Topic: Terry's NEW big Kawasaki build, the "Lockdown 1428" special.

[grcamna2]

Terry,
Good looking engine ,here's hoping the shippers get those lost parts over to you.
When you finish the project and have it all set-up the way you like,you might challenge some of those classic car guy's with their nice Detroit muscle 60's-70's 'Big Block' V8's to a race.Those guys have deep pockets(they hate to lose..) and you may recoup some of your well spent $.

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, yeah, it's good to have my old engine sitting beside the new one for reference, better than a parts manual IMHO, although I do have the parts manual too, if I need it. I've already realised that I'm missing one major part, but more on that later. Not sure about illegal street racing for money though, as much as I like blowing away cars on any of my bikes, I only race them up to the legal speed limit on city streets, then once they get over the speed limit, I let them go, happy in the knowledge that I didn't have to break the law to beat them.

While I do like to ride really, really fast, I prefer to do it on nice quiet (usually un-policed) country roads. You all saw my latest speeding fine, and it gets a lot worse than that if I get caught riding at warp speed, including having my bike taken off me if I get caught doing 30 MPH over the limit, and even doing some jail time if I really fall foul of the law. I don't think jail would be all that bad after 43 years in the army, but I'd hate to lose my bike. Maybe I'll try drag racing, there's a drag strip not far from here, and I think you can do "run what you brung" racing at most meets? That might be fun, even if it's only 1/4 of a mile at a time. We'll see, I better get it together and get it running first.  

[grcamna2]

Yeah,let Them pick a low stress place,private track.I'm sure no one would try to run their hotrod against that bike:they'd lose.
That is a drag racer you're building,right ?? 

[dave500]

i love those pistons!look like little Mt Everests poking their heads up!

[PeWe]

i love those pistons!look like little Mt Everests poking their heads up!

Or pyramides!

[Terry in Australia]

Ha ha, thanks guys, I'll need to set the head on top, to make sure there's enough room in the combustion chambers. I've got a Z1 head off a similar big block engine that I know will fit, but it's earmarked for my Z1. Anyway, the ports and valves in the GPZ1100 head are pretty big compared to the Z1/Z1000, that's why they went from 83 BHP for a Z1000 to 120 for a GPZ1100. It's a street bike G, should be a lot of fun!

I've just sent an email to Mikuni Oz to order some intake manifolds for the 40mm RS flat slide carbs, before the CCP virus it would take a week, maybe two to receive stuff from the US, now it's taking months. I'm really cheesed off as this is really slowing down the Z1 build, and I'm stealing parts from the Z1 build, just so I can keep going with this build. I've started a movement with a catchy statement, who wants to join?

Bike Parts Matter by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

 

[jgger]

I like it ,Terry!  I just think you might have trouble if the woke snowflakes here in the States see it, probably never get anything in the mail except Bill's and cable tv promotions. Just don't order anything from Chaz!🤔

[Terry in Australia]

Ha ha, thanks mate, I think they're already on to me, because all that came in the mail today was bills, and a spring set for my CB750K1 build from England. Not a huge issue as I think I can rat enough bits from the Z1 spares to continue with this engine build, but it does piss me off that there is literally thousands of bux worth of bits sitting in various depots in the USA according to the tracking info, that just haven't moved?

Oh well, to fill in my time I ordered a ton of crushed rock to be delivered today so I could fill in the deep puddles that was once my footpath (sidewalk, in the US) caused by my son parking my old Ford Exploder on it, and sinking into the mud. 

Crushed Rock 16 Jun 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I can't blame him alone, I used to park my work ute (small truck) there for years, and of course, in the winter the holes just get deeper. I was walking out to my letter box this morning (BIKE PARTS MATTER) and the vista of my potholed be-puddled footpath pissed me off, so I rang Nick at the local garden supplies to get half a metre delivered, but he told me that the minimum delivery was a metre (ton) so I thought I could always use it when I do some paving later. As it turned out, one cubic metre wasn't nearly enough, so when I filled the puddles, it looked OK until I put a bit of weight on it, and I realised that I'd pretty much created quicksand, it just sunk into the holes until I ran out of crushed rock to throw in it. Bugger.

Crushed Rock 16 Jun 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr 

So I quickly rang Nick and he brought around another cubic metre which I then piled over each of the holes and drove my Mitsubishi Outlander (hairdressers car) up and down to compact the crushed rock, and whatever was left over, I just raked level over the whole footpath.

Crushed Rock 16 Jun 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

It's not pretty, but it will work better than last time when I filled it with top soil and re-seeded the grass, only for the cars to sink in again. Come Spring, I'll ring Nick again and get him to drop off a metre or two of top soil and throw in some grass seed, and hopefully it'll look a bit better than it did first up this morning. Needless to say I didn't get any bike work done, but I did find a complete gasket kit from the US waiting at my front door, that I only ordered last week! Obviously small parcels are travelling a lot quicker than boxes full of delightful bike parts.........

