TOPIC:

I bought this bike last year thinking I'd run it for 1 season, blow it apart and make it new in the winter. The reality of insurance costs in Ontario has me thinking about starting the project now.

The bike has 40000 miles, has been used as a commuter and overall appears to have been taken care of. It is very solid to ride.

It NEEDs:

new cam chain and possibly adjusters (noisy chain)
new front tire
drive chain and sprockets
a valve adjustment and carb cleaning wouldn't hurt.

The paint (engine, frame & covers) is tired (40000 miles), the tank has a couple of decent dents.

The Electrics are mint.

My question is,

Knowing what it needs, would you bother to pull the engine and split the lower half to get the primary chain too while replacing the cam chain with a continuous replacement, or leave it together and install a link cam chain?

If I'm going to split the lower end, I'll pull the whole bike down for a restoration. If it's not worth splitting the engine, I'll do the work in the frame and leave the bike together.

Thanks for your input

You might try to find a lower mileage engine . The problem is that with these bikes being so old now it's hard to find a low mileage engine(less than 10,000mi). And of course the engine needs to be somewhat local with gas being over $4/gal . It's just so expensive to do a good rebuild with all the parts and the cost of labor for machine work .You are probably looking at $400 for cyl.boring and a good valve job . FWIW I've had 2 bikes ('82KZ550 & "81 GPz550 ) with less than 5,000 recently , but they both needed valve seals . Still a lot easier than a full rebuild .