TOPIC:

The reserve, on, off petcock thing is leaking. And it does not function as it should with the fuel flow. There do not seem to be any rebuild kits available.

* Is there an aftermarket replacement?
* Can I use another more recent years' petcock with hole adjustments? Re holing and such?
* Does anyone want to sell me one?
* Should I scrap the whole thing?

Love to all.

Fuel puddles

If you are still using the original 1977 KZ650 petcock, it should be a manual lever that you simply point down for "on", up for "reserve", and forward for "off". If so, there's very little to it. You have an oring on the aluminum lever, a rubber gasket in the bottom of the petcock, and of course the rubber oring between the tank and petcock. Should be easy to buy any or all of these. Otherwise most any vacuum operated petcock used by Kawasaki from about 1978-1985 with the same mount can be used on your 1977 if you enlarge the hole in the tank a little and run a vacuum line down to one of your sync ports in front of the carbs.

Read the link below, it describes how I solved my petcock issues.

kzrider.com/component/option,com_joomlab...w/catid,3/id,125354/

Read the link below, it describes how I solved my petcock issues.

kzrider.com/component/option,com_joomlab...w/catid,3/id,125354/

True that Ron.

There is very little to it. The retainer screw is still in and the O-ring (gas compatible) is as close as I could find at Napa. However, the actuator lever is moving in ways that it should not be. In factI fear that soon it will simply fall out. This causes the gas flow to work sometimes and sometimes not. I frequently have to partially close the mechanism to get the gas to flow at all.
It needs to be replaced.

Grantl I went to the pingel website and looked around. Did you go to a shop? Or did you get yours online?

(later)

I just went and found some newer (78-80'ish) used petcocks at a local bikeyard.

The owner hooked me up/suggested a brand new Suzuki vacume petcock (Tour maX High Performance Equipment FPC-307 Fuel Petcock Assy 18 - 4358, Suz 44300-45372)The man must be a genius. The petcock fits in with no tank modifications and the micrometer says that there is only a 4 micrometer difference in bolt hole spacing, well within reasonable tolerance.

It would be nice to turn the vacume assembly 90 degrees so that it is pointing down, not forward as it is now. Besides that, it works wonderfully.

Suzuki part,....... Oh well. No more gas leaks and no tank filing. sweet.

Q

The mount holes for a petcock vary from bike to bike. On my KZ1000E1 shaft, the offset is 44mm. I have a 650 tank of some sort on one of my test bikes and the hole spacing doesn't match any offset Pingel uses for their adapter plates. On the shaftie, I just bought an adapter plate and used a 3/8" NPT thread petcock from Custom Chrome. www.z1enterprises.com sells them. The nice thing, is that I can go to JPCycles.com and buy ALL the replacment parts. The adapter plate and petcock are just a bit over $20 and with a fully rebuildable petcock, I am a happy camper. On the 650 tank, I used a universal adapter. Just drilled my own holes through the plate to mount to the tank. Works great. Haven't had any leaks and have those things mounted on several of my bikes (four now I think).

Measure the mount hole offset on your bike and order the adapter plate. You can even pick up a petcock at the local Harley shop... they will be under $25 there as well. Pingel is the only one making the adapter plates and Z1E sells the entire line.

There's a spring behind your lever that puts constant pressure on the plastic piece behind it in the petcock that directs the fuel flow. It's possible your spring is missing, or the plastic 180 degrees off. It's pretty hard for this type of petcock to not function correctly as it's all mechanical. If it's all there and assembled correctly it will work.