Topic: Terry's Kawasaki ZZR1100 "Bring it back to life" project.

[spotty]

i would have offered it up as a firey sacrifice to whatever gods are taking the p1ss out of me with everything else that's screwed up in my life at the moment

[BPellerine]

haha

[Terry in Australia]

You've come a long way with the ZZR. I don't know if it was just that I wasn't real well at the time, or that I'd just totally lost interest, but I could have happily burned it, it was just getting in my way. Since it's gone, I've built the Swamp Rat, the Z1000 Mad Max bike (now the 1428 Lockdown Special) bought and got going the XS650 Yamaha, just about finished the Z1-B engine build, and pretty much finished the first stage of the CB750F2 resuscitation. It'll be good to see it going, but better that it's no longer mine.

[spotty]

well thats a year gone by so quickly...
got the head off, found out that you can't even straight edge the combustion face as the valve heads protrude below the flat surface , virtually no combustion chamber as we know them, so out came all of the valves, straight edged it and its not warped and there disgust overcame me
so cut to a couple of weeks ago and after buying a proper valve install tool i got the head back together
so i'm thinking some beers tonight and do a dry fit without torquing anything down to see if the head will go back in without taking the motor out again, if it will then pull bits out again, assembly lube and put it back together properly
if not i shall enlist some help to get the motor back out ( Terry ? what you up to after lockdown fcuks off )
either way, then its put the rest back together and see if it runs , i probably won't keep it after all this as theres no way my fcuked left leg will bend into the required shape to let me sit on it. if i can get it running i will take it for at least one ride just so i can say i have ( this was always one of my dream bikes and i can't pass up the chance for at least one attempt at 280kmh )
i'vre been offered roughly what it owes me from the wreckers as is or if i can get it going i should get over $3K which would be nice
more to follow....

[Terry in Australia]

Fcuking hell spotty, what happened to the head? The valves were all sitting below the combustion chambers/head gasket mating surface? Were the valves stuck in the guides? That's weird! I'm sure there are pics further back of the head before I put it back on, and I don't remember there being any problems with it? Anyway, yep, happy to come over and give you a hand to put it back together, or pull the engine out, or whatever, I want a ride too, before the sacrificial fire!

[spotty]

well, progress last night, all of it backwards

worked out how to get the head back on without dropping the motor, ( apparently reading the manual is recommended ) laid it on the cylinders and all good, so back off to install the tappets and associated rods and springs, shims and woohoo, ready to bolt down and install the cams ( took me an hour to find them but beer helped keep me calm during the search )

however...whats this baggie with 16 each of large and small washers, very thin, blued steel and with a number count remarkably similar to the amount of valves present in the head. back to the manual and , oh dear, they'd be the washers that go under the valve springs to stop the springs hammering into the alloy head.

i did consider ignoring them as i am going to be rid of the bike one way or another but my beer soaked conscience got the better of me and i shall spend some further quality kawasaki time this weekend removing each valve and associated boing bits ( one at a time so i don't have to rebag everything to keep all associated pieces together ) , reinstall each valves worth then all the bits i put in last night then bolt the head down before i can fcuk anything else up

then its rocker cover, carbs, oil lines, exhaust, fuel lines, water pipes etc fill it with coolant and see where it leaks from this time

as a bonus as i put everything back together i lubed thoroughly so i'm going to look like the creature from the greasy lagoon by the time i'm finished. i may give it a good degrease and wash before i start

who knows i may even get to work on thwe poor old honda one of these days

[Terry in Australia]

well, progress last night, all of it backwards

worked out how to get the head back on without dropping the motor, ( apparently reading the manual is recommended ) laid it on the cylinders and all good, so back off to install the tappets and associated rods and springs, shims and woohoo, ready to bolt down and install the cams ( took me an hour to find them but beer helped keep me calm during the search )

however...whats this baggie with 16 each of large and small washers, very thin, blued steel and with a number count remarkably similar to the amount of valves present in the head. back to the manual and , oh dear, they'd be the washers that go under the valve springs to stop the springs hammering into the alloy head.

i did consider ignoring them as i am going to be rid of the bike one way or another but my beer soaked conscience got the better of me and i shall spend some further quality kawasaki time this weekend removing each valve and associated boing bits ( one at a time so i don't have to rebag everything to keep all associated pieces together ) , reinstall each valves worth then all the bits i put in last night then bolt the head down before i can fcuk anything else up

THEN I NEED TO INSTALL THE CAMS, CHECK THE CLEARANCES, INSTALL THE CORRECT SIZED SHIMS (AFTER PULLING THE CAMS OUT AGAIN) AND SET THE VALVE TIMING, AFTER CAREFULLY READING AND RE-READING THE MANUAL.

then its rocker cover, carbs, oil lines, exhaust, fuel lines, water pipes etc fill it with coolant and see where it leaks from this time

as a bonus as i put everything back together i lubed thoroughly so i'm going to look like the creature from the greasy lagoon by the time i'm finished. i may give it a good degrease and wash before i start

who knows i may even get to work on thwe poor old honda one of these days

There you go mate, I fixed it for you.

