My Kwaka KZ400 Brat Build

[eden]

Hey KB readers and riders.

Just a quick introduction, i'm Eden, Rider of 5 years, owned 2 bikes, ridden ALOT more, motorcycle addict and avid lay mechanic.

I've finally decided to post my 1974 KZ400 rebuild. Been a lurker in these forums for a few years and havn't really found a reason to post or ask anything significant, but thought hell, it's about time!

It might also be a good way of asking some of you guys questions in regards of what to do, technicalities and where to go next.

So to get you up to speed.... rewind a few years to June 2011



It started when i accidentally chopped my index finger off whilst lubing my chain on my 1992 Suzuki GSF250 Bandit - a freak accident that left me unable to ride for at least a year, and kicking myself pretty hard.

Said lack of finger - Yummy.


So instead of wallowing in despair, and not being able to ride, i instead dreamed about having the chance to revive a dying motorcycle and give it a good help of brat style loving. While trawling through bikeexif.com, returnofthecaferacers.com,silodrome.com, dotheton.com, pipeburn.com and revivalcycles.com (all highly reccommended) my interest peaked and i found myself thinking about customising one of my own during the day and dreaming about it at night - absolutely hooked.

A couple of months later my father came home from work and broke the news to me. He had found a 1974 Kawasaki KZ400 Cafe Racer that a french guy names Francois wanted to get rid of. Instantly my ears perked up. Two days and $900.00 later, that beast was sitting in the driveway. And what a worn out, mistreated and under maintained beast it was...



The front brake was locked on and leaking fluid, the rear tyre looked like something akin to Burt Monroes nugget-filled cracked specialty. The electrics were as useful as colourful liquorice, and the battery was dead. It was leaking oil out of several places (god knows how many), every chrome surface had rust, the frame had been cut and severely weakened for aesthetic purposes, both fork seals were leaking all over the place. The seat was wooden and unpadded with cracked fibreglass tail mounted onto the back - if you were riding it for more than 30mins you would probably come off with a compacted spine. (Assuming the thing ran, that is).

Ok, ok, you get the idea. Long story short, it took about 600m of towing behind a car to get the damn thing even turning over by itself, and the amount of black smoke coming out the exhaust was deplorable. I guess it may have done the ton a long time ago, now it struggled over 80kph and was just a sick old commuter dressed up to look like something flash. Not much of a kwikasfucki...

And now the picture of the not so stoked me thinking about the amount of work needed to get this thing even legal..


Aaaaand me after deciding to take it for it's last cruise before the breakdown. In hindsight i now understand why my dad was so nervous about me driving it - it REALLY was a deathtrap.


Got any one interested to hear more?

Will post more if there's some interest.

[98tls]

So whats the plan and have to say it againFark that must of hurt.

[fridayflash]

ok....im following

[hayd3n]

no pull my finger jokes

[eden]

Being my first time working on a bike in some detail, i was a bit cavalier with pulling it apart - putting it lightly. At least i had the brains to label each part i took off and list it on a separate piece of paper - that somewhat helped later on.
The sad reality that i had no garage to work in made things a bit more complicated, but when someone's as excitable and enthusiastic as i am, nothing really can get in the way. It just meant i had to finish the portable parts before trying to do the big ones.


Here's something small to work on before i get a workshop! Pretty soon i realised small did not mean simple.


With the lurking thought "it's always harder to put it back together" hanging around behind my brain somewhere, i pulled the bike to pieces and it soon dawned on me that i was in for the long haul - seriously over the eyeballs in problems, parts, technical nightmares and with no expertise in sight i quickly found myself trawling through kz400.com for some form of solace. (If you have any KZ twin cylinder motorcycle, i would highly recommend this site for any tips - the forums aren't as cool as KB though) I soon found it in the form of a factory manual - lifesaver! It wasn't long before a Haynes Manual arrived from the Uk - which eventually guided me step by step how to everything i would need to know - which was alot!

