Topic: Terry's new Kawasaki Z1B build, the OCD special...........

[Kevin D]

Since a recent software update, none of the embedded videos will play on my iPad. So I borrowed my brides laptop to see your first start Terry, and wow, did that fire when the first piston hit TDC? Idles, revs, can’t wait to see it go down the road.

[grcamna2]

That sounds good for the first start;that bike will NEED those dual front disc brakes when you give it the beans 

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks Kevin, getting the valve timing right on a Z1 is a bit more difficult than on a CB750 so my only real concern was being a tooth out, but seriously, I turned the ignition on, pushed the choke on and pressed the button, and it ran! I need to get that shim kit and do the valve clearances before I run it again, but apart from a little fiddling with the carbs I think it’s gonna be fine.

Two years ago I’d planned to use a pair of Lester wheels and I’d mated drilled cast iron discs with 6 piston Tokico calipers off a GSXR1000 which would have pulled it up from silly speeds much quicker than the (almost) standard twin disc setup I have to use with the stock wheels now, so I’ll just have to be very careful with that quick action throttle, and the hand holding it…...

[MauiK3]

I imagine the torque will be brutal!
Lots of tire wear and perhaps front wheel elevation.

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks Steve, yeah, the black “Mad Max” bike that I built out of the old KZ1000 based drag bike was a real handful. My Triumph Rocket III has probably more RWBHP, but the Kawasaki was much harsher in its power delivery, I’m hoping that the Z1-B is a little gentler, we’ll see.

Speaking of the black bike, I’m planning a “Freshen up” for it, I need to buy another Dyna 2000 ignition for the 1428cc engine I built for it at the same time that I built the Z1-B engine. The poor old rolling frame needs some love after sitting in a dusty carport for the last couple of years, so there’s some surface rust to clean up, and maybe some new painting required. More on that later.

[Alan F.]

Wow, just wow. It sounds great and reminded me of the way my K3's unbaffled Kerker sounded in 2005 before I stupidly tore it down for a rebuild that it probably didn't need.

The sound alone is very inspiring, not motivating but inspiring. 

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks Alan, it’s a much scarier thing in the flesh. While it doesn’t have the same 13.5:1 compression of the original drag bike (Z1’s have bigger combustion chambers than GPZ1100 heads, like the one on the drag bike) it shakes the concrete and scatters the cats, so should be scary fun……

[Terry in Australia]

While I wait for the valve shim kit (should be here by Wednesday) and my refurbished front brakes (have arrived in Oz, no idea when they'll be delivered) I've been working on the T500 and T350 and spending too much time looking for bike parts. Last week I saw that one Nils Menten (a member here) had a complete set of OEM bodywork for sale, that he'd taken off a Z1-B 8 years ago to install new Doremi bodywork, like Stev-O and I have for our bikes.

He wanted to sell it in one lot, so although I have an OEM tank and Ducktail for mine (in case I ever want to restore it, or if my kids sell it when I fall off the perch) but the price was "Sofa-King" low that I put my hand up for it all.

Terry's OEM Z1-B bodywork by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I'll just hang them up in the garage for some garage art, but it'll be nice to have them, even if I never use them.

[Terry in Australia]

so yesterday was another stinker after at least a week of stinking hot days. I had to drive in to work at 5am and drove home around 2 after stopping in at my employers palatial offices to collect a work laptop, which I didn't want, but had no choice. I got home, and there was a box waiting for me.

Z1-B Monday 24 Jan 2022 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

It was my refurbished OEM brakes, woohoo! Another 1000 BOAT ("Break Out Another Thousand") but I'm happy that I'm moving away from having a lot of repro parts and not too many originals, not that some of the repro parts aren't very well made, but without sounding like an "investor" I know that original bikes, or at least in my case, bikes built from original OEM parts are worth more than those with a lot of repro items, regardless of how pretty they are. Anyway, Retro Motorcycles did a great job, and the refurbished OEM calipers look like new:

Z1-B brakes 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Z1-B brakes 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

The splitter is OEM too, has been either painted or (preferably) powdercoated, but I presume the hoses are aftermarket? It even came with a new brake light switch and rubber boot.

Z1-B brakes 4 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

The MC is aftermarket, but I have a tired old OEM one here to go into the OEM stash.

Z1-B brakes 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyway, they look good. I bled them, which was surprisingly easy, in fact I filled the MC with dot 4 and wandered into the garage to find some bleed hose, and by the time I came back the MC was empty and there was a pool of fluid on the patio floor from where it had run thru the hoses and out the opened bleeder screws. Oops! I splashed a can of warm diet coke (because it was the closest liquid to hand) over it then washed it off with clean water and it doesn't appear to have affected the paint, so maybe it is powder coated?

