Hey guys, this is my first post on here.
My name is Tim, I'm new to kz's but not bikes.
I guess this will be my build thread. I wasn't planning on starting one until I got farther along but what the hell!
I picked this 78 kz650d off of my room mate about 2 weeks ago. He was trying to do a bobber style build with it and honestly he really didn't know what he was doing so I have my work cut out for me! I personally don't like the bobber style and I have always wanted to do a cafe ish style build. So I have pretty much undid everything that he has done and started to build it in my own style.
This is the bike when I got it off of him
Starting out I already had a suzuki bandit 600 swingarm, wheel and rear brakes from a previous project that has been put on the back burner for a while. So I decided to use that, it was a little less than half an inch shorter in the pivot area than the frame was so I made two spacers at .225 thick and now it fits snug. I decided I wanted to use the kz650 swingarm bolt so I made 2 bearing races with the id the size of the bolt and the od at .990 which fits in just perfect. I don't have any pics of these but I'm sure you get the idea.
I got a set of zrx1200 shocks off of a buddy here locally that I am going to use. I had to make new shock mounts for the swingarm since it use to be a mono shock setup. I spent a little bit of time on the manual mill and got the mounts made up then welded on. I still need make the gussets on the bottom of the mounts since they stick over the swingarm quite a bit
Ignore the seat on there. I was just getting ideas.
I still need to figure out what I'm going to do about chain alignment. I think I'm going to find a 5/8" offset front sprocket and mill down the back of the Cush drive till it's exact
For the front end I'm going with a 02 gsxr 750 setup. I picked up the triple tree, forks and clip ons last week, I still need to find a wheel, calipers and axle.
I didn't really know what to do with the stem swap because the od of the kz stem was smaller than the od of the gsxr stem where it presses in. So the only idea I could think of was to turn down the od of the kz stem and make a collar the same dimensions of the gsxr's, press it on, then weld it and finally turn it down to the right dimensions to be pressed into the lower triple. I'm waiting on my kz650 steering stem bearings to come in so I can mount it all up.
Pics of the stem that I modified
Kz stem is on the left, this is after I made the spacer and pressed it on
Welded together
Turned down to the correct dimensions
And finally pressed in
I still need to drill out the top triple because the kz stem is to big to fit thru the hole of the gsxr's upper triple. I will do this tomorrow I think.
But that's about as far as I am for now. If you have any questions or concerns I'd be more than happy to hear them.
My name is Tim, I'm new to kz's but not bikes.
I guess this will be my build thread. I wasn't planning on starting one until I got farther along but what the hell!
I picked this 78 kz650d off of my room mate about 2 weeks ago. He was trying to do a bobber style build with it and honestly he really didn't know what he was doing so I have my work cut out for me! I personally don't like the bobber style and I have always wanted to do a cafe ish style build. So I have pretty much undid everything that he has done and started to build it in my own style.
This is the bike when I got it off of him
Starting out I already had a suzuki bandit 600 swingarm, wheel and rear brakes from a previous project that has been put on the back burner for a while. So I decided to use that, it was a little less than half an inch shorter in the pivot area than the frame was so I made two spacers at .225 thick and now it fits snug. I decided I wanted to use the kz650 swingarm bolt so I made 2 bearing races with the id the size of the bolt and the od at .990 which fits in just perfect. I don't have any pics of these but I'm sure you get the idea.
I got a set of zrx1200 shocks off of a buddy here locally that I am going to use. I had to make new shock mounts for the swingarm since it use to be a mono shock setup. I spent a little bit of time on the manual mill and got the mounts made up then welded on. I still need make the gussets on the bottom of the mounts since they stick over the swingarm quite a bit
Ignore the seat on there. I was just getting ideas.
I still need to figure out what I'm going to do about chain alignment. I think I'm going to find a 5/8" offset front sprocket and mill down the back of the Cush drive till it's exact
For the front end I'm going with a 02 gsxr 750 setup. I picked up the triple tree, forks and clip ons last week, I still need to find a wheel, calipers and axle.
I didn't really know what to do with the stem swap because the od of the kz stem was smaller than the od of the gsxr stem where it presses in. So the only idea I could think of was to turn down the od of the kz stem and make a collar the same dimensions of the gsxr's, press it on, then weld it and finally turn it down to the right dimensions to be pressed into the lower triple. I'm waiting on my kz650 steering stem bearings to come in so I can mount it all up.
Pics of the stem that I modified
Kz stem is on the left, this is after I made the spacer and pressed it on
Welded together
Turned down to the correct dimensions
And finally pressed in
I still need to drill out the top triple because the kz stem is to big to fit thru the hole of the gsxr's upper triple. I will do this tomorrow I think.
But that's about as far as I am for now. If you have any questions or concerns I'd be more than happy to hear them.
