Good job Alan, better to be safe than sorry. Spotty and I dragged my “free” Kawasaki Kz750 out of storage a couple of weeks ago with the intention of getting it running again after a 10 year hibernation. We changed the oil and filter (which is up where the starter motor sits on most bikes of the era) and were happy that there was no metal in the oil.
The front master cylinder was badly corroded and didn’t work so I bought a rebuild kit for it, which was a little bit different to what came out of it, and after installing everything we couldn’t get any lever pressure out of it so I bought the cheapest “Generic” MC assembly on Amazon ($20 AUD with free delivery) and installed it yesterday and have now got a pretty good lever pressure. At this stage the intent is to sell it, but I’ll take it for a ride before I do, just in case I decide that it’s another keeper.
The tank was pretty much empty and was surprisingly clean so I mixed some carb cleaner with a gallon of fresh gas, and turned the fuel on, which immediately started pissing out of the overflow on the left carb. It had plenty of spark with the battery I’d taken out of the K0, and would run if we sprayed carb cleaner into the air box, but no amount of tapping the float bowl would stop fuel running out, so we pulled the carbs and I took them home to clean in my ultrasonic cleaner.
I pulled them apart and the left carb was disgusting. The float had actually seized and I couldn’t remove the pin. I stripped the right carb and it was really clean. I was able to remove the float and float valve with no issues, so I removed the slides to check the diaphragms and they were both good. Rather than risk snapping off a float pivot tower I decided to put the carbs in the ultrasonic cleaner as is, hoping that the heat and the new degreaser I’d bought would help to remove the float.
The degreaser was just some cheap water based stuff I’d bought on Amazon for I think about $15 for a 5 litre container, and I used the garden hose to fill the 30 litre cleaner so I wasn’t really expecting a great result considering that the $200 20 litre container of simple green aircraft parts cleaner I previously used didn’t really make a set of carbs look as nice as some carbs I’ve seen guys post, but to my surprise, after an hour or so, the carbs were perfect! Woohoo!
I pulled them out of the cleaner and the brass float came off as easy as could be. Only problem was, it has a pinhole in it. Bugger. Rob, the previous owner had told me that it might have a pinhole as apparently that was a common ailment with KZ750 twins. I’d thought about soldering the hole, or using a splotch of JB Weld, then I wondered if perhaps one of the H1 500 floats might fit, but really wasn’t confident. I pulled one out, and was surprised (and happy) that they’re identical! Woohoo again!
I used my cheap little Amazon ultrasonic cleaner to clean all the little bits like screws and jets etc in some other degreaser that Spotty recommended and they all came up like new, so I’ll put the carbs back together and check the float levels, then next weekend I’ll take them back to Spotty’s place and we’ll reinstall them and see if it’ll go. Being an American import it has no mixture screws visible (I think they’re there, but have metal caps pressed in over them so owners can’t mess with them, like the OEM carb on my Harley Sportster) but as it ran fine until Rob parked it up, it shouldn’t need any fine tuning. I am happy that I have another float for it, if I decide to sell it I don’t want to spend any more on it than I need to.