OK, so brakes are done, and according to Fedex the valve adjusting shims will be here today. Tomorrow is a public holiday (Australia Day) so with luck I might even get a sneaky ride in? I better not count my chickens, just in case something ruins my cunning plan......

[grcamna2]

Nice looking parts 

[craz1]

I deal with Marcel at Retro quite a bit. Since he is close I get the stuff pretty quick.

[RAFster122s]

Nice!

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, and true to form, fcuking Fedex have screwed me. The "3 day shipping" that I paid for 10 days ago that was guaranteed to be delivered today is delayed again, and so I won't get my valve shims until Friday. (maybe) Oh well, the T350 needs some love, I guess that's what I'll be doing tomorrow.

[MauiK3]

I think you need to get a shop area where you can line up the bikes like in a museum and charge admission.
The brakes look great.

[RAFster122s]

The weather and CoVID cases have FedEx in the US about 1-3 days behind schedule in part due to the number of staff calling out sick with the virus. Omicron variant is ripping through the US laying waste to those who have had their 3 shots and those whom haven't.
I have a package that is supposed to be arriving Today from FedEx but it last was updated when it arrived at a distribution center in Wisconsin Friday evening. Contacted the company and whey told me about FedEx tracking and significant loss of staffing due to CoVID and out sick.

Most Americans don't have paid sick days and many whom are lower income wage earners cannot cope with being out of work for two days much less 5-10. So, they are going to work with Omicron because it is like a bad cold or mild flu for many vaccinated people. Then there are those whom are all but asymptomatic and they don't know they are sick and spreading it...
So, that's one dynamic at work right now in the US and in some cases was the case earlier in the pandemic.

Terry, brakes look great and sorry your shims are currently on holiday not showing up promptly.

[MauiK3]

Nice fork brace!

[Terry in Australia]

The weather and CoVID cases have FedEx in the US about 1-3 days behind schedule in part due to the number of staff calling out sick with the virus. Omicron variant is ripping through the US laying waste to those who have had their 3 shots and those whom haven't.
I have a package that is supposed to be arriving Today from FedEx but it last was updated when it arrived at a distribution center in Wisconsin Friday evening. Contacted the company and whey told me about FedEx tracking and significant loss of staffing due to CoVID and out sick.

Most Americans don't have paid sick days and many whom are lower income wage earners cannot cope with being out of work for two days much less 5-10. So, they are going to work with Omicron because it is like a bad cold or mild flu for many vaccinated people. Then there are those whom are all but asymptomatic and they don't know they are sick and spreading it...
So, that's one dynamic at work right now in the US and in some cases was the case earlier in the pandemic.

Terry, brakes look great and sorry your shims are currently on holiday not showing up promptly.

Thanks David, I can understand the whole Covid thing slowing down Fedex, but what has pissed me off for the last 3 deliveries from the US is that I've paid top dollar for the "3 day delivery", each delivery has take from 10 days to 3 weeks, I've received no notification that it's been delayed until I check the tracking when the box wasn't delivered on the day it was booked for, and I haven't received a partial refund when their "3 day delivery" blows out to taking longer than their cheapest option. My box has been sitting in Hawaii for the last week or so, if Steve needs some valve shims I'll give him the address so he can take some out of the box for his bike.

[Terry in Australia]

I think you need to get a shop area where you can line up the bikes like in a museum and charge admission.
The brakes look great.

You know I did think about leasing a small showroom/workshop/warehouse when I decide to sell off all of my bikes and projects Steve, it'd look great to have them all clean and shiny parked in a showroom reminiscent of the old bike shops I remember back in the 70's, but then I thought that I'd have to have a very secure facility as the crooks would love them as much as I do. Of course if they were stolen, the insured value would exceed their actual value, so I guess that it wouldn't be all bad? I love the fork brace too, I think it came from Britain? If you're not looking for one, you probably wouldn't notice it?

[BenelliSEI]

I think you need to get a shop area where you can line up the bikes like in a museum and charge admission.
The brakes look great.

You know I did think about leasing a small showroom/workshop/warehouse when I decide to sell off all of my bikes and projects Steve, it'd look great to have them all clean and shiny parked in a showroom reminiscent of the old bike shops I remember back in the 70's, but then I thought that I'd have to have a very secure facility as the crooks would love them as much as I do. Of course if they were stolen, the insured value would exceed their actual value, so I guess that it wouldn't be all bad? I love the fork brace too, I think it came from Britain? If you're not looking for one, you probably wouldn't notice it?

