work smoothly.




Also had a chance to clean up the front wheel, replace the wheel bearings, and repack the spedo drive gear.



The calipers will come back off for cleaning and maybe rebuilding. The rear wheel is also coming back off for cleaning and for new bearings.

Still need to hook the stand springs but the stands are in place.

A lot of what's left is electrical :sick:

I'm sure I'm going to have some issues with the spliced main harness. The Vetter fairings and bags required cutting into the harness and I suspect the wiring diagrams in the service manual will no longer be totally useful. So if/when issues arise I'm going to be spending a lot of time chasing connecting with a multimeter.

Oh well, that's a problem for future me. Man I don't envy that guy.

I stripped the factory Vetter fairing, bags, trunk, even the KHI floor boards and forward controls off of my 83 KZ1100 LTD and rain into a good bit of what you are talking about with the wiring harness. One 12 inch section in the rear had 4 splices with three different colors of wire. BUT...the factory manual did help a bunch. When you buzz it out, hooking up your meter at the right color wire on a connector, then connecting to the different non- stock wires until you get continuity will help you. Immensely. You can get there, I'm no wizard and I did. She is looking good.

Sorry for the lack of activity on this thread, quite a bit of changes coming in my life. I am going to have to halt work on everything soon for a long while, couple years anyway.

When I have time to work on the bike I've failed to document the progress but the air box and carbs are back on along with the cables, controls, and grips. I don't think I'll get it ready to fire before I'll have to stop work and store it. Might be able to get a battery in and check for spark and all that.

Looks like this beauty is going back in hibernation but she'll get back on the road eventually.

Time to restart this rebuild! Fortunately, what I thought was going to be a 2 year relocation assignment for work turned out to be only 1 year, thank God.

Spent the last couple days trying to remember where I left things and will shortly be ready to start putting parts back on. Just as soon as I find where I put them all!

More to come.

Welcome back! We are looking forward to the rest of the story!

Before I paused the project last year I rebuilt and tossed on the front master cylinder which came with the bike.


The lens discoloration wasn't great but it could be tolerated; however, she leaked a bit around the edges. So I hopped on the old Ebay and rolled the dice on a second (or third or fourth) hand master cylinder.



Had a bit o'trouble getting one of the lid screws out but after some drilling and easy-outing she eventually broke free.



Popped out the cylinder, cleaned things up a bit, and reassembled the "new" master cylinder. She looks a bit better and no leaks!

Also had a chance to put fluid into the rear brake system today and mount the exhaust. The PO had pipes from a 1000 on the bike. They're a bit shorter than 1100 pipes and have some rash on the end of the muffler but they'll work.




I think they cleaned up okay. Hopefully I'll be able to start the bike tomorrow and "see" how they sound.

Today was a big milestone for the project. First fire after the rebuild! :woohoo:

Filled the case with Rotella T4 and cycled the motor with the plugs out for ~30 seconds to pump oil up to the head. Screwed in the plugs and installed new plug wires.

Didnt have a good jerry can so I used the tank. Had to spray a little starter fluid in the airbox but she eventually fired up! There's a lot more to do to get her running well but its was great to fire up the old girl and twist the throttle a bit.

During yesterday's first running, I noticed the tac, front and rear brake light, horn, and neutral light were not working. I was not looking forward to the exploratory electrical investigation to fix things.

After a clumsy reading of the wiring diagram I discovered that all these items share a common wire (along with several other things). After poking around with a multimeter I found the culprit was a weak fuse. Swapped that out and everything but the horns worked.

I swapped the horn assemblies with my 81 1100 and the horns still didn't work, but they did on the 81. So the problems in the controls or connections. All the connections were sold so I opened up the control housing.

The horn button felt weak and I couldn't hear the switch 'click'. After copious amounts of contact cleaner the switch moved more freely and clicked. But I couldn't coax more than a faint squeak from the horns.

I had an extra set of controls but the connections were different so I could not swap the assemblies. Instead I decided to try to swap the switches.

Now, my soldering skills are weak but armed with a Harbor Freight soldering iron I was able to swap the switches.



An ugly solder job but it should hold for another 30 years no problem! Gave it a test push and the horns bleated enough to pass a Missouri safety inspection.

Popped the switch back in the case along with all the other parts.



Installed the controls back on the bars and that problem's done!

The soldering Points Need some good clean with a brass/fiber brush and some soldering flux liquid to get a better tin to copper penetrating.
Any metal oxydadion will the soldering medium get apart from the soldering spot, you Need the bare metal to bind the parts together.
The flux will etching the both surfaces to bare metal and let them bind well.

^^^ all very good points! ^^^