[spotty]

Lets not get silly about all of this, the shims that came out of each valve and are going back into the same valve are the ones you put in there so i'm guessing you did all of the above and therefore i won't need to

[Terry in Australia]

Lets not get silly about all of this, the shims that came out of each valve and are going back into the same valve are the ones you put in there so i'm guessing you did all of the above and therefore i won't need to

I imagine that I did, so as long as you're sure that you put the correct one back in the same spot you should be OK, but you still need to carefully time those cams. Get it wrong, and you'll bend some valves.

[spotty]

they've still got the marks on that you used but i will check the manuel

[spotty]

more progress, more backwards

pulled the head apart again, one valve at a time, and installed the under spring washers

next step was install the cams, cannot work out how to get them both in under the cam chain, pulled the ignition case off to check the chain hadn't got caught up and locked around the sprocket, no
rang Terry to ask if he had any idea how he'd done it when he built the engine, no, not surprising as it was about 3 years ago when he built the motor and hes built a couple of dozen since, we get out of lockdown this week so he might be able to pop pover on the weekend and see if we can work it out

it was while i was talking to him i realised it wasn't cam time just yet, i hadn't actually bolted down the head.....
alrighty, time to learn how my torque wrench works, the lowest number on the shaft is 26Nm and i need 20 for the first tighten, aha the little numbers on the turning bit of the handle must mean add or minus from the marked numbers depending on which way you turn it, read the instructions and turns out to be so ( yes i know, read the instructions first )
head torques down nicely and on to the next step

which is the exhaust, bejesus that thing is heavy but after some WWE style wrestling its attached ( later found the clamp that seals up the linking pipe between L and R but thats not too much to sort later ) , things are going well....

too well as it turns out, radiator is next and as soon as i look at it i'm thinking where are the sleeves that go through the rubber mounting bushes, an hour later and several beers i came to the conclusion i've lost them fcuk

tried to fit the steel water pipe that runs across the back of the head and you'd think it would hold in place with the pressure of a couple of o-rings while i bolt it in but it falls back out of its holes....hmmm seems we need new o-rings as well as the radiator mount sleeves

so we come to a grinding halt again  but with maybe some sort of light at the end of the tunnel, though knowing my luck its probably an express train heading straight for me

[Alan F.]

Some days you realize that the light at the end of the tunnel....is a flashlight the Misses dropped down the outhouse late last night.

[spotty]

well, i got the lathe and after a few abortive attempts and no experience whatsoever i have made the parts i need, it was an extremely satisfying moment when i popped the second one out of the chuck and found it was almost exactly the same ( within a few bees dicks of a mm ) as the first one AND they both fit perfectly in the radiator grommets

 2 big long rods ( well 50cm long anyway ) of 27mm aluminium were only about $14 each which seemed really inexpensive to me so i've got lots of material to practice on and theres a few bits of Vmax that have always annoyed me so i shall have a go at replicating them in the fashion of what i think mr yamaha should have done them in the first place

terry and another friend are going to come round and give me lessons and no doubt tell me i'll die if i keep doing things the way that seems natural to me

and another plus is i saved over $20 by making the parts instead of buying them, so all i need to do is make another 400 sets for willing kawasaki purchasers out there and i'll have paid off the cost of the lathe

[Terry in Australia]

Well done Spotty, Action Aluminium in Thomastown are really good, I buy lots of offcuts from them when I need to make something.

[spotty]

a well spent thursday night, pulled half the exhaust off to put the mid clamp onto the joiner between the mufflers

reattached the radiator and oil cooler using shiny new stainless bolts and my beautifully lathed inserts

found out why the cams wouldn't go in, the cam chain had come off the bottom sprocket and got caught behind a guide, it would still turn but it was just that little bit too short to allow the cams in at the top end

drank a lot of beer and listened to raucous punk rock

[Alan F.]

One day I'll start melting down beer cans to cast into lathe materials. Wide bar stock takes forever to cut and costs are always going up.

[spotty]

well after many years and much valiant trying its gone.....sold it to the wreckers, waved it goodbye last week with not a single regret

the straw that broke the spottys back was the electrics, after all the fcuking around with mechanicals and bodywork and all the rest i had an auto elec get it turning over on the button, put all the bodywork back on and ....fcuk all. the fuel pump packed it in, got a new one, spigots were the wrong size but it wouldn't turn on the button again so sod it, the wrecker brought a trailer and left me with some money ( probably could have got more but couldn't be bothered with the hassle of private buyers ) and more space in the garage
i've since sold the manuals i had for it for a bit more

just relieved to be rid of it.
shame was, i was looking forward to one very quick test ride when i finished it