'81 kz440: brat cafe build

Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

i have a problem. i tried to start the bike this week and i'm getting NOTHING! won't turn over, no lights, no nothing. i'm certain i put all the wires back where they were supposed to go after i pulled/painted/reinstalled my engine, my battery is charged, and all my fuses are fine, none blown. i can't understand why absolutely nothing works. i don't know electrical systems very well, so if anyone could lead me through some steps to diagnose this problem, i would be eternally grateful!
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

got the bike running today! i got my brief electrical scare sorted out and after a lot of tries, she finally kicked over! thanks to those of you who offered help and suggestions. here's a video, kinda dark in the garage tonight but at least you can hear the bike running. we figured out the oil leak you can hear my wife and i talking about in the vid. turns out i forgot to replace the crush washers at the banjo bolts on the oil feed line, so doing that should fix up the leaking. i love the sound of the exhaust, super stoked on it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5gAvlnU07w
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

What was the electrical problem and how did you fix it??? I am stuck in the same problem right now. No power at all.
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

i found a ground wire that had come undone from somewhere. i just connected it to the negative battery terminal and all is good now! definitely get a multimeter. that was suggested to me, but luckily i didn't so much as get it out of it's box before i noticed that ground wire hanging out.
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

I LOVE that exhaust! Somebody's gotta start making 'em and selling 'em. Maybe all scrambler pipes for all sorts of bikes, it'd be a good business. Anyway, please post anything you find as to burn risks for passengers etc. I wanna do one up just like that, but the bike is for my teen daughter first of all, and she'll very likely have her "cycle bitch" on the back seat and all of that, so I just don't wanna burn anybody. So I'm thinking of heavy duty heat shields or maybe routing the pipes very differently, tough to say. I'd like to do a twin pipe thing, just over the engine cases, maybe then with a bash plate on the bottom. Going with both sixteen inch wheels, got a GT750J drum hub for it, Borrani 3x16" front rim for it - it looks cool no room for spokes ha ha, if it were a 10" or 12" tire you could just stick it on the drum ... which sounds even better than this wheel actually ha ha. But yeah, Maxi-scooter tires, low profile, 110/70 and 120-130/70 so even lower in the back end too, which means I really wanna clean up the lower sides to help with clearance etc. Maybe one pipe down the center, I dunno.... Ha anybody ever figured out how to do an oil cooler on these bikes? There's such a great place for one, between the down-tubes, a long vertical oil cooler. I'm sure people would say I don't need it, but I've actually had an old motor burn up over-heated on the high-way. I don't want that happening again. I can see the intake at the sump all of the Kawi bikes use a long tube to the oil pump intake. Maybe that can be adapted? Or maybe some kind of thing can be modded, like the oil filter cover etc. I wouldn't wanna take it off the line that goes to the head, but maybe there's something can be done to route it off the oil pump somehow. Oh, and the oil pumps, I wonder if there's a bigger bike's oil pump that would fit? Maybe a different part inside with some shimming, to put a bigger rotor inside the pump? I guess I should tear one apart, but I just thought I should look around for a tried and true solution from out there in the KZ world. I'm a DOHC Honda guy, even though I've had this bike for longer. It's just sat in storage, and I have always planned to fix it but put it off and put it off. Now I'm in a hurry. Ha ha. But, I've got two engines, and I'm not averse to buying a third for a good rebuild. Big ideas about a kick start on a 440, kick start only strip off some weight, etc etc etc....
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