Here's my step by step break down.

Suddenly it was looking a lot lighter... it seemed too easy. (Hindsights a wonderful thing ain't it?)


The parts flew off easy as!


Before night descended on me i had successfully pulled the bike apart to a point where i was starting to get nervous about what i had done. The reality that i had jumped into a pool that was well over my head had started to sink in, and i just gritted my teeth, closed my eyes and kept going. Why stop when you're on a roll?

Note... the new tire on the rear. That thing was a NEED.

[Fiddy40]

Good on you Eden, admire your courage mate and amazed you have a cupboard size to work in. Those of us that have done rebuilds etc know the feeling of bloody hell what have I done its a mix of fright and delight. It really is the very best way of knowing what is what and knowing exactly what you have done. AND very rewarding give yourself a pat on the back mate.

[Drew]

My only advice, is not to put off the fiddly jobs that need doing. They look hard and often you don't know where to begin, but trust me when I say it is those jobs that yield greatly in respect to the finished product.

A good example is wires too long. Take to them with sidecutters, a soldering iron and some heat shrink rather than coiling them up.

[eden]

And of course My inspiration for this project...






I know, i know. This last one is a Honda CX500.. but it's lines are amazing. Big ups to David Mucci for helping me through a few tough ideas and concepts on instagram. He's a really nice guy, on to it too.

[eden]

Good on you Eden, admire your courage mate and amazed you have a cupboard size to work in. Those of us that have done rebuilds etc know the feeling of bloody hell what have I done its a mix of fright and delight. It really is the very best way of knowing what is what and knowing exactly what you have done. AND very rewarding give yourself a pat on the back mate.

Thanks mate, it really is just a case of staying tenacious and pushing through every situation. Digging deep, learning more, finding enthusiasm, forever looking for inspiration - and that's just the mechanical and customisation side of the job!

The real guts of a bike rebuild aren't the style and technical bits, but the soul behind the machine you're building. The Deus Ex Machina - mind behind the machine. That is what keeps the build going regardless of your situations and lack of funding - the last thing i would ever want for my beautiful kwaka is it sold on tardme half finished with a box of parts.

Hell, when a motorcycle chain chops off your finger, best way to prove that it didn't break you is to get even closer to the animal that hurt you in the first place.. never give up - that's how things get done and good stories are made. Best lesson i've ever learnt and another reason why i'll never give up motorcycling!

[eden]

It wasn't long before a long 'to do' list started to amass, creating what would easily be described as a panic attack and pity party.

When i tried to prioritise the list, i also found that each thing to do had another 15 steps within it to complete each job. GREAT. First off? --:

The Carburettor.

I found some decent exploded diagrams and a really good description on how to break down the carburettor after taking it off the bike. Proceeded to do so.

First up, i took it apart and put it back together about 3 times to memorise the carbs layout - then proceeded to clean it out, document which parts were stuffed, found their part numbers and ordered a backlog of rubber and brass bits and pieces to make the little bugger brand new.

Problems found

• All the jets were old and stuffed, way too small for the amount of air flow the engine had.
• All the rubber seals were cracked or disintegrated.
• The choke plungers were seized and locked in place by corrosion.
• The float bowl leaked like a sieve

Luckily ebay could fix most of these problems. After a few hours of research and planning i found some parts that fit the description on ebay and ordered them!. Unfortunately they were coming from either Australia or the States, so i had to wait for WEEKS. I also at this time preempted the need to regasket the engine, so bought a full gasket set from the ebay shop disastermotors - who were super helpful and really looked after me.

I used 6sigma for my jet kit because after having a look i considered my filters to be high flow (My new ones definately are) and my exhaust to be holy and loud enough to also be high flow - so jetted it to specification. - I can't remember the size of the jets off the top of the head, but i did shim the needle with a nylon spacer to increase fuel flow at lower rpms - seeing as i still havn't got the bike running yet, i'm still yet to see how good this kit actually worked.