Terry..... Your “showroom” idea made me smile. A few of us were on a club “zoom call” last week. One of the guys I race with just bought a local  fire hall, across from his small town service garage. There were rumours the place was full of asbestos insulation. It’s a small barn shaped, two story building. Room for two big trucks in the main floor bays, kitchen and bunk room upstairs. Probably +60 years old, but well kept. He got in and took a bunch of insulation samples and had them analyzed. Just rock wool, vermiculite, and newspaper! Bought it for almost nothing, just to make sure nobody opened up a competing business......

Between us, we have a pretty decent stash of cars, trucks and motorcycles that are definitely “SABLE” (supplies and above beyond life expectancy). He has a dealers lic. The plan is  for all of us to drag in 3-4 of the items we could live without in there this summer, and have that 1960-70’s dealership you describe. Should be fun and we might actually sell some stuff!

[Terry in Australia]

That sounds magnificent John, I saw a "Masonic Hall" in a little country town for sale for $75K AUD on FB the other day, I thought it would make an interesting residence at the time, but like your fire hall, it'd easily store a lot of cars and bikes.

It was on a big block of land too, so I imagine whoever buys it will quickly pull the building down and build something newer on it, most of these little towns don't have the money to demand historic building's be restored, so if there are any developers in the town (doubtful, it's just a fly speck on the map and not a tourist trap) they'll pull it down and build something new.

I'd love to find an old gas station to turn into a classic bike shop/showroom, but once agin, most of them disappeared here years ago. Make sure you post some pics John, I'm sure I'm not the only one here who'd love to see it. I wandered outside an hour ago to do some work on the T350, it's getting close to 100 degrees outside, so I fired it up, did 2 laps around the local streets while the wife is out doing some "Australia Day" grocery shopping, parked it, started sweating like a pig, so escaped back to the ducted cooling inside. No rush, and the ride was fun.  

[Terry in Australia]

Well as you'd expect, after Fedex fcuked me on Tuesday, bright and early this morning, they dropped off my box of shims.

Z1 Thursday 27 Jan 2022 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

What better way to spend a day "working from home" than cleaning, measuring and filing 84 valve shims by size? Took a couple of hours, but well worth it. All shims are marked with their size, but noobs install them with the markings uppermost and the cams wipe the markings off. If you ever work on a shim adjusted bike (or car) make sure the shims are installed with the markings toward the bucket, not the cam.

Z1 Thursday 27 Jan 2022 1 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

Anyhoo, as soon as I was able to, I scurried outside into the heat to adjust some valves. Last time I checked them it wasn't as hot as it was today, and interestingly (to me anyway) the clearances, which were tight beforehand, were even tighter today.

Z1 Thursday 27 Jan 2022 2 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I had to change 6 of the 8 shims and as you'd expect some compromises had to be made, but I figured that slightly bigger clearances with a hot set of cams were better than slightly tighter ones. I did sh1t myself when the nose of my shim bucket depressing tool snapped off under the exhaust cam. Fuuuuuck..........

The only place in the engine that it could have gone, being the #2 exhaust lobe was straight down the camchain tunnel. Fcuk! I looked everywhere under and around the cam and couldn't find it, and had just about resolved myself to dropping the 3.7 litres of expensive MC oil, the filter and the pan, exhaust system, etc etc to see if had dropped down into the bowels of the engine, when walking across the patio, wiping away the tears of abject misery, I spotted the missing piece of cast steel on the patio floor! Woohoo!

Z1 Thursday 27 Jan 2022 3 by Terry Prendergast, on Flickr

I was so happy, I quickly bolted the cam cover back on, and fired it up! It still runs a little bit rough, but I think that I probably need to read up on the advance curves best suited to the mods that have been done to the engine, and probably play with the mixture screws a bit, but on the plus side, it is one wicked, wicked engine, it revs like a drag bike and the ground shakes beneath it. I'm running out of excuses now, Tomorrow, all going well, I'll ride it around the block, or somewhere........

 

[Alan F.]

That's a lucky find, congrats on not draining the oil! And thanks for the tip on placing shim markings downward.
Be careful out there.

[MauiK3]

Don't you hate that feeling when something like that happens?
Ugh
Love to see it out on the road.

[Alan F.]

I wonder if a big magnet would catch tools or parts from falling down the tunnel or if a clean shop rag is the better bet?

[Terry in Australia]

Thanks guys, it’s getting exciting, the tank is still in its “Doremi Collection” box and I haven’t looked at it since 2020, so later today (it’s 2.30 am as I tap this out on my iPhone) I’ll pull it out and attach the Kawasaki badges, cap and petcock, and sit it on the bike for the first time, ever.

Yes, I do feel a bit like Doctor Frankenstein, about to breathe life into another mechanical monster, I hope it ends better for me than it did him…..