ABS drum for seat pan is an awesome tip! Here I've gone with fibreglas time and time again. But hey, are you sure you don't mean POLYETHYLENE? If you DO mean ABS, you should be able to glue it with pipe cement from the hardware store. My DOHC Honda seat-pan I have made a replacement from Bondo as the original - it's DELRIN, which is Nylon with glass fibres in it. Nylon you can heat weld, but not with the glass strands, it creates weak spots where the strands don't go back in. I've tried it. But yeah, if you do indeed have ABS you should be able to heat it in the oven to get the curl out - actually that'd work better on the polyethylene, only they'll both smell that's for sure. I figure fibreglas might just work fine with the staples anyway, what with the complex shapes I wanna make. Still, you get top points for recycling, I just LOVE that kinda thing. It's just that ... 50 gal barrels are such a good thing for rain-water catchment, "grey-water" recycling into the garden, etc etc - I don't think I'll cut up any of my own. I was a really hard-core aquarium geek for a long time, import warehouse staff to gov't lab worker, I did a LOT of fish-geek stuff, and I was a hard-core gardener too - I just can't wrap my head around not hanging onto a good barrel. Oh, and if you're into Zombie Survivalism too, that's your water resovoir VERY important! I always wanted to plumb one in direct to my toilet, to fill up the tank with every flush, plumbed such that the fresh line water going through the barrel refreshes it. Then, in event of water supply failure, you've got a barrel - maybe barrelS - of fresh water, or pretty damned fresh, seeing as you flush often enough to recirculate and replace it. It could just go on the supply line straight out of the wall, then it would replace with ALL of the water going into your house. At which point, you could put several of 'em in line, due to the overall larger rate of replenishment. Put a couple good ones in a crawl space like that and hell, you could have that and your cases of baked beans, just hole up with your ammunition and sip away on your barrels of water - then there's no panic where you fill your tub and drink traces of shampoo and exfoliated skin, etc etc etc. Far better to have that already done, and to be able to stress about the PROPER things in event of an emergency. Fish tanks make a great water reserve, but without recirculation they can foul pretty quickly. Anyway, obviously I've just "outed" myself as a nut-job. But hell, I live in Mormon territory here in Southern Alberta. Living here as a kid, ALL of the kids I played with had huge truck sized stacks of cans in their basements -and being a really poor kid (no exaggeration, lived in a car briefly then moved into a house with fire damage and black walls, nothing but peaches and creme flavoured instant oatmeal for two weeks straight, etc etc) I think that's the one thing that gave me the impression that those friends came from wealthy families, 'cause they had FOOD. Ha ha ha. They all had guns too, that's what made me jealous, what with my hippie pacifist feminist matriarch at home I was lucky to get a sling-shot. Ha ha ha. Still, when everybody in your class ... I almost said neighborhood but the neighborhood was just like my place - when all of your classmates are from survivalist nut-job families it rubs off in strange ways. Or maybe it was their religious intolerance and conservative extremism that made me feel like boarding up the house and protecting it with a gun.... Whatever. Just don't wreck your barrels people! I'd give you top points if you could make it out of used drinking water bottles - but only if you didn't BUY the stupid things in the first place ha ha - maybe using a seat foam made up of chopped up kids' stuffie toys that were made from recycled pop bottles? I'm gonna use wheel-chair cushions, they make 'em out of the same blue gel as Dr Scholl's shoe insoles. Should feel good on the hiney. I also thought about silicone breast implants, or better still silicone BUTT implants. I mean, on my BIKE SEAT ha ha NOT on my BODY - I wanna go with the low profile slim-line seat and everything, but I want OEM seat covers - not neccessarily from the exact same bike - same make at least - but yeah, I also want the good cushioning. The yellow foam is old school. They don't make children's mattresses out of that stuff anymore. The nice thing about having a crappy old used one was that you could tear holes in it to make terrain for your plastic army men, trenches and shit. Yeah, anyway I've thought about roll up camping mattresses, yoga foam blocks, etc etc - but I think the gel stuff is the best idea so far. And they make auto seat cushions using knock-off versions of the same stuff. I bought some clearance items at Crappy Tire (oh if you don't live in Canada that means "Canadian Tire") with black waffle pattern gel, I'm gonna try 'em out on the seats, and if they work out great but I think I'll seek out some solid block type gel for wheel-chairs. What would be nice, in the summer, a zipper around the seat and you could slip in a pad from the freezer or fridge. In spring/falll - winter for you Southern folk, some kind barley neck bag thing that you could stick in the nuker. Conversely, just in case of opportunity to wire it into the bike down the road, it might be nice to put some kinda heater into the seat cushioning, built in. Yanno?

-S.
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

WALL_OF_TEXT.jpg


In other news...excellent work, the bike sounds great!
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

I am having such a difficult time wrapping my head around how your mono shock set up works, is that bracket the shock is attached to at the bottom attached to the swing arm? any close up pictures? curiosity is killing me


great work btw! its an amazing build
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

RedBullEnema said:
In other news...excellent work, the bike sounds great!

haha, thanks! i looked at those prior two posts first thing this morning and they made my head hurt, haha. hey, whatever picture you tried to post didn't show up, only saw a red "X."

.Spindat. said:
I am having such a difficult time wrapping my head around how your mono shock set up works, is that bracket the shock is attached to at the bottom attached to the swing arm? any close up pictures? curiosity is killing me


great work btw! its an amazing build

i'll get you some pics! you're just interested in how it attatches at the bottom, correct? it's off a 2010 ninja 250ex, and it's got a couple dog bone linkages, but i'll try to snap a few shots of it for you. i know what it's like to be curious and need answers, my nickname was curious george as a kid, haha :) thanks to the props!
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

now i can see the pic, it made me laugh :) i'm gonna get those pics for you soon .spindat. got a lot done this weekend. dropped to one rotor/caliper up front cause i didn't need all that stop power for a lil 440. left side now looks pretty cool all opened up on the front wheel with no rotor. fit a new tank, it looks awesome. it's off an old xl350. got my chain on, clutch cable back in place, clutch cover back on. also got the rear brake caliper on, but it's gonna be some work figuring how to get my stock brake pedal to engage the master cylinder. wish i could justify spending the money on some rearsets, ha. i'll have pics up soon. g'night!
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

so i bled my front brake today and have a slight problem. i have a nice stiff lever pull, however, when i pull it, it does not spring back into place. any ideas why that might be? the calipers disengage when i let go of the lever, so it's not the pistons sticking or anything. maybe a weak return spring in the lever? any help is appreciated!

i just have to de-rust-ify the inside of my new tank and this thing will be ready to ride! as long as no unforeseen problems arise, that is. i tried the electrolysis method with a 10 amp charger, but can't seem to get any results. i am sure my sacrificial anode is not touching the tank anywhere, so it's not grounding out. however, after 24 hrs, it did not collect any rust! do i need more sodium hydroxide? i mixed one tablespoon with each gallon of water i put in the tank. i'm stumped as to why it's not working.
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

new tank for this steed...

404649275.jpg


tried the 'ol handfuls of screws/nuts/bolts in the tank trick. wrapped it in a blanket, threw it in the dryer with a few other thick blankets around it, and 45 mins later, it's looking a lot less rusty inside. still some work to do, though.
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

Ahhhhhhhhhhh this is KILLER!! This is the same exhaust I want for my KZ. I just havent gotten around to fabbing it up yet. What did you do with your battery?
 
Re: '81 kz440: bobber --> cafe

Looking good. Diggin the tank. I like the exhaust but your going to burn you leg off unless you got nice heat shield. My scrambler pipes get nice and hot and they have a heat shield. Not a big deal, but you'd never want to wear shorts.
 
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