!PROJECT! KZ650 Cafe racer

[TheSnodge]

Looks good so far. I'm ready to see the gold leafing.

[zeiss150]

Hi there my Kawi love'n friends. Its been a few weeks since I posted. I have a bunch of pictures to post up but I'll do that on another day. I took my cafe' 650's engine apart this morning... at least the top end. I did it pretty quick (it only took me 2 hours) I'm sure some guys can do it in 30 minutes but I'm not one of them. Anyway... I got the top end off and took it to my local engine rebuilder. All he does is motorcycles. I brought him the pistons (with rings) the old cylinder jugs and the new cylinder jugs. I told him my theory that the rust in the cylinder bore was allowing oil past the rings and causing it to smoke. He looked the parts over did a little thinking and told me he thinks that the rings simply are not seating. He pointed out that there wasn't a good "cross hatch" pattern in my cylinders and the rings look like they have never been run before. So in his opinion If he just puts a really nice hone on my existing cylinder walls and if I put it back together right (a big if) then it shouldn't smoke at all.

He asked me if I put oil on the pistons and rings when I put the cylinder on. I said yeah ... just like the book says. Wrong! He say's that they should be put in "dry". If they have to much lube then they wont bite and seat. That makes good sense to me. He said I could use WD40 because that would burn off right away.

So I'm going to take his 20 + years of motorcycle engine rebuilding experience and get a good hone and put it back together dry. The worse thing that can happen is it doesn't work.

The good news is that I can reuse my head and base gaskets ....they came off totally in tact!

I ordered a few parts from Z1 today and I hope to have every thing by Friday. I should be able to put the bike back together in a few hours once I get all the parts.

Stay tuned cafe' fans

Matt-

[Torques]

Nice

[zeiss150]

Ok... I was sitting around and I figured ... what the hell... I'll post up some pictures.

This is the finished picture of the side cover... once it cures I'll sand and polish it.


This is how the tail section turned out




I took the top end apart this morning as I mentioned in the previous post... here are the pictures of that.



valve cover is off along with all the tins and coils.



I needed to take the pistons off so that I could take them to be matched up with the bore job(that I didn't end up needing) They come off pretty easy. Just remove a spring clip and the wrist pin slides right out. just don't drop any parts into the block :-0



Always # your pistons so they match back up with the bore... 1-4 from the left.


Ok thats it for today

Rock on Kawi people
Matt-

[anakinkenobe]

Looks great, i have got a 78 kz650D basket case right now, did you do a full carb rebuild ? and when you sanded your carbs and got them lookin really nice what did you use to get them like that, i have got to pull my carbs off and give them a full rebuild so i figured id just take the time and do the job right, can you take some close up pics of them since they are off lol please, i would like to study them and start my project, we were having problems doing the vaccum sync last night with the gauges because everytime we would try to take the choke off the bike would stop running. we have a book but im buying a Haynes book they seem to be more user friendly and easier to follow..

[zeiss150]

Hey anakin. Polishing aluminum is a pain in the butt. Seriously I hate it ... but its soooooo worth all the work. first you have to take off the pieces that you are going to polish...i.e. float bowls and covers. Then you need 3 different kinds of sand paper....

Wet dry sand paper

200

400

1000

grit

first sand with the 200, then 400, and finish with 1000. After you get a smooth surface with the 1000 grit wet sand paper (make sure you use water when you sand with all grits) use mothers polishing cream. follow directions and polish to a brilliant shine.

There is another way to polish the parts but you need a big electric motor with polishing wheels on it. then you need different polishing compounds. but you would still need to sand off any casting defects. its faster but the end result is the same.

I'll try to post up some pictures of my carbs in the next few days.

The good news is you really don't need to do all 4 carbs ... just the two outside ones. ... I did all 4 but I'm dumb.

I still need to polish the stator cover... I'm not looking forward to that.

I hope this helps!
Matt-


P.S. I set up the main and pilot jets for my engine set up (pods, exaust, overbore)... the carbs seem to be in really good sink so I'm not gonna mess with them. I also didn't mess with the needle height.

[anakinkenobe]

Sweet thanks, i was a bad boy tonight, Harley had a demo night tonight and my brother and me stopped in and we both drove the '09 Heritage and '09 StreetGlide and oh man was it hard getting off of them and sharing with the other riders lol..... i know what my next bike is going to be !!!!

[zeiss150]

Have you ever had one of those moments where your brain stopped working and you thought you broke your motorcycle but had no idea how... yeah ... that was me yesterday.

I was doing some long over due "adjustments" to my bike, i.e. putting the pistons back on, re-routing the clutch cable so it doesn't stick out all weird, polish the aluminum, re-connect the tail light and some other stuff that I can't remember right now.

So I was doing all this stuff and I tried to turn the engine over with the kick start and the pistons weren't moving I started to freak out. I started to think ... "oh crap, What did i do to my bike... I broke it ... I'm gonna have to split the case, how did this happen, Oh man this sucks..." My mind started to spin out of control for the next 5 minutes.

I started to think about all the stuff I had done and what could I have done that would have busted the kick start.... Smoke was coming out of my ears and then it came to me....

THE CLUTCH! I rerouted the clutch cable and the cable was to tight... so the clutch was in.... SO THE KICK STARTER WONT WORK. DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHH.

I adjusted it and let out a sigh of relief ..... Then I laughed at myself for a few minutes.

We all make mistakes... Just try to laugh at yourself when you can.


Have a great day!
Matt-

[KAW>BOY]

Glad you found the problem right away.
And I know it is not worse for me than it is for you, but I am ready for you to get it assembled again, after all the shining and polishing you've been doing,
post some more pics!!!

BTW, the gold striping looks like it turned out good on the rear, and the spade looks good on the side cover. You do good work, but i tole ya that before

[anakinkenobe]

Where did you get the .50 over pistons?

[zeiss150]

The .50 pistons came with the bike. I didn't know that until I took the motor apart. If you look back at the first pictures I posted there are pictures of the pistons from the first time I took the engine apart and you can see the .50. The PO did all kinds of stuff to the bike years ago ... but he just didn't do it right. Mostly he WAAAAAAAAAAAAY over jetted the carbs. If you look at the head in the first pictures, the combustion chambers are covered in "soot". I have the carbs sorted out now (the correct jets for the engine build).

I needed new rings and that was not going to happen especially with .50 over so I got luck and found a full set of rings that were 1mm over. I just filed them down .50 mm. I think I got the full set on ebay for $25. much cheaper than spending $1,500 on an 810 kit.

I can't wait to put this baby back together and ride it. If it doesn't smoke I'll be the happiest guy in the land.

Matt-

[zeiss150]

The .50 pistons came with the bike. I didn't know that until I took the motor apart. If you look back at the first pictures I posted there are pictures of the pistons from the first time I took the engine apart and you can see the .50. The PO did all kinds of stuff to the bike years ago ... but he just didn't do it right. Mostly he WAAAAAAAAAAAAY over jetted the carbs. If you look at the head in the first pictures, the combustion chambers are covered in "soot". I have the carbs sorted out now (the correct jets for the engine build).

I needed new rings and that was not going to happen especially with .50 over so I got luck and found a full set of rings that were 1mm over. I just filed them down .50 mm. I think I got the full set on ebay for $25. much cheaper than spending $1,500 on an 810 kit.

I can't wait to put this baby back together and ride it. If it doesn't smoke I'll be the happiest guy in the land.

Matt-

[sakiguy]

Amazing project. Wish I could hear how it sounds when you ride it.

[zeiss150]

I'll post up a video when Its done. I picked up the jugs and they look great. I put them on and they slide on smooth and easy. Then it came time to put the head on and I needed to put the cam chain idler on ... What the hell is up with the little rubber pieces? You're supposed to "super glue" them to the idler then hope they don't fall in to the engine? I put them in that way the last time and I thought it was dumb, but this time I have new rubber pieces and they really don't fit.

Could the Climer manual be wrong? It shows a picture of the rubber pieces down... It seems like they should go up Any one have any info on this?

OH!!! Check this out.... this looks like the "CORRECT" way to have the rubber pieces

http://www.bikebandit.com/assets/sch...50B2US_B-7.gif

Help!

[zeiss150]

I decided to do it this way...





This is what Clymer shows that you should do... WTF?


Anyone disagree with me?

Speak now or I'll cry when I have to take the head off.

Matt-

[zeiss150]

I got pretty far today. I put the jugs, head and cam's in. I had a little "snag" with the cam chain idler rubber pieces (see above post) but I think I figured it out. I'll finish it up tomorrow... I can't wait. Its sort of like Christmas when I was a kid. And if it smokes I'll cry like a little kid too.

Here are a few pictures ...



Heres the jugs going on... I used 4" hose clamps to compress the rings





The jugs are seated ...



So Fresh 'n so clean!



Ok that's all for today. I'll finish it up tomorrow and I'll try to post up some video

Matt-

[kopcicle]

Tolerate some humor from years ago ?
If more is better then too much is just enough , right ?
There was a set of 34mm SmoothBores sitting on the "club" parts shelf and we fingered , with a little bit of fabrication we can get them on the 650 .
You guessed it . Turned the bike into a light switch . Nothing below 5,000 rpm and then hold on . If you were leaned over it would spit you off . If you weren't ready for it it would spit you off the back . The experiment lasted all of a weekend .

~kop

[zeiss150]

So ... lets talk about the positive things that I learned today...

1. the rings are not my problem!

That's it. nothing else positive happened. My bike STILL SMOKES LIKE AN F'N FREIGHT TRAIN!!!!!!! :CRY:

the bike fired right up and it was smoking a little, but it seemed to be the normal amount for a new start, then slowly it started to smoke more and more and more and more until there was a city wide evacuation from all the smoke my bike was throwing...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHH!.

Ok ... its going to be ok... just think. Its not the rings, so it must be some where in the head. Maybe the valve stem seals are not seated correctly? maybe they popped off? is that even possible?

I'll pull the head tomorrow and see if the valve seals are messed up.


Santa clause ... can you bring me a motorcycle that doesn't smoke?


Matt-

[Torques]

It's supposed to smoke isn't it? Or is it smoking so much it's like fog in London.

[Mike900]

Are you sure its burning oil & not a carb problem? Can you post a video?
Did you install O rings between the cylinders & head?