!PROJECT! KZ650 Cafe racer

[blazer8689]

Matt I gotta say thanks! with all the tinkering you are doing with your bike i am doing the exact same, Your photos are a great visual, your description of retrofitting these bikes has helped me get my bike running. After a 5 year slumber, the questions and solutions you ask and get are the same as if i was doing the "work". Keep up the good work and your thread is inspiring
By the way its a 1977 Kz650 B1, now im just getting it road worthy!



-Eric

[kawasaki333]

look at it my kz 650 7000 milles

[zeiss150]

Thanks Eric! I'm glad that you're inspired to get your KZ back on the road. I used to be a teacher so maybe that's why my posts are helpful to you. I'd love to see you post up some pictures of your bike. Once I get the electronic ignition done and finish up a few cosmetic things (polish the stator cover, and gold leaf a spade on the side cover) I'm going to go out and take some "professional" photographs of my bike. It'll be fun to post them up. I love riding it. I get a ton of looks and compliments. Most of the young guys, with there GSX... and CBRR... and YZ.... have no idea what kind of a bike it is ... they just know they wish it was theirs.

Thanks again Eric, and post up some pictures.

Matt-

[anakinkenobe]

Hows the progress on the ignition going?

[zeiss150]

I just got some more parts in the mail today, so I'll try to put it together on Thursday. I don't have new coils yet so I'm kind of not wanting to finish the mod because it wont be "right". Don't worry thought I'll have lots of pictures and instructions when I get it on.

Matt-

[zeiss150]

I spent today changing my points ignition to an electronic ignition from a 82 kz750. It went pretty well but now my bike isn't running so good, so maybe it didn't go so good. I just tweek a few bugs. but here's what I did and feel free to correct anything that I did wrong.

First take off the right side points cover




Once the points cover is off then unscrew the points plate. There are 3 screws. its very easy to remove.







once you have the points plate off you need to take off the ignition advance plate. its held on by a 12 or 13 mm bolt (the 17mm nut is just to turn the engine over). You will need to hold the 17mm nut while you loosen the 12mm bolt. once its loose the advance plate will simply come off. That looks like this.







once you pull the advance plate off you need to unplug the oil pressure sensor its a blue/red wire. then you can remove the points plate and the advance plate and all the wiring. Once you have everything out it will look likes this.





To be continued ...

[anakinkenobe]

Very nice !!!!!!

[zeiss150]

Now you need to replace all the parts you just removed with "new" electronic parts. I used parts from an 82 KZ750. I cleaned them and made sure the mechanical advance was lubed and working properly. Before I could put it back together, I needed to get the wire from the old points plate that was used for the oil pressure sending unit. So I just cut it out of the wire harness from the old points plate... that looks like this.







Once that wire is striped out It will be reconnected to the original place.

now its time to put it back together. The advance plate can only go on one way. There is a roll pin on the crank that lines up the advance. The back of the advance plate has a slot and it looks like this....



Just push the advance plate on the crank and then bolt it down. Now you can put the pick up plate on, but first hook up the oil pressure wire and put it through the hole on the bottom of the pick up plate. then screw the pick up plate into position with the three screws (the washers from the original points plate wont fit so just get rid of them).






to be continued

[zeiss150]

The rubber grommet that the wires come through needs to be modified a little in order to fit the 2 extra wires (the original points plate only had 3 wires). My solution was to slide the plastic wire cover down so that the new blue/red (oil sensor wire) would fit. Just cut the grommet and put the new wire in. its a snug fit but it works.



This is the IC ignitor that I got from Ebay for $25, yeah for ebay. It plugs right into the wires from the pick up plate. there are blue and black wires that fire the 1 & 4 coil and a yellow and red wires that fire the 2 & 3 coil. These 4 wires from the pick up plate plug right into the IC. Easy...



There are 4 more wires coming out of the IC yellow/red, black/yellow, black, and green. 1. The Yellow/red is the power wire, it needs to be spliced into a power supply. 2. the Black/yellow need to be spliced into a ground wire. 3 the green wire needs to be plugged into the original green wire. 4. the Black wire need to be plugged into the original black wire. the Oil sensor wire (blue/red) plugs in right next to the green and black that go to the coils. In order to make the mod as "plug and play" as possible I decided to solder the bullet connectors to the IC so that they would just plug into the original wires. So that looks like this...







Another thing I did was to tape up the oil pressure wire to the wire bundle. If you look close you can see the 3 bullet connectors that are part of the original wire harness. Now I can plug the black, green, blue/red wires into the bullet connectors.





Now the only thing left to do is splice in power and ground. I used the line splicers.



I spliced the power wire into the wired George mod power wire and I spliced the ground into the wired George ground wire.

I kicked it over and it didn't fire at all ....GRRRRRRR so I looked and I figured out that when I took the advance apart to clean it I put it back on 180 degrees out DUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHH. So I fixed that. And now it runs but really rough. So I'm not sure if its a coil problem or if its a static timing problem.

