Crikey! Nearly three years since the last update 🙂
Bike is going well, just never got around to getting it re-certified for road use, but I am going to list it for sale soon, but with no rego or wof. In as-is condition with a box of spare parts. It is rideable, everything is buttoned down and works fine and of course, it is fun to ride.
I’ll give it a good clean and polish first of course 🙂
The KZ440 is purring like a kitten. I have a new tachometer cable installed and is working just dandy, and a speedo cable on the bench ready to go in.
TBH, the speedo cable was a surprise as I was told that hens teeth are easier to come by than an ’81 kz440 clutch cable, but the lads at Boyles (hot and cold as they are, bless ’em) managed to repair the old cable for next to nowt, and now, apart from some new tyres, the bike is now ready to go to the local life-blood suckers for inspection for wof and rego.
Sadly, the old human fangs are sucking up the available readies at this point in time, and the tyres will have to wait just a little longer…
On the KZ440 list of things still to do are:
So, I only take the bike out for short rides around the neighbourhood when the weather is good. Today, I was meeting a chum to fly drones at the end of Hine road. I stopped off at Mikes to see if he wanted to come along and PING! the clutch lever gave up. The steel ball at the end of the cable sheared off. Dagnabbit! I’d only put 13.6kmh’s on the rotten thing. Oh well, parked it up at Mikes, went and flew drones, then went home, hooked up the trailer and went on a retrieval mission.
Gawd knows how long it’s going to take to get a replacement cable.
Crikey dick! 1 month shy of 4 years after taking ownership of a 1981 KZ440 rolling chassis and a million parts, I finally took the 440 for a blat down the road today :).
I chucked in the towel after struggling with what I thought was a fuel petcock problem, and got the pro’s at Boyle Brothers Kawasaki to weave their magic, and ya know?, I wish I had done that a year ago! Sheesh…:\
Dropped it off on Saturday, got the phone call on Wednesday (expecting the worst), and apart from a few digs at a wannabe backyard bike mechanic (who shall remain nameless), they said the bike is now running just like a bought one. Purrs like a kitten they said… Hat off to them, they accepted the challenge and they delivered.
In the end, it was some dodgy wiring here, a bad jet there, a cam chain tensioner incorrectly installed, a couple of other gotchas and corrections, and voila! One running 1981 Kawasaki KZ440.
When I got it home, I blipped it up the driveway and back (the vid), and then donned the leathers, and then went for a quick ride around to Mike’s to show it off.
Didn’t fang it because the bike is not properly torqued down yet, but quickly learnt that there may be a little too much oil in the recently rejuvenated forks. She’s a bit hard over the bumps. Apart from that and a missing speedo cable, it goes great, sounds even better and handles very well considering it is on probably 10 year old tyres.
Now that it is running I can carry on with finishing it up. Bit of a polish, new paint (the bright red is not doing it for me), a speedo cable, an indicator lens cover (one is faded), new tyres and a triple tree badge (that is going to be the hard to get!)
So ultimately, this is the end of this project :/. The bike is running and on the road. C’est la vie. I might do a couple more updates further down the track, post a pic after new paint applied and so on.
SWMBO wants me to keep it and enjoy it, not sell it (or destroy it like I originally wanted to do because I was mad as hell), but I’ll have to have a quiet think about it’s future.
Ok, the heading is a bit of an exaggeration, maybe it is only setback #26 but I do feel like I’m pushing the proverbial uphill, in the rain, with a fork.
Found some time this week to give starting the bike another crack to see what could be the problem on why it starts, but does not stay start. I reckon it is the fuel petcock that is causing the issue, because the bike starts after a prime, but I can’t see any fuel going through the filter when the petcock is on or on reserve.
In the process of removing the tank and the petcock to inspect, I popped the tank cap and noticed slimy, black rusty crap inside on the ridge. Well, that’s really kind of sucky. And when I drained the tank, the bottom 1/4 was almost black. Glad I decided to put an inline filter in place. It’s not the cause of my starting issue, but it is definitely not helping.
On reflection, when I washed the tank out and let it dry in the sun last year, it seems the water still inside the tank decided to have a party with the exposed steel and apparently “flash rusted”…I did not know that was even a thing.