[ken65]

Great Tshirt Terry. Just ordered one. Mainly for home use.

[Terry in Australia]

Great Tshirt Terry. Just ordered one. Mainly for home use.

You can buy them Ken? Bugger, my son made mine and I was hoping to flog a few! I hope yours isn't made in China........

[ken65]

Great Tshirt Terry. Just ordered one. Mainly for home use.

You can buy them Ken? Bugger, my son made mine and I was hoping to flog a few! I hope yours isn't made in China........

Got it off ebay  from one of those shops that will print whatever you want on it. Just over 19 delivered. Hope the shirt is made in Banladesh.

[jgger]

What would be really cool is if you could read it without using a mirror!

[spotty]

Great Tshirt Terry. Just ordered one. Mainly for home use.

You can buy them Ken? Bugger, my son made mine and I was hoping to flog a few! I hope yours isn't made in China........

I'll take one in grey 3XL if he's knocking out some more there terance

[Terry in Australia]

Ha ha, yeah, I'm lucky, being dyslexic, I can read backwards or forwards with no issues. Today was a great day, I had a couple of medical appointments, so I took a "sickie". My wife had forgotten my cunning plan, so woke me early anyway, but backed off quickly when I let fly with a few expletives. Regardless, it turned out to be a great day, firstly, a big box of Z1 parts arrived, along with a new battery for my Yamaha FJR1300.

1428 head 17 Jun 2020 6 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

1428 head 17 Jun 2020 5 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Slightly ironic that it all came in a box marked "Honda", but hell, it was a nice quality box. I had to drive over to the local VICROADS (DMV) to pay the money and get a new number plate for my Yamaha FJR1300. Needless to say I got fcuked around when I got there, even before Covid-19 getting served by the pubic serpents there in was a slow process, but now with all the social distancing rules, it was painful. Regardless, I got my new plate, so it's legal again, and just at the right time of year, like most big watercooled bikes with barn door fairings, it's a lot more enjoyable on cold winter rides, than on 100 deg plus summer days. I'll be affixing it to the bike on Saturday morning, and doing my 12th 100 mile plus ride for the year. In fact I need to move it back home and take a couple of my future project bikes over to the storage place, it seems rather silly that 3 of my rideable, registered bikes are languishing in the storage place while 7 "future projects" are taking pride of place in my cramped garage. 

1428 head 17 Jun 2020 7 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I stopped at Bunnings (our big box hardware stores) and bought another couple of large tubs to store the new Z1 parts in, which I find a lot handier than many boxes, satchels and small packets of parts, especially when I'm building a bike from a bare frame, as I am with the Z1.

I got to thinking about the 1428 engine again, I've had a few nagging concerns about the interface between those mountainous pistons and the cylinder head of choice, the GPZ1100. I've actually got two of these, the one that was on the drag bike's 1100 engine, and another one I bought for the "Sofa-King" low price of $18 on Ebay USA. I dragged that one out today, because, as it has no valves in it to block my view thru the ports, I could see how much of the combustion chamber would be occupied by those huge crowns.

1428 head 17 Jun 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

These ports are huge, so much materiel has been removed that I'm a tad worried about the thin mounting surface for the carb manifolds which hopefully will arrive tomorrow or Friday as I bought them from a FB member and asked him to Express Post them to me from his home in Newcastle, one state over. He's a top bloke, he took them straight to the Post Office and sent them even before we'd discussed a price, and they were cheap anyway, so I was very happy. Hopefully I can use this head, as it's already been relieved for big cams.

1428 head 17 Jun 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

The good news was that there was still plenty of room in the combustion chambers for those big arse piston crowns. I now just need to make sure that the valves won't come into contact with the pistons, because the Z/KZ heads had different valve angles than the GPZ1100 heads apparently, and I don't know if this will have an effect or not. We'll see. I'll have to think about getting the head and the cylinder block deck skimmed, as I'm sure I could see a very thin line of daylight between the gasket surfaces with the head just sitting on the block, and I don't want leaking head gaskets. I'll double check with a straight edge and make sure that there's not just some old gasket goop causing that gap first though, and I'll do the "sandpaper on glass" trick to see if there are any high or low spots that I can fix, because I don't want to have to wait weeks to get my parts back from the machine shop, either. Anyhoo, it's getting closer. More tomorrow.

1428 head 17 Jun 2020 4 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

     

[Terry in Australia]

Great Tshirt Terry. Just ordered one. Mainly for home use.

You can buy them Ken? Bugger, my son made mine and I was hoping to flog a few! I hope yours isn't made in China........