I'll try working on it on Monday. I bought some 3 ohm Coils from Accel today on Ebay ($6 so they should be here some time next week. Then I'll be able to get into it more.

Any Questions? Did I mess anything up. Any comments?

I hope this was helpful

Matt-

[anakinkenobe]

Very helpful, did you use your 650 coils? i lucky have all the part except for the IC ignitor....

[zeiss150]

I used the coils that came with the bike. I think they are kz1000 coils but I don't know for sure. They are going to be replaced with 3 ohm Accel coils that will put out 30k volts, I hope.

I'm kind of bummed that its not running well right now. I think it has something to do with the wiring or the coils... but I don't know for sure. Hopefully I will be able to figure it out on Monday.

the one thing that I hope its not is something with the cam timing. Like if the cam is off by one link. That would suck.

I'll keep up dating

Matt-

[anakinkenobe]

can you post the auction link for your coils so i know what im looking for please..
Thanks this is helping me out tons...

[zeiss150]

Here is a link to the Accel and a description of the coils I bought.

ACCEL Motorcycle :: Product Details

I hope this helps

Matt-

[blazer8689]

Awsome now i know which coils to get!! Thanks!! but a question though, You think if buy this Accel coil kit it would work with the dyna-S ignition system ? For the 77 KZ650

[Christo]

Ditch the wire splicers, and do a proper solder splice, those splicing connectors are a triumph of enthusiasm over engineering.

I've tried using them many times, and they never work well.

Do a proper splice on your wires, and I'd lay odds yer running problems will be solved.

[klx678]

Originally Posted by zeiss150

So I pulled the engine and rebuilt (well sort of) it and now all I need is a nice pretty frame to put it in. What will I do? Oh, I know... sand blasting! Lets take a look at the frame before... Enjoy



So I found a sand blaster guy that was only 20 miles away . anyway... He only charged me $70 bucks to blast everything that I gave him, frame, swing arm, center stand, side stand, battery box ... yeah, that's all. Once it was blasted i had a beautiful clean steel surface to prime. I used a nice rattle can duplicolor primer. It worked pretty well... so far. I thought about power coating but they didn't have a gold color... at all. they had yellow in a bunch of different shades and they had a bronze that was nice... but nothing even close to gold. So I went with a duplicolor that I picked out from Pepboys... yeah that's right Pepboys. Don't knock it till you've tried it. It took me 4 small cans and 2 large cans of clear coat ... but this is what it came out like. Put your sunglasses on.

I really like the way the frame came out... It looks clean and BRIGHT. Now that the frame is done I need to work on the triple tree and all the other stuff. So I spent about a zillion hours sanding and polishing the top tree and forks. Seriously ... it takes FOREVER. 125, 220, 400, 1500 grit wet sand paper then followed up by mothers polish. this is what that looks like...



Tomorrow I'll post up the pictures of the new shocks and all the gory details of relacing the rims .... Yeah that's right... I put new spokes on my rims... and they said I couldn't do it... WRONG.


Until tomorrow....
Matt-

Finally! someone who realizes bike frames don't have to be black! I'm from the old school flat track days and the Bultaco bunch, who really like silver frames. I like the bronze and titanium tones I've seen too. Black is just too dull and recessive on a frame. Engine cylinders and such work with black since it's sort of a change.

Looks good... I'm following your project too.

Edit:
Forgot to mention a friend in the area here races a KZ650 in the vintage middle weight superbike class. He ran as high as second and finished fifth in the heavy weight superbike class at Mid Ohio a month ago, his 900 blew a rod through the cases and he went out on the 650. I noticed it when I saw the tail section of the bike. He said no one else apparently noticed, since I was the only one who commented about it. He ran pretty good for running nearly half the horsepower the others had. He ran second in the MW superbikes. Those KZ650s can still do it!

[klx678]

Originally Posted by zeiss150

Hi NCdave! Thanks for the compliment. I agree with you about the tail section but I just couldn't find anything that worked with the KZ frame. It also would have involved me cutting the frame... and I wasn't ready to mess with the frame.

The seat... Well, we'll just agree to disagree


The front fender... I've seen Many a cafe with front fenders. Its a personal choice, I had the bike without the fender for a while and I like it better with it.

Thanks for your comments and I hope you enjoy the rest of my build!

Matt-

Personally I like the stock KZ tail sections a lot... but that's me.

I will say painting the front fender semi-gloss black can make it sort of disappear a bit. I did that on my SR500 for the flat track look. I don't want to eat the crap thrown up by the tire. I plan a smaller more form fitting fender for my next rendition of the 500 street tracker.

[anakinkenobe]

Whats the progress so far did you get it running right?

[zeiss150]

So I got my Accel coils in the mail on Thursday. I had to buy wires today, so I got some Accel wires from the local parts store. I hooked it all up and ... nothing. . I kicked it over a bunch of times and it did finally turn over and it ran up to 4k rmps so I had to shut it down. I couldn't get it to start again. Its late and I'm tired and I don't want to mess with it anymore tonight. I'll try tomorrow.

Matt-

[Torques]

Update?