So next weekend I will be going through the motions of cleaning it once more, only this time I’ll try and do it properly by pressure washing it, letting it soak in vinegar overnight and then giving it a swirl with some 2 stroke before filling the tank (I only put a few litres in the last time). Fingers crossed.
In the meanwhile, I need to sort out a new / refurbished petcock. I wonder if that will be as rare as the side badges are…?
Meh. So I can’t get non-LTD KZ440 badges for the bike (Lordy knows I done tried!) so I’ve attached some 440 LTD badges in the meantime in the off chance that a proper set will miraculously appear out of thin air.
They don’t match the Kawasaki tank badges, so it doesn’t look right, and well, it’s not an LTD so… “FAKE NEWS!!”
Maybe I’ll 3D print some, or paint the red in the LTD badge white…
Right, I now seem to have a fuel delivery problem. The good thing about that is I can see where it’s not coming through thanks to my new clear inline fuel filter.
There are three settings on the KZ440 fuel petcock.
When the tap is in the “ON” position I cannot see any fuel flowing through the clear in-line filter when trying to start the bike. I set the choke to full and can still see no fuel flowing through to the carbs when trying to start.
As above, the same is true for the “RES” position.
When the tap is in the “PRI” position, I can see fuel flow through the filter and the bike starts and runs, but as soon as I turn the tap to “ON” it stops within a few seconds. (Obvs can’t leave the tap in the “PRI” position as the bike wouldn’t go fast enough to use all the gravity fed fuel and would dump out the overflow 🙂 and leak out the drain hole in the bottom of the exhaust pipe)
So, do I have a problem with the fuel petcock (it looked OK to me when I stripped and cleaned it when I had the tank off for painting) or, is there a vacuum issue?
The primer setting uses gravity I believe, bypassing the diaphragm in the petcock body, which relies on vacuum from the carburettor to open the diaphragm and pull fuel in.
One day Roger Fitch, one day…
New gasket in (and one spare jic thanks shuk engineering, top team there!), topped up the oils, and no leaks (yet). Battery is deaded so had to distill some water (took a couple of days using an old coke bottle and mother nature) and now have to wait for it to charge before I can start it and look at the timing etc. That’s a job for next week on my week off from the toil because actually, working from home is quite tough, and I need a break!
Apart from all of the above, I am now only missing the side cover badges. I have a couple of 440 LTD ones, but it’s not an LTD, so I might go against the grain and just put them on anyway to finish it off. If I get lucky, I might be able to get the actual badges, but I haven’t seen any around.
I think there is still an electrical issue related to the always-on front light (park light), but that is a problem for another day.
Had to remove the hydraulic ram off the lift again today as well, because the generic O-ring I put in the last time was obvs not the right one and it was leaking fluid all over the garage floor (only discovered this when I jacked it up to put the fly-wheel cover back on). Have a new O-ring in now and the ram is on the workbench under pressure to see if it has fixed it this time around. So far so good.
Once the Kayzee is running, I’ll remove the wheels, clean, polish and paint them, replace the tyres, give the chrome another polish and Bob’s yer uncle.
Almost time for a ride…?
I sent the old gasket off to a place in NP who said they could cut me a new one no probs. The next day, the gubbmint shut down NZ. So 3 weeks later, still waiting.
Hopefully, this crowd haven’t gone of of business and when lock-down is over, they can get that gasket to me so I can get this thing done once and for all…
Update: May the Fourth (be with you)…
Woot! Two brand new gaskets arrived today. I got a spare one made just in case. So now I will be able to finish this bike up now that I am happy that the starter clutch slipping is almost normal.
Local bike shop has let me down again. Got tired of waiting so called them and quelle surprise! I got told “oh, i thought I had called you and sorry, but do you want the bad news first or the bad news first?”.
So it seems that they couldn’t source the parts and they couldn’t be arsed to tell me that either. So now it’s either off to errBay to get a gasket kit sent over with a whole load of extra crap I don’t need, or I can just get some gasket material and map out a new gasket using the old one as a template. I think option B is the one for me. I think I can handle a scalpel blade and it won’t take weeks to do…
1981 KZ440C Rebuild 