Kawa 1000 GPz RX

[Stealthmode666]

I just bought a second hand kawasaki GPz 1000 RX (87) with 30 000 miles on her.
Everything including half the engine and gearbox is brand new, exhaust 4 into 2 manifold pipes, forks, brakes, pads, calipers, braided hoses, (All brake parts are upgraded as well as new), every engine nut, bolt, and gaskets, every clip, cable and hose, a new chain and sprocket set and an oiler also fitted, and a streetfighter look with straight bars.

I went to Devon to ride her back to London, 230 miles and at first she behaved as expected - too much power and snaking and a sliding all over the motorway but hey thats why I bought her.
Anyway it was so cold I had to defrost about every 60 miles for an hour or so and on her second tank of petrol and 133 miles later disaster struck.
I came of the motorway to join another one which involved slowing down to a stop at lights and suddenly it starts seriously miss-firing so I revved her through the lights till I could pull up safely.
It cut out but will run only on blipping the throttle and wouldn't idle.
I sat at 3 am in the freezing cold with her.
I knew its petrol starvation/blockage or electrical cut out. I sat there for over two hours to allow her to cool off then she fired up beautifully and of I went with only 20 miles to get home.
Two miles from my house, again dropping rev's for junction and lights, she does the same thing.
I wait only half an hour but this time she has still got a slight miss-fire and i limp her home by riding the cluch and reving her.
The weather was so bad with the cold my visor had to remain open for the last part of my journey. I am looking for elimination answers to start the fault diognosis. It's like she's only firing on 2 out of 4 cyclinders.

[Stealthmode666]

Update, now she won't fire up easily and runs on two with a bit of a push.
I was hoping it was an easy fault that someone else had but I see it's a bit of a problem on these bikes with different solutions to each, (GPz 1000A RX)but I'll take it to the beginning and let you all know what turns out to be the problem.
I was a mechanic years ago but interests are way beyond that these days. I'd hoped I'd bought this machine knowing it has been rebuilt and only covered 200 miles in four years, with over £2000 spent on her, (after me going through the parts receipts properly today), and would ride like new. (Just my luck!!)
She has also had the icing of the carbs cured with an adation unit made by the previous owner to ferry heat from the engine to stop cold air hitting the carbs. A brilliant and simple invention. because of this, even tho' I was in cold weather last night taking her home, I knew it was not the carbs icing up that caused her to start missing and coughing.

I will do it all in this order till I cure the problem, but all will be done to make sure.

1. All spark plugs sparking, correct blue and no weak or orange spark. No leaking HT leads. Plugs not fouled or lean mixture etc. Both coils primary windings and secondary windings resistance readings - any difference or deviation from manufature spec then I will by new ones.

2. Pulsar coils next, ohms x 100 scale test on black/white and blue wire terminals. if your reading this and you have black/yellow wires do the same test. if I find a low resistance this will tell me a short circuit is in the wires and again a high resistance will tell me the same, as in an open circuit, where the wires will be trapped or damaged. if resistance is not within Man Spec. then I will replace with a new set and set the pulser coil air gap, to man Spec's.

3. lastly on the ignition side I will check the entire IC Ignitor unit which takes some time but has to be done to eliminate any problems. waiting on Kawasaki sending me the (K ohms) values for the IC unless someone has a haynes manual for the 1000A engine model and can post me the diagram and readings. (If they are in the manual).

Only after all this is done can I go near the carbs and possible problems of mis-firing and eratic running. Some might just do the carbs and find the fault was there but you need all ignition to be 100% before you can check and set the carbs.
I will take a day or two to do the above so will post back as i work through the problem.

The only thing not on the receipts are new HT leads, coils or pulsar's so i will be pleased if this is all that she done to me to peev me off.