Next was to remedy the seized choke plungers.
A good thing about discovering these were stuck - it partly explained why it was so damn hard to start when i first got the bike!
But after a closer inspection and trying a few different methods to remove the plungers i found that they were well and truly stuck - both of them.
I heated the casing, i soaked them in WD40 and CRC for days on end, i even used alternative methods of Coca-cola and others to eat through the corrosion.

Unfortunately i eventually had to take the carburettors to Weber Specialties in Silverdale north of Auckland to get them milled out by Murray who did a stellar job! (He also later helped me out with another technical issue - this guy is old school and seriously knowledgable!)

With the old choke plungers drilled out, and new ones ordered the whole choke plunger saga was now coming to an end... this took a total of 3 months inbetween uni and work. Absolutely drove me insane! At least i know the carburettors are now in perfect working order and can pull them apart at a moments notice to fix them whenever i see fit . Hooray for doing your own mechanical!

Here's a few pics of the dumb things - non during break down unfortunately. Most of these are older pictures before being completely fixed.

[eden]

The carburettor was getting sorted at Weber Specialists, and the list of things that needed doing weren't going away. So i decided to hook into the engine and try make a little bit of ground.

Enter my state of the art workshop and behold...


It was one of those days... first job? Empty the engine of oil. Easy, right? Immediately... whoopdedoo.. somehow the sump plug had seized on. I spent the most of the next 1.5 hours racking my brain, screaming and jumping up and down like a monkey at this bloody sump plug that wouldn't move. I didn't know, but here i was scratching my head about to learn an important life lesson in how to approach problems... because of this motorcycle. Robert Pirsig has put it perfectly..

"This is the zero moment of consciousness. Stuck. No answer. Honked. Kaput. It's a miserable experience emotionally. You're losing time. You're incompetent. You don't know what you're doing. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take the machine to a real mechanic who knows how to figure these things out.

It's normal at this point for the fear-anger syndrome to take over and make you want to hammer on that side plate with a chisel, to pound it off with a sledge if necessary. You think about it, and the more you think about it the more you're inclined to take the whole machine to a high bridge and drop it off. It's just outrageous that a tiny little slot of a screw can defeat you so totally.

What you're up against is the great unknown, the void of all Western thought. You need some ideas, some hypotheses. Traditional scientific method, unfortunately, has never quite gotten around to say exactly where to pick up more of these hypotheses. Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20-20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go, unless where you ought to go is a continuation of where you were going in the past. Creativity, originality, inventiveness, intuition, imagination..."unstuckness," in other words...are completely outside [scientific methods'] domain." Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

I rounded the bolt almost to a circle, chiselled at it with a cold chisel, drilled through it and then proceeded to break two screw driver handles trying to turn it with them like a bench mounted vicegrip. WD40? Fail. Heating then hitting the plug straight on with a hammer or rubber mallet to break the seal? Fail. I only wish i had read "Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance" earlier! I would have at least walked away, calmed down and come back with some sort of intuitive idea or rational mind frame.. Unfortunately because of this steep learning curve... all that's left of my sump plug is a mangled piece of metal that still does the job perfectly, however not using any specific tool...

I would replace the sump plug for something that works in a more conventional manner, more practical.. more 'engineer minded' shall we say.. but the truth is that i'm not that kind of person. I'm not 'that kind' of thinker, and the more i thought about this beat up little mound of metal with hole drilled through it... the more i realised that not only did it work just fine to fulfil its purpose, but it represented my personal lesson on what really is the most important thing when things go wrong. Not fixing the problem.. that's more part of the motion... but approaching mechanical and even larger life issues with the right mindset. If i had taken my time, stayed relaxed and not lost control.. i probably would have saved that little metal lug from mutilation.