I'll take one in grey 3XL if he's knocking out some more there terance

No worries Spotty, I'll see what I can do! do you want the other slogan on the reverse, that says, "I can't build"...........

[grcamna2]

PARTS !!  I love getting parts more than money,myself.
Terry,Those high dome pistons you have,where they made for the KZ1000 engine specifically?

[754]

Clay the piston , check your clearance..

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks Frank, I will, the wife's going shopping tomorrow so I'll get her to get me some play-dough. Quick question, the sleeves have been o-ringed for copper wire, but it looks like the PO didn't put wire in, presumably because he used a copper or MLS gasket. I'm using a new copper base and cylinder head gasket, do I need to make some copper O rings? I have done before on a big block (RC) Honda CB750, but didn't run a head gasket?

G, that's the problem I have, is I don't know if the PO used a Z1/KZ1000 head, or a GPZ1100 head? I do have an electronic angle finder, so I guess I could look at the angles on the piston and compare them to the valve angles for a GPZ head? The pistons have pretty deep valve pockets and I'm not running monster cams (although they are pretty big compared to stockers) so I'm hoping there'll be plenty of room. Another little packet of parts (blinker stems) arrived this morning from the USA, but I'm getting a bit antsy about the Z1 cases, I hope they haven't been lost, or I'm screwed.........

[spotty]

I can see that the copper O rings would work for sealing the bores but without a head gasket wouldn't oil find it quite easy to lubricate your pants rather than the cams etc ?

[Terry in Australia]

Supposedly not Spotty, I read an article on Russ Collins running a CB750 with O ringed cylinders and no head gaskets in his race bikes, but I imagine there was some sealant involved? I torqued it down, and kicked it over a few times, but lost my nerve and sold the good RC block (I had 2, but one was buggared) to a bloke who for reasons best known to himself, had it re-sleeved for 836cc pistons.

I had to laugh when he showed up on FB only recently with a story about how he's made the seller (me) an offer and I knocked it back, and then a day later rang him back and took his offer, apparently because my wife told me to take his offer? Funny, because I put it on Ebay with a "buy it now" price, which disappears as soon as someone makes a bid, and it was bid up well over the "buy it now" price.

I was only pissed off because I'd gone to the trouble of replacing one of the sleeves that had a chunk missing out of it with a sleeve from a Kawasaki Z1000 that Mick in Darwin had kindly sent me, and even made a special tool to cut the O ring groove to match the other ones. Oh well, folks love to tell stories about how they "won", I guess?

[Terry in Australia]

But I digress. Today was a busy day, apart from working from home, I also made another 28 litres of ginger beer. I've never been good at maths, so by the time my latest batch was ready to decant into bottles, to sit for a couple of weeks in the dark to mature and do the carbonation thing, I'd run out of ginger brew. I've been existing on Crabbies (piss weak scottish muck that wouldn't get a nun drunk if you dumped her in it and held her under) and Somersby cider (not much stronger than crabbies, but a lot cheaper) so to avoid the impending ginger drought, I knocked up another tank, and in 2 weeks, I'll have another 56 bottles of the finest ginger sleeping medicine.

Anyway, it's in the tank, and when it's down to room temperature tomorrow, I'll chuck in a couple of packets of yeast, and listen to it burble and fart for the next couple of weeks. Once that was out of the way it was already getting dark, but I wanted to fill the 1428's engine with gearbox guts, so I turned on the lights in the sheltered workshop, and burned the midnight (well, early evening) oil. Luckily, due to my OCD I bought lots of gearbox bits, so it didn't take long to assemble the two shafts with the correct gears.

1428 gearbox guts 18 Jun 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Having the 1100 engine split open made it super easy to see where everything was meant to go. The only thing I'm missing is one of those half ring thingies that hold the bearing in place at the end of the output shaft, but I'm hoping that I'll have one for a Honda CB750 that (hopefully) will be the same size. If not, maybe a piston ring? If all else fails, I'll just steal one from the 1100 engine and buy a new one. I also realised I don't have a clutch hub assembly, so once again I'll rat the one from the black engine, and buy another one for the Z1.

1428 gearbox guts 18 Jun 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyhoo, everything's looking good, so when I swap over the clutch and bearing retaining ring, and install the selectors into the bottom case, I'll stick it together. Hopefully I'll have the bottom end together by Sunday night, (ride day Saturday) and then I just need to worry about the top end, which I'm sure will present some issues, so far, it's been just a little bit too easy............

1428 gearbox guts 18 Jun 2020 7 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

[grcamna2]

Terry,I'm not sure whether this will help in your situation or not but Kawasaki is going to start producing oem 903cc Z1 factory cylinder heads again according to www.cycleworld.com.I imagine lot's of drag racers will be pleased:fresh castings. 

