Turbo kz650!! Part rat, part cafe, part... Peterbilt?!?

I've been a lurker for awhile and I'm getting to the point in my project where I'm spending almost as much time actually getting work done as I am standing around drinking beers and talking about getting work done! SO, I figured it was time to get a thread going. I picked up a 1977 kz650c1 last fall and began tearing down over the winter. This is how I got her- pretty much stock save for the paint, pod filters, kerker 4into1, and superbike bars.

My goal with the bike is to strip it down to a bare mechanical/industrial look (my favorite builders are the wrenchmonkees), while incorporating a turbo and as many parts from 18 wheelers as possible. My dad drove trucks and had a peterbilt my whole childhood, so there is no dearth of pete odds and ends around "the barn" (what my family calls my dads HUGE two tractor garage). Here's the turbo i will be using and how she sat around a month ago

Mmm, dieselpunk bike.

Going to keep an eye on this.

Thats just a little teaser of the progress thus far- I have since mated the exhaust up to the turbo and mounted it, and am currently working on mating the compressor side up to the intake via a homemade plenum. I'll have more updated pics soon, but for now I'll start back at the beginning and take stock of the progress ive made over the past 6 months, working on the bike whenever ive got a spare weekend home from college and a couple duckets to burn on parts.

Here are some pics of when i still had the bike up my apartment before the winter. I started pulling whatever I could apart with what limited tools/space i had. I pulled the seat, tank, rear fender/licence plate/tailight assembly, and eventually most of the electrics and the motor. I essentially got it down to a rolling chassis before I lugged the whole thing home in, no lie, the back of my hatchback! That's right folks, I fit an entire motorcycle in pieces into the back of a SAAB 9-3, that is the rolling chassis, the motor, and the rest in boxes. Theoretically, if you could lift it, you could fit an entire kz650 fully assembled into the back of one of those little turds. I had to see it to believe it myself, but unfortunately I didn't get a pic- it was night time. I might do it again, however, to go get stuff welded up, so I'll be sure to snap a few if I do. Here are a few pics of the teardown beginning last fall.

Catbird said:

Mmm, dieselpunk bike.

Going to keep an eye on this.

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HAHaha Yes!! Dieselpunk is the word I've been searching for- that's this bike to a T. That's an 18 wheeler fog lamp as a headlight, and here's a pic of my latest addition to project PeterBike- an AIRHORN!! that's right, I'm going to be that asshole

Some pics from over the winter as I started to cut off useless junk from the frame and chopped the seat area down short right behind the read clevis-overs.

this looks really interesting, I'm subscribed.

Spent most of the winter trying to get funds up- sold unneeded stock parts on eBay for a total of around $400. Not too shabby for a bike I paid $700 for. Stock junk paid for my turbo setup

Here's one look i was playing with, kind of cliche, but popular for a reason I guess. Love those cafe lines

Also toyed with cuttin her real short an stubby and not having a cowl at all

looking pretty neet. liking the headlingt

Think I'm going to go with a real shallow bench seat instead. Here's the bike with a seat pan I made, and a few pics of my favorite wrenchmonkees bike that I'll try an make my seat look somewhat like.

Got the creative juices flowing, messing around with using a spent fire extinguisher as a plenum for the intake manifold. Im thinking I can replace the extinguisher's gauge with a more accurate boost gauge that only goes up to a bar or 2 ;D I'll probly run less than a bar though, maybe 8 psi, nothing crazy

And if you ever run dangerously overpressure, just hit the spray handle.

I think that's about it as far as pictures and ideas at the moment. My phone sucks and converts all pic messages to slideshows so i cant put them on my computer, so the latest pics sent from my buddy's iphone look like crap. Probably because I used my computer's webcam to take a snapshot of my cellphone screen hahaha pretty low tech. I'll take good pics as soon as I can. If you can make it out you can see the exhaust fabbed up to the turbo (I chopped up my kerker exhaust! sinful, I know). I also drilled out the flange for the exhaust going out of the turbo this past weekend- The bigger of the two pipes is the main exhaust, and the smaller is the dump pipe for the wastegate she's gonna be a nasty bitch

i dont know if youre doing it for looks or what but there is absolutely zero performance gain piping your wastegate separately with an internal type gate and im thinking it may be much easier for you to fab an exhaust if you just buy a flange for your turbo and build your exhaust from there?

oh, and another thing, you may want to rethink the exhaust and bring it to the right side of the bike because it might be hard to get your kickstand down with the exhaust the way it is.

Catbird said:

And if you ever run dangerously overpressure, just hit the spray handle.

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Hahaha I'll keep that in mind. I might use the fire extinguisher as the pressure tank for the airhorn system intstead- then I could hit the spray handle to honk the horn!! hahaha either way I should work it in there that would be funny

forcefanajd said:

i dont know if youre doing it for looks or what but there is absolutely zero performance gain piping your wastegate separately with an internal type gate and im thinking it may be much easier for you to fab an exhaust if you just buy a flange for your turbo and build your exhaust from there?

oh, and another thing, you may want to rethink the exhaust and bring it to the right side of the bike because it might be hard to get your kickstand down with the exhaust the way it is.

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Thanks for the technical knowledge! yeah its mostly for looks.
Also the exhaust system IS on the right side, those pictures are both backwards- a product of my high tech way of getting them out of my messages folder on my phone haha

;D ok. in that case, well done. what are you planning to run for carbs?

(or carb if youre going draw through)

Yeah I'm doing a draw-through setup. The stock carbs are MIC 24s, so I figure one 44mm ought to breathe well enough for all of 'em. Picked up one on fleBay- it's off of some 3 cyclinder rotax snowmobile engine. Its a Mikuni vm series 44h, round slide. The engine its from was 2 stroke, but since it just mixes fuel and air it shouldn't matter, right? I hope it will work, but if not, at least it was cheap (like 25 bucks). I head the MIC HSR42's are the hot setup for turbo bikes but I can't afford one. The one in this picture is from google images but it looks about the same

Actually... a two stroke carb would probably be a better bet than a four stroke because of the turbo. The 44mm should be a good fit for the turbo application so long as you plan to keep it around 8 PSI or less.