I guess i was starting to figure out what the hell i was doing with this motorcycle in the first place. Anyone can work on a bike. Every project has to have an end, a reason.. If the project doesn't have an end other than completion itself, or the pay packet when it's done, the fulfilment isn't there anymore and it just becomes a task of manual labour. Some of you might have 'being cool' as that end, or 'speed', or even technical or aesthetic 'excellence' for your end goal. My end was to learn, explore, not only the motorcycle but my inner workings when i'm pushed into the uncomfortable zone. The soul of the Kwaka was it's journey, my journey and the journey's it was going to go on, even after being completed - not beauty or being mechanically perfect.

In the same way that the shitty little sump plug represented more than a mangled piece of metal, the Kwaka KZ400 was going to represent much much more than just a cool custom motorcycle.

Interesting how a motorcycle can help you learn so much about yourself.

Anyway...

Long story short - I emptied the engine of oil and amassed the appropriate tools to remove it.

A skateboard, a jack and my bare hands.


Tadaaa!


Please note...Chain removed from sprocket without incident - (the engine wasn't running) - phobia addressed successfully.



Now is probably a good time to give you a small list of things which i found wrong with the motorcycle so far.. oh god.

1. Both front fork seals were weeping
2. The steering housing bearings had NO grease on them
3. The frame had been compromised and cut - significantly reducing its rigidity
4. The frame was also an ugly matt black
5. The battery was too small to run the starter motor
6. The engine was leaking significant amounts of oil down the front of it while running
7. The engine was running lean
8. The exhaust had some serious rust holes in it (you could hear it across the whole valley)
9. The seat was damn uncomfortable
10. The frame had been detabbed (I wanted to be able to hold a passenger)
11. Front brake was constantly leaking out of the bleed nipple, and out of the brake lever
12. The petcock was seriously leaky - and the petcock fuel filter didnt exist
13. Wiring loom was all shot to shit - seriously a fire hazard
14. The clutch cable didn't work properly.. kinky!
15. And worst of the lot…. its registration had lapsed.

[eden]

My only advice, is not to put off the fiddly jobs that need doing. They look hard and often you don't know where to begin, but trust me when I say it is those jobs that yield greatly in respect to the finished product.

A good example is wires too long. Take to them with sidecutters, a soldering iron and some heat shrink rather than coiling them up.

Thanks Drew, it's a good bit of advice. I'm not sure if you've noticed but this is more of a story telling of my bike building experience, not a day by day account of what i've done.

At the moment i'm about to install an electronic ignition and some cool motogadget gears to make it electrically sound. Heard of motogadget M-Unit V.2? Google that shit.

[the oldstuff]

Keep up the good work there. kz400.com is definately helpful and a great source of inspiration. I have two 440s, one a flat track bike (now bent after incident with concrete wall at Ashburton Speedway) and another cafe project. I may have some usefull parts if you need anything let me know.

[nizzalotti]

Keep up the good work there. kz400.com is definately helpful and a great source of inspiration. I have two 440s, one a flat track bike (now bent after incident with concrete wall at Ashburton Speedway) and another cafe project. I may have some usefull parts if you need anything let me know.

I also have Kz400 (79) ... Great thread so far Eden!!

Mine has sat for a year or so after i think i leaned it out too much after fitting pod filters without re-jetting (duh) ... think i have burnt a hole in one of the pistons ... I've just tidied some room in my garage and will start pulling her apart this week. Planning on re-assembling as a brat also for round town use as its a bit small for hi-way use for me (100kg lad). Really like the look of the Diabalo kz you posted , have been hunting for a reasonably priced set of firestone vintage tyres .. 18x4.50 rear and 18x4.00 front.

Anyone have spare good engine around (440cc even?) or internal parts ... otherwise its ebay time im picking.

keep up the good work.

[eden]

This beast is still being refurbished (albeit a bit slowly). Alot has been completed since my last post (unremarkably).
Not too much currently happening, it's in a shop in Auckland being worked on by possibly the coolest mechanic ever while i twiddle my thumbs in wellington. Updates (including photos) coming very soon.