[dave500]

good job Terry,ditch that wd40 and use #$%*ing crc or inox!itll go faster!

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, I've got a wicked ported and polished head for my Z1-B G, I can't remember what I paid for it (maybe I don't want to remember?) with a pair of monstrous Webb cams. The cams will go into the 1428 engine, and the slightly milder GPZ1100 cams will go into the Z1 to make it a little more streetable. WD40 is great stuff Dave, I use it when breaking in new rings, and it beds them in well. I don't have a preference really though, CRC and Inox are good too, just harder to find in my area, I bought a 3 pack of WD40 on my last trip to Costco.

Anyhoo, more gearbox work. I thought I'd pretty much gezumped the gearboxx and was right to install the selector drum etc into the lower cases, when I took a closer look and discovered that I was missing this thrust washer. Poop. I went thru all my parts, but no, I didn't have one, bugger.

1428 gearbox 19 jun 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

The wonderful thing about owning a lathe, is it took about 10  minutes to make another one. Game on!

1428 gearbox 19 jun 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

So there I was, with a big sh1t eating grin on my face, when I noticed a gap on the other end of the shaft. Fcuk! I was missing two more thinner thrust washers and a circlip! Damn! I went back thru all my parts, but no, no thrust washers that size, and no circlip. I gave up, and just swapped the complete gearbox assembly from the black engine. I've contacted my best new Kawasaki friend, Oink, and he's gonna send me a new clutch hub, the bearing retainer, and the other bits, for when I assemble the Z1 engine. No biggie, it's still a week or two away before I get to it.

1428 gearbox 19 jun 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I did install the selector drum and the three selectors. Due to my OCD I had 2 or 3 selector drums, and several spare selectors. I also have a complete gearbox on it's way. I've just realised that I have almost enough bits to build another complete engine, I have several crankshafts, a spare frame, swingarm, tank and front wheel. I might have to build another bike, maybe a stocker, just for a change? But again, I digress. I've test fitted everything, it all looks good, so on the weekend I'll pull it apart again, double check that all of the widgets are in place, clean and lube everything, then glue it together. So far, so good...............

1428 gearbox 19 jun 2020 4 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr   

[Terry in Australia]

Well have you ever had a day when you worked your arse off all day, and by the time you dragged your greasy self inside for the night, you didn't have much to show for it? That was my day today. Because of my OCD, I've always thought two or three steps ahead of the task at hand, so instead of just worrying about installing the cam chain, glueing the top and bottom case together then bolting the case halves together, I decided to clean the bolts (job #3) before I did 1 and 2. Rather than use the manky bolts with semi-stripped heads from the black engine, I dragged out a big bag containing over 100 bolts that Oink sent me a few months ago. They were in good nick, but filthy. Rather than dunk them in the ultrasonic cleaner to come out slightly rusty, I took a bit of a risk, and filled a glass juice bottle with them all, then filled it with stale gasoline, then dunked that in the ultrasonic cleaner for an hour @ 50 deg C. I suppose there  was a risk of it blowing up and burning down the house, but hey, "Safety" is my middle name, as we all know. It worked well.

1428 gearbox guts 21 Jun 2020 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I then spent an hour or so cleaning them up on my wire wheel, to remove any traces of silicon sealant from the threads, and polishing the heads. What a drag, but you gotta do, what you gotta do. I also realised that to install the cam chain I had to remove the pistons and cylinder block, which wasn't a problem, just something I hadn't thought about. I compared my new heavy duty cam chain to the one in the black engine, and while the old one wasn't stretched, it was badly worn down one side, so who knows what happened there? The new one looks to be a bit thicker than the old one, so all going well, it'll work well in this monstrous engine.

1428 gearbox guts 21 Jun 2020 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I oiled all the gears, selectors and bearings, and made sure that  they were all sitting in place. I'm not using the stock bottom end bolts or cylinder studs, rather, I have some nice meaty APE studs for both top and bottom, and I even found a "windage tray" that I'd only seen in the ZZR1100 engine, from memory? Apparently these are common in high horsepower Kawasaki engines, so well worth the 30 bucks I paid for it.

1428 gearbox guts 21 Jun 2020 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr.

By this stage it was 6pm, pitch black, and I was half drunk. Wishing to be fully drunk, rather than glue the cases together just to realise that I should have torqued the studs down past the 25 foot pounds I thought appropriate, I'd go read the workshop manual, while drinking as much as possible. OK, I am now fully drunk, but haven't read the manual, so better sign off, read it, have a shower and go to bed. I've got a big day tomorrow, Spotty's coming for a visit, a nice man is bringing a Yamaha XS650 tank over, and hopefully, some big boxes full of parts and tools will arrive. Oh, and I might get some paid work done too. More tomorrow.

1428 gearbox guts 21 Jun 2020 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr