I bought a 93 ZXR 750 a while back to restore and haven't done much to it until today and started stripping it down. I took the carbs off it and found play in the carb spindles... It's been a while since I played with carbs but I assume that the play from the first carb to the second isn't normal. Before I start to strip it down has anyone seen anything like this before? Thanks, Mark
How do you get on with the skylift? Been wanting one for ages. Thinking about getting rid of my superbike stand and taking the plunge even though I mostly just clean it. Looks like a good bit of kit to be fair
Awesome. Wish I’d had one years ago. Only have a small garage and in the past doing stuff like this would have taken it all up. With this you can spin it round to work on whatever but you like and then tuck it away at the end of the day.
My bank balance won’t be your friend. I was hoping you’d say it was crap. Now it’s jumped up the list of things I need to buy again
I got it like this... ...so it was already pretty non-standard. The bodywork is mostly not original and the paint doesn't look like the original. The frame has been sort of polished but whoever did it did a crap job and didn't remove anything so it sort of stops around the head stock as can be seen in the above photos. So, I didn't want to take it back to standard as I'm not a fan of the scribble line. I think the K1 and K2 look awesome but I'm not going to replicate that scheme as it'll look weird. So the plan is to polish the frame properly and if I like it keep it like that and if not get it resprayed kawasaki silver. I'll respray all the subframe bits and the swing arm arm. I know the swing arm isn't supposed to be silver but the original finish isn't very nice. The body work I got will be boxed up for anyone who wants to put it back on in the future. I'm going to buy a full set of racing fairings from superbike body work in 'ready to paint' with no holes for headlights. They look like this... ...and I'll get the single seat to match. I'll then get the bodywork painted pearlescent white, the same colour as on my toyota... ...but with the belly pan painted black and the wheels powder coated black. I think that this will be a satin finish black. The result should be a little like this I guess... Depending where the belly pan paint line ends up I may carry that up to the tail piece but we'll see when it's fitted to the bike. The only thing I'm not sure of at the moment is whether to bother with headlights. I don't want to fit the twin headlights as although I love them on the original bike, I don't think I want them on mine. If I fit one then it will be a small projector headlight like this... ...recessed in to the front roughly here... Anyway, that's the current plan... we'll see
Awesome man, I absolutely love build threads. Grateful that you'll be sharing this one with us! If you want some inspiration, this is, IMO, the king of all build threads, considering all the tiny details and home made parts... https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=74&t=1900843&i=0
So to solve the problem I started the thread with... I stripped the carbs apart from each other and it turns out that an end plate on one of the throttle shafts that was supposed to be a tight fit on to the shaft wasn't, causing the play. I ground off part of the end of the end plate to expose the join, held the join open as much as I could and then drilled a hole on the join. Then I hammered in a slightly larger drill piece to stake the join which removed all the play. I then used marine epoxy (doesn't shrink) and pushed it in the gaps left over and covered the stake. When it's dry I'll grind it flatter to clean it up and give room to fit against the next carb. I think that should fix it.
The epoxy sorted it and now there's no play. Just bought carb bottom end rebuild kits and new o-rings all round so they don't leak. Not sure if they were leaking but all the o-rings were deformed and cracks on many of them and the air tubes just fell out. As the o-rings were deformed I couldn't measure them properly so I bought OE Kawasaki o-rings. Needed 12, cost £32. Bargain.
It gets to the point with carb seals that are possibly 30 years old and nowadays depending on the brew in them being attacked by ethanol just to replace them and be done, it’s a job you want to do once and that’s it. I have been using Litetek kits for a number of years as they use a different formula for the float bowls etc, and it performs higher then OEM. Good work and planning so far, love these old Kwaks, real honest bombers, always enjoyed the ones I had, will be great to see where it ends up.
Not sure why I didn't do any on this bike last year but today I dropped the engine and cleaned most of the gunk off it of which there was an awful lot due to a couple of oil leaks from the cam cover gasket and the cam cover bolt seals... I may have another go at it next time but I could no longer feel my fingers so had to stop today. Next job is to replace the cam gasket and bolt seals and repaint some of the brackets that came off the engine. Then I'll strip the rest of the stuff off the frame and swing arm so I can inspect the bearings and so on and the polish the frame.
Have you thought of scotchbriting the frame, it will be hell of a lot easier to look after, I mirror polished everything on my exup years ago and it looked great at the time but what an absolute pain to keep it that way.
Motoforza do the projector headlight kits. https://www.motoforzafairings.com/installation-holders-for-projector/
Oh superb, thank you. I was going to fashion something up out of some plastic pipe... or something. I'll see what sort of finish scotchbrite gives, thanks for the suggestion.
Bit of an update... did the valve clearances and love the fact that you can push the rockers to one side on this bike so you don't have to remove the cams... Painted the cam cover and a few other covers to tidy the engine up a little. Replace the cam cover gasket, spark plug seals and cam cover bolt seals to solve the oil leak. Fitted pair valve eliminator plates... Stripped the frame down for painting and to renew the bearings... Swing arm sleeve is borked but fortunately it all came apart ok. Replacing it with a zx7r sleeve and the appropriate adapters. Threads on the pivot bolt aren't great either so replacing that... Shock doesn't look great so working out my options here...
Having spent a really bad tempered day with paint stripper... how did you get your frame looking as good as that?
I use scotchbrite wheels, they’re good in a drill but fantastic in a air die grinder, they don’t last the longest but very easy to use. https://www.thepolishingshop.co.uk/satin-wheels-pads-and-mops/satin-wheels-on-a-6mm-shank
If you’ve any really rough areas these wheels in a 4 inch grinder are fantastic and for flatting burrs etc. https://www.thepolishingshop.co.uk/...s/blaze-rapid-strip-discs-115mm-x-22mm-297000
