TOPIC:

Hey There!
Just got back from the trip up to the shop where my '79 kz650c has been in resting in the barn.
The trip was pretty uneventful other than me acting like a teenager jumping up and down from the truck bed while loading the bike parts when I lost my footing on the bike ramp and fell hard on my arse. Thankfully the only things bruised and sore are hidden by my jeans and my helmet
On the bright side, I didn't drop my carbs during the fall and even my friend who was helping me load the bike noted "I saw you didn't let go of the carbs during that...graceful dismount..."

So it may be good to review this bike's progress (or lack there of).

I found this bike at an auction back in 2007:


Incredibly, I spotted this and managed to make my way to it without anyone else showing interest and without picking up any chiggers or ticks!
An hour or so and a gavel drop later and it was mine and brought back to the shop:


It was pretty ugly and obviously going to be a long-haul restoration but it had some good points.
Low(er) mileage:


It was "stock" black (or so I thought). It had some "extras" like engine guards and a luggage rack:


My son (pictured above) helped me get it rolling and brought it into the shop. He had picked up a Suzi and a Honda at the same auction so we had lots of hours wrenching together on them and managed to get his Honda actually running and functioning nicely in just a few days. The Suzi (was a GS550) wasn't so lucky.
This KZombie was...reluctant is probably just the term, so I began the long process of tearing it down completely because I just couldn't for some reason, give up on it:




I managed to get some things accomplished including ordering various parts (some I had totally forgotten about) and even got the carbs rebuilt:


The lad and I wrenched for a few days and I really enjoyed the hell out of it. I had high hopes for this '650 being on the road soon:





That was then. This is now. 2016. Almost 9 years later...
As I searched through the dusty shop, snapping a yardstick at various critters that have taken over. I found the ol' 650 covered in blankets and with some help extracted it back into the daylight:



Dayum! Time has NOT been nice to it. Of course I have more wrinkles than that tank still has

I re-discovered all the parts I had carefully chunked into a tub or left for the mice to play on:







And.... was so happy to see these carbs were still as clean as the day I rebuilt them:



Dragged the whole kit 'n caboodle back to my garage and unloaded it without a repeat stumble, fall, CrAsH on that dang slippery ramp, where it now sits with it's little brother that my son bought me a couple months ago:



Then, I got to thinking about what KZRon had shown me here on the forum when I asked about Stock Purist Paint. A chart showing that this '79 could not have been black, even while everything it had still was black. I mean look at this "stock" duck bill:


Surely, Kawasaki made an exception for THIS bike? That's stock paint. No? Stock stripes. No?
In a word. No:


So that was last evening. My arse is still sore from the fall. My carbs are still beautiful and undamaged. My head's a little woozy from the lack of coffee but finally things can get back to rolling again.
Oh yeah. So after I got the bike and all it's parts loaded on the truck yesterday morning. I decided to take one last walk through the shop and just peek and poke at things and found more parts I had ordered. Totally forgotten about but obviously my "then-self" knew more than my "now-self" about this project. I had a complete engine gasket set and a brand new battery with the acid tank unopened on that rebuilt shelf that self destructed on my kz440's paint job all those years ago.

So I'm stoked to get this puppy back to something worth looking at again. Fear the Rolling Dead!

OUTSTANDING pics and story Wrench.... I'm "re-starting" my restore after a year of doing other things.

Wow!
Sixdog, that is one saweet lookin' bike there. Even in the bones, it's a beauty. Super nice work you are doing!
Keep us posted on the progress. I need the inspiration to see that light at the end of the tunnel is NOT an on-coming train

Good start to a thread.Looking forward to the build.Good luck with it.

Will do....and THANKS!

Well things have gone a little slower than anticipated...
I kinda' blew-off a perfect Sunday in the garage working on the KZombie650 because, well, my ... body ... was sore from the fall the day previously.
Then today I awoke nice and early and added an asprin to my morning breakfast ritual.
What I wanted to achieve today was to confirm the engine's compression and discover the state of the valve clearances. I have done this before on the 550a so I was hoping for some reasonable progress.
Sadly, the KZombie was not cooperating and I ran into an issue:
- This bike was bought at auction "as is" - missing the cam chain tensioner - which I purchased way back when and installed. I was able to spin the crank full circle without any binding then.

My problem now is that the camshafts seem to be out of sync. My manual is "in the mail" so I've only had the info I could gather from the forum here. Much of which was based upon other model years of 650, so everything was interpreted.
Here's a pic of the situation:



In this picture, the crank is at TDC #1 & #4 mark. I had the the cam shafts aligning (it seems) based upon another forum member's picture from his manual. I drew a GREEN line across the cam gears alignment marks. The problem is, the cam lobes for exhaust (far right, in red) and intake (far left, in red) are not aligned with the case top there.
When I did this job on the 550 a month ago, the two lobes (of any cylinder) aligned like the drawing in the manual - lobe pointing along the case top.
But this is not happening here. While the exhaust lobe is aligned as I expected, the intake lobe is pointing downward at about the 7 o'clock range.
So, initially, I thought perhaps this was normal since I didn't experience any binding during crank rotation and I decided to measure the valve gaps on cylinder 1.
The measures were .10mm on exhaust and .35mm on intake. Hmmmm? Not correct.
The only thing I could find via the forum on what the gaps should be was based upon a 1981 kz650 which states that BOTH the exhaust AND intake have the same range - .008 to (i forget now, it's written down in the garage) but point is I was way out on one valve and possibly right on the other.
To compound things (argh!), I decided to remove the cam chain tensioner since I knew I was going to have to reshim anyway but then as I slowly spun the crank from TDC 1 toward 2/3, the cam chain jumped. Now for sure I am no longer in-sync between the two camshafts.

I shoulda' had more coffee I guess. Sigh.

Lastly, are these camshafts stock? They do not have the same reference lines as shown in the 1981 manual I downloaded but they seem to match those in a picture posted here by another member.

Well that was fun...NOT!

I jumped through every conceivable hoop in trying to make some sense of the various images and online PDF manuals and apply them to my KZombie650. It was, in a word, futile.
After determining that my camshafts were no longer in-sync, I poured an ale and set to removing the camshafts, idler, and tensioner to reset everything back to square one - or rather, what I was delusional in thinking was square one.
I got the two camshafts back in situ in the form I was thinking would be correct with #1 lobes pointing at the case edges like in the 550's manual:


WRONG!
It wouldn't even rotate from TDC-1 to TDC-2 before I could feel interference.
Back to the drawing board.
Next I figured to go with the only manual reference I could find online for a 650, which is this:


WRONG!
I don't know what 650 uses this configuration beyond the manual's stipulation it was 1981 but there was no way I could get that number of cam chain pins between the forward exhaust cam alignment mark and the aft intake cam alignment mark.

So, it was back to how I found it all those years ago and how it started this day off with TDC-1/4 and #1 exhaust lobe pointing to case edge and #1 intake lobe pointing downward at about 7 o'clock.
Spun the crank through several careful rotations and just like it was, no problems. I guess this is the correct setting even while there was nowhere near the number of chain-link-pins as prescribed in the '650 manual above; it worked so who am I to argue?

I finally, after an entire day of putzin' with this got to measure the gaps so I could ultimately try to take some compression readings and get an idea of the engine's health.
Here's the valve gap measures:


Hmmm? Suspect...
As of right now, I'm still unaware of what exactly the range of these valves' gaps should be but at least I know they're not so tight as to be holding open the valves and thus messing up compression readings I want to take... tomorrow. LOL

Looks like the intake valves have been nicked.
Steve

Thanks for the help Steve. I fear I may be in deeper water than I'm comfortable with. What do you mean by nicked? The valves themselves have a physical problem? I still want to do compression test tomorrow. Will that reveal the nicked valves?

Bent. I've had that happen. It don't take much. I hope I'm wrong.
Steve

You need a 79 KZ650 manual ...... the correct pin count on mine (78) is 36 should be that on yours too..... search "KZ 650 first time valve adjustment" it has info and a good pic but you still need the correct manual to get it right..... "But" as Steve says sounds like you have 4 bent intake valves due to the large clearance.......... Not sure if you should do a comp test till you have the cams right but as Steve says again I think the damage might be done already ...... hope I'm wrong too.

Ah. Ok. I understand now. So essentially the intake bank of valves are stuck into the combustion chamber & not fully returning to seat. That makes total sense.
This engine spins freely thru all cycles, so this is why i wanted to do the comp test.
I do have a complete engine gasket set so if a tear down is needed, i am willing but maybe not quite ready until my FSM arrives. Lol