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That paint turned out pretty wicked! She's slowly coming together, just keep your chin up and take it one step at a time. When I built my bike up, the front end and rear end mods took me just around 2 years to complete as I was chipping away whenever I could on her. It was a bit of time, but more than worth it. You're getting there! She's starting to look really good!

Devin

Hey Gents!
Yup. I'm a cheap old bastard!
"So cheap I squeak..." is what my old man used to say.
Truth be told:
I sliced off that first piece of masking tape from a spoke and looked at it curling up, stuck to my knife and the light bulb went on -
Hey! A perfectly, custom made piece of 1/4" masking tape, exactly the length of this spoke...
So yeah. Turns out I have a few qualities, more than cheap, I'm lazy too! One wonders what my gal ever saw in me?
Why not take advantage of all that laborious effort and reuse what would be otherwise waste?

Dev, you are so right about the time aspect of this project. Back at day one, nearly 10 years ago, I was thinking I'd have this old bike slam dunked in days if not hours. Today... meh, I don't even try to guess where the finish line is. I have come to accept that some projects fall together as if they want to be done, while others fight you tooth and nail the whole way.
KZombie is the latter.
Like last evening. I was digging through all the tubs and boxes of parts I took off the bike so long ago. Laying pieces on the floor around the frame trying to remember what and where this odd looking piece is or goes. I don't remember half of it - (OK kids. Let this be a lesson to y'all. Drugs are bad! MmmKaaay? Short term memory loss is a real thing. Not some contrived malady meant to scare you ).
Anyhow, it turns out I'm missing a few things beyond the obvious - my mind - like the left side foot peg. Now who'd abscond with the left side foot peg? Or the side stand spring? Or the right side handlebar brake lever?
One of the biggest issues I discovered is about the steering lock. I do not have the seat lock or the ignition cylinder or obviously the key. So this may be a problem in trying to resolve that steering lock which I chose to leave on the frame even when I bought replacement ignition and seat locks with matching keys.

Oh and then there's this - the exhaust system for KZombie is actually in pretty nice condition. Go figure. But I did discover one problem that I have no idea how to solve. Hopefully someone here on the forum has figured this out - mud daubers built nests or whatever you call those muddy clumps INSIDE my exhaust system! Fricken bugs!
I think these critters are mostly a southern thing? They look like alien wasps or hornets but pretty much don't bother humans except to build these adobe egg nests in the oddest places.
I picked up the exhaust sections and heard this internal "clunk" as something fell from one end of the muffler to the other. Then little bits of ancient dried mud and some egg casing remains fell out. So I shook the thing for like 10 minutes figuring the mud clump would ultimately be destroyed and fall out in bits but uh uh, that's not happening at some point the clump stopped moving, like I suddenly wedged it into some internal baffling; I dunno. Fricken bugs

So it's like your experience Devin... Time is what it takes. In your case, it was engineering new systems to advance the state of the art and in my case it's idiot pursuits like debugging an exhaust system

Fill them up with water, let them sit and flush them out.
Steve

The only thing that matters with builds like this is that you're taking small steps forward and getting closer you your end goal. Yeah, my build took lots of head scratching, fabbing, machining, sketching on CAD, etc. At times I looked at it and thought "when is it ever going to be ready?" But one small piece here and another thing there, and it's closer and closer to being finished. I still have some bugs to work out, get my rear tire hugger on, put an LED tail light on it... But I can ride it now, and that's more than ok with me

Coming along well Wrench.

Next time you need to remove the alternator/stator rotor/flywheel, you don't need a ball bearing, at least I don't recall using one.
Just thread rear axle into the rotor, tighten it up, then tap on the end of the axle.
The flywheel should come off.

Good to hear the cases didn't need to be split.

Hey there good people!

Thank you as always for all your support & guidance.
Steve, that sounds like the perfect solution. I needa bath those exhaust pipes anyway so a little longer in the water ain't gunna hurt. It's either that or just hook'em up, start engine (more optimism) and crack open the throttle to sonically break the little buggers apart. Haha.

650Mod, I am totally there man. Baby steps now will hopefully result in giant leaps for KZ kind later. Someday i'll be saying here on the forum "I remember way back when I was doing this and ...sorry I can't actually remember that long ago.

Rob, I stood at the bench for a while thinking there must be some other bolt or fastener somewhere on this bike that would fit the flywheel. Course my axle was buried in a tub somewhere so it didn't register as an option but there on my bench was the top fork brace avec cap bolt... Turns out it fit perfectly! I put it in and blipped it with the electric impact gun and success! But for future consideration others should consider the axle first as you said because my trip tree bolt got the shiny chrome chipped by the impact and the first thread was dinged up such that i couldn't thread it into the steering stem later until i regroomed the threads with a small file.

I've got an old one I've been using for years. They're $20 at z1partsinc.
Steve

Greetings and Salutations fellow KZR's!

Where has the time gone? Seems like it was only last week that I made the decision to retrieve my KZ650-C3 from the dark of my barn but I see here it's actually been closer to 2 months already! Yikes! The older I've gotten, I've noticed two things: My mirror is a big fat liar and my watch, clock, phone and calendar are in kahoots to accelerate time. Blip. See? That was yesterday already!

So when last we chatted, I had mangled to. erm, I mean, managed to get the frame painted and set to installing the wheels which thwarted me due to two incorrect bearing sizes in my "complete KZ650 Bearing Set". Well, I finally got the corrected bearings reshipped and for free from the super eBay seller mentioned elsewhere but in the interim I was burning daylight waiting so I pulled out all the boxes and tubs and dug up all the skins and bits that would ultimately need to go back on. Of course everything was thick in dust, grease, mud, mouse poop and insect carcasses so last weekend (Blip) a month ago, I created a parts washer out of a big plastic tub and started hand washing, scrubbing and sanding anything and everything. Eventually, I got to start assembly and put bits back on the bare frame:



I know it doesn't look like much but there was hours upon hours (Blip) weeks of hard work with hands under soapy water between the last bare frame/freshly painted pic and this one.
So pleased with how nicely most of the passive parts were cleaning up, I thought I may tackle something a little more advanced. So since it was the middle of weekend still, I pulled out the rear braking system and commenced to pulling it apart. I'm not joking when I tell you it took all day just to clean, dismantle, clean more and rebuild the rear master cylinder:


That puppy was packed solid with what looks like calcium deposits you'd normally associate with old water pipes in a house. Hard. Whitish to brownish. Crumbly like sand. Yuck! I had to invent tools to get it fully cleaned and after many minutes (Blip) a day of struggling I got the inner piston to come out. Incredibly the bore was smooth and the 2 rubber seals were like...perfect. It's biggest sin is just fading of the cap and reservoir from sun exposure. Great result and I pressed-on the next day to tackle the rear caliper:


More of the same, same here. It was a struggle to liberate the pistons and get everything extracted and cleaned but unlike so many other calipers I've *tried* to clean and rebuild, nothing was corroded save for the pad pins. Even the rubber seals were beautiful. So here's hoping; I've already ordered new pads (agh! another "set") to replace the existing ones but truth be told, I think I could just put these pads back into place and run them another few years. The back pads were of course worse for wear but the front pads look almost unused. No surprise, given some recent discussions we've had on the forum here about how few folks use their front brakes. The PO of this bike was guilty as charged.

Next day (Blip) ... I decided to tackle the front braking system:


Surprise! Exactly the same conditions. Packed hard with calcium but incredibly the first one cleaned up nearly perfect:


Sorry for the blurry picture. It looked clear on my liar-phone.
I haven't gotten to the second front caliper yet. My fingers were looking like prunes from being submerged in soapy water for days and I hadda give it rest. Or maybe it was the extreme freakish humidity lately. I decided to move my work space inside and work in the air conditioned comfort ten feet away from the boob tube and commence to restoring my gauges:


As with most everything on the KZombie. Things looked worse than they ultimately turned out to be. Once apart and cleaned a wee bit the old speedometer functions well. I did discover one thing that kinda' pisses me off though; the input shaft on these speedometers is held captive by a riveted thrust plate? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? What engineer thought this was a good idea? A freakin' device designed to live-out it's brutal life in the great outdoors where water, dirt and 80MPH bugs are going to be attacking it at every opening. Sigh. So, I stand corrected on an early post here - you CANNOT pull out the input shaft to regrease it unless you wish to drill out two stupid rivets and then re-install the trust plate with some adhoc fastener idea. Dumb! (the design and me!)

A hour later (Blip) the postman arrived and handed me a much waited for package containing the last 2 bearings I needed to assemble my wheels! So I did!


In spite of the fact that I dismantled these wheels and brakes and well, everything that was still part of the KZombie when I got it; it was still a challenge to reassemble it all. There is definitely some rocket science going on in the back wheel. One more bearing than I would ever have guessed needed. One more spacer than I would have guessed needed and an specific order to install and assemble or you simply fail. Thankfully the lucky horseshoes secured under my seat helped me complete it and even get the wheel back on the bike WITH the rear brake caliper and torque link (Okay, it may have taken me a couple of tries when I realized that some bean-head had made MY KZ with an extra wide rear axle!

Success was mine! I will overcome! I will get to that finish line...someday.
Having such an easy assembly so far, the next day ( ) I chose to tackle the front end. I even remembered to finally pick-up that fork oil damnit! So it was onto the forks. I got the new seals and dust boots installed and after much ruminating on whether to refill the forks on the bench or on the bike, I resorted to the FSM finally. Yeah. Well, it was more like my wife's idea - "Well, what does the manual say to do? Don't look at me. I hate that ratty old thing!". Manual in hand, I poured over the pages repeatedly until they made sense. Only took about an hour (Blip):


So the front-end is almost complete. I have yet to refill the forks because I was running out of daylight and honestly, it was just too hot or rather humid. I hate handling nicely cleaned and or polished parts when I dripping with sweat all over them. I had to keep wiping down the freshened-up rotors with acetone so I wouldn't come out the next day to find them with rusty finger prints. With the front end installed something occured to me - KZombie is a ROLLER again! Wasn't it just yesterday when I removed it all and rendered it a bike-in-boxes?:


Yup! I hadda roll it around a bit just to prove to myself that I could. Rolled it outside and kinda' giddy-up'd it around the driveway like a blithering idiot and parked it for a beauty shot. Well, it's beautiful to me anyway...

And another week had Blipped by. I ran out this morning just before going to work and quickly bolted the front fender on temporarily to see some more progress and get a feel for the end result:


The front fender will be painted the color of the tank and skins so it's coming back off at some point. I'm also not impressed with the aftermarket headlamp. Looks "kewl" but it's shite at best and doesn't fit the stock ears at all. I ordered a handful of parts earlier this morning including:
- Stock headlamp "assembly" - bucket, rings and lamp.
- A complete gauge cluster - as it turned out, KZombie's was missing a couple of significant pieces like the center panel cover.
- Um... more schtuff but I forget now.
Presently on route to my hungry hands via post:
- More primer, paint and clear.
- brake pads
- New front MC (thanks again 650ed for the info)
Um...more schtuff but I forget now (although I'm certain the wife will remind me when the credit card bill comes in )

Gonna look sharp.
Steve

Looking good buddy! If you're ready to give up on the brakes, I had the exact same stock set up on my 650 as it was also a custom. When I rode it in stock shape for the season I did, I had to rebuild the brakes from the pistons to seals to pads... And they might have 1,000 km on them. They're sitting upstairs in my garage doing nothing but sitting upstairs in my garage, If you'd like them, they're all yours, along with whatever else I have brake wise from the stock set up. Let me know

Devin

Hey Devin,
Thanks man! That is very kind of you! I really don't know what to expect from anything on the bike yet. I am just trying to get it put back together so I can assess what if anything (or everything) needs to be replaced. I've found so many things that are absent or missing now. Like the gauge cluster. It always appeared "whole" to me until I got to restoring it and realized that the entire central light display (neutral, oil, brake...um.. turns etc) is missing the front and back covers. Tried to find a replacement on eBay but cost-wise I couldn't find a good unit so I ended up buying an entire cluster complete because it had the front and back covers. I might just run the whole set as is, even though the odometer has higher mileage than KZombie has on it...
The brakes are kinda like the engine at this point. I'm going to put it together (still need to order flex lines all around) and find out how it works. It may be okay or maybe not and I'll have to take it all apart again and repair or replace.

This has been a rather unusual restoration for me because I have no baseline comparison for it. I never had it running before nor have I ever had a working example of this particular model so I don't know what to expect or what should be. Example: Is there a Kawasaki name plate on the front forks? Most bikes I've owned had something like this. Even the 550a does but who knows with this one?

Another snag in the plans for this restoration is the esthetics of it all. Namely paint. I don't know I need something until I discover it's missing (or broken or unusable) and then have to source and get it delivered. Then... I have to strip the parts down and get them ready for paint but I'm using a 2k paint system and so I need to have "all" the parts to be painted together and ready. This is why I had to order more primer, paint and clear last week when I realized how many little bits I missed painting when I did the frame.

Still, I totally appreciate the brake component offer Devin! I even google mapped your location to see about shipping and realized the last time I was in your fair city was 1977. Just a few weeks before Elvis died. Blip! That was like .... last month wasn't it?

Fine job there Wrench! Someone as psychotic as me about tearing em apart is refreshing. One comment I have is did you reconsider replacing the crank seals? Given how old and how long that sat I would given how far torn down it is. I did on my old 550, it wasn;t that bad pf an operation. That bike had a leak on the rotor side seal and that was the only reason it got tore apart. Engine only had 3000 miles and was pristine inside. Keep up the good work and forget about sleeping

R