The entire engine and gearbox has been rebuilt and all I can say is that in the few hours I had her on the motorway taking her home before she broke down was without swearing very scary!! (Incase any police are reading this I was on a private streach of road when i did this next power test, so leave me alone).
5200 rpm at 100 mph in 6th gear, took her to 6000 revs and from 6-9000 she had gone up to 150 mph, and remember, This girl has no fairing and straight bars!! That was enough for me. Back to public motorway and came home till she broke down at 70 mph at 3700/4000 rpm in top gear.

[StarGate]

Sounds like a good diagnostic plan. If it lost 2 cyls at the same time and the 2 were on the same coil then my money would be on the electrical as well. Good luck with it.

[Stealthmode666]

I prey its one of the coils, but I didn't even work out which two cyclinders went down. Only thing is she went down further than two cyclinders and now not starting. My tools and meters are about a hundred miles away from me (reason I can't touch her), because even the severe rain would not stop me from finding out at least why she jacked me in, and on our first night together!!, but at least the bike had the decency to wait till I was near home and not left me stranded in the middle of no-where with an expensive recovery job. I got her home even tho' i probably woke the entire area and neighbourhood with keeping her high in the rev's and riding the clutch the last couple of miles to my house.

[Ericthejet]

Read this and do this. I know this bike well and mine of course.

GPZ 900R Fuel Taps

[Stealthmode666]

Thanks for that, certainly on my list of to-do's after the electrical side. Also all there as what and how to do, impressive. I was not wanting to do anything this winter to her apart from ride her, but I may have to go through everything the previous owner did to put my own mind at rest. On the plus side, the clutch, gear select, brakes, final drive and ride feels like she is brand new and just off the production line. Not a single clonk, shudder or bang from road bumps and pot holes. I got an e-mail earlier today with the IC Ignitor unit Kilo-ohms setting for each terminal so all ready to go when I can get to my tools. When I get a chance I'll post some pics of her and let people see what it looks like all shiny and new from back to front, with the engine looking like she was just fitted from the factory last week!! and not a single oil leak anywhere.

[Ericthejet]

Yup, it's the fuel tap. Rebuild and enjoy your bike.

[Stealthmode666]

You got me at so much now i'm going to do this first, just to hear her run again. I'll still go through the electrics tho'. Mates think i'm mad as i passed up a suzuki GSXr 750 and a honda vfr (carb Bike), but I have a bad back and will be doing some serious miles. This one has been converted to straight bars which are very comfy. My mates are frightened to get water or ice near them and being an old scotsman from the highlands weather don't bother me.

[Stealthmode666]

I have bought a big heap of troublewith this GPz 1000 RX. Replaced the diaphram in the petrol taps with new kit. Checked out coils, all okay. I have two dead cyclinders, number 1 and 3. Went out and broke down 60 miles from home. Took me 6 hours to get bike home as i was not leaving her in middle of no-where to get stripped. Such a shame as bike looks like just came out of factory. I may just break her for parts to get my money back.
Anyone looking for major parts for this model?

[geepster]

I read that link about fuel taps and have to disagree about inline filters. I have a '95 GPZ1100 and almost everybody I know who has one, puts in an inline filter. I have one and has absolutely no adverse effects. And the peace of mind that some little piece of debris won't make my float valve stick open is worth it. By the way, that happend before I put the filter on. And I hate pulling the carbs to clean them.

[Stealthmode666]

The bike I have, I just bought, and on her maiden voyage home she went down on 2 cyclinders, I have 1 10mm spanner, 1 star srewdriver, 1 multimeter and 1 box set allen-keys at my disposal since I got home, but my tools arrive hopefully tomorrow, about 100 miles away so at long last tomorrow I will get to the bottom of this poor girls problems. I've put in a new stopcock kit (took it apart to discover the one I was looking at was brand new, previous owner had done it), I discovered he has also fitted an inline fuel filter and like you say no difference whether it's fitted or not.
I suspect one thing down wrong with mine, (If I'm right, it will crack you all up), but I'll let you all know tomorrow when I fix her, even if it's partial open-heart surgery. was going to take her to a shop but thats me just being lazy.

[Stealthmode666]

Got some of my tools delivered so straight to work. got all four cyclinders back. Fired up and running almost okay. Waited to clear the back yard of smoke, and the two neighbours yards as well. Choke off, set idle at 900rpm.
Running very rich but only carbs causing this, needing set properly.
about 7 minutes later sitting at tick-over temp gauge suddenly goes off the scale!!
Spraying water out the expansion tank like a fountain. left to cool off and drained. Dark brown water, NO rust inhibitor or antifreeze in it. In all my many miles of riding it almost 300 miles home, I never sat anywhere with it idling, so this problem never came up.
Reconditioned radiator fitted and all new pipes and external engine water channels and the previous owner never thought of adding anti-freeze when he rebuilt it. (turning out to be a serious cowboy build on engine and box, even if half of it is new).
Next job now, need to purge the system as trapped air, refilling will not do it, as I tried. fan never came on so will check relay. Also need to check the water pump works.

[Ericthejet]

Yeah, they ran hot all right.
I have a manual fan switch on the "under" cooled bike of the year.

[Stealthmode666]

I'm glad these bikes have an air bleed valve for the water system, but darkness my end stopped all work, will carry on in morning again. Still not out of the woods yet with this bike, if too much to do to the engine, then I will break the bike for spares to get my money back, as not got much time or money left to keep spending, even tho' I fell in love with this one, it's looking like damages goods.

[geepster]

I feel for ya. 6 months after purchasing my '95 GPZ, I spun no. 2 bearing. Fortunately, I found a perfectly good engine on Ebay that nobody else bid on and won it for $56. Yep, you read that right. And it was only an hour away so no shipping charges. But that was after I had changed the clutch and clutch basket in the old engine and tried, without complete success to stop several oil leaks. But since I've had the bike, I put a different engine in, put in a completely different harness, CPU, and relay box. It was full of ghosts in the machine. Thankfully, they have all been exorcised and she is right as rain now. I hope yours ends up as well.

[Stealthmode666]

What really kills me is the putting on of a brand new head and block and the stupidity of using the old running gear. Pistons, cams, chains, etc. (even tho' she'll still pull your arms off!!)
On finally going through all the reciepts on this bike nothing for running gear, only new gearbox assembley and clutch. How can you rebuild a unit from the ground up and use parts at 30 000 miles?
But what I paid for the bike I have no right to grumble. I'm off the road and loosing money as not able to get to work so this is whats really eating me up. It would have made a beautiful winter project to get her up to new again.

[Stealthmode666]

Originally Posted by Ericthejet

Yeah, they ran hot all right.

Heck of a price to pay for a water kettle, cos I'm sure you can buy one for a tenner

[StarGate]

So where are you located and how much would it take to buy it?

[Stealthmode666]

i'm in UK, stuck in London with it, and no, i'm not riding it over to Arkansas.
but tomorrow will spend another day

[Stealthmode666]

Finally got back on the road this evening, took her for 124 mile round trip and it got better and better. Now able to rip my arms out of their sockets again

Filled tank with gas and added redex and I could feel the difference from start to finish on the run and becoming more resposive and positive.

Started this morning, day 2:
Removed VC and checked and set every valve clearance then back together and done what I could with the carb Sync on the vacum gauges. got them at best at a tolerance of 4 cm Hg between all four carbs. (Happy when I can get them down to about 1 cm Hg).

I'm hoping the previous owner at least put new rings on the pistons since he has fitted a new block and head, but no receipt for these in my collection.

I have blown exhaust cans both sides, so until I get other cans on I was happy at this, plus until redex was run through her I expected not to get the carbs spot on, and still got to check compression.

Got water temp sorted out, bled both ends and got rid of trapped air, flushed the system on the run I gave her, emptied water and flush and filled with antifreeze about 2 hours later and re-bled the system.

No fan working yet, but will get to that next.
Now I can get to my workshop, (okay shed then ), and tools, so will do full compression test, then take it from there.
Timing chain has slight rattle so will invest in new one. At end of life.

Thats all for today