2024-01-19 Hints and Tips from Fart Smellers

 From kz1300.com

Everything about circlips is determined by the shaft diameter the circlip is being installed on.
The shaft diameter of the water pump at the impeller is 11mm.
Referring to the chart we need a D1400-11 circlip
The free inside diameter of that circlip is 10.2mm
The groove diameter is suppose to be 10.5mm
the thickness of the circlip is 1mm
The groove width is supposed to be 1.10mm

This is where things got interesting.
I measured the groove diameter of my shaft at 10.3mm when it should be 10.5mm The groove was .2mm undersized
I measured the free inside diameter of the circlip at 10mm and it should be 10.2mm The circlip is .2mm undersized as well.
Bottom line- the circlip available from Zed Parts is a perfect fit for the water pump shaft even though it is not a standard spec.
If you spring a 10mm circlip on to a 10.3mm groove ( a difference of .3mm diameter), the ears of the circlip will open up by (diameter difference x π) = .3 x 3.14 = .94mm (.037")
If the free space between the ears was .015" and we add .037" we end up with a gap between the ears of .052" (1.3mm) and that's measurable. So you could measure that gap and know for sure that the clip is on properly.

One other thing I should mention is that the Stainless steel circlips are softer than a spring steel circlip and they don't like being yielded i.e. opened up so much that they won't return to original diameter. A standard circlip will be more apt to return to size if opened up more so than the Stainless steel circlips. In order to do it properly, I would suggest having a brand new set of circlip plier tips on your circlip pliers that fit the holes of the circlip being installed so you don't have to fight the circlip when installing.

And that's all I got to say about that and THAT should make everyone happy

From KZ1300.com

Buna N is probably the most common rubber used for a lot of applications but there are a few limitations. 70% of what you'll probably need an o ring for can be done with Buna N so having the o ring kit is a good thing if you need static seals. If the o ring is being used in a dynamic application, you'll have to find a replacement manufactured o ring. The Superglue joint won't last in a dynamic application.


If you haven't seen an o ring compatibility chart, you should be aware of it. I reference them all the time.

follow this link to see why.   All O Rings compatibility chart  

As an example= an  o ring choice for Engine Oil is not a good o ring for eythelene glycol and this might explain why there's 2 o rings on the bottom of the cylinder sleeve in the cylinder block and yet, the gasket sets most have bought aftermarket have the o rings for the liners and the top o ring is silicone based (red) and the bottom o rings are something else (black)  but there's not 2 separate bags of o rings to suggest a top and bottom o ring for the lower o rings. Leaves me with questions .    ?????

From kz1300.com

Just working on cleaning up the cylinder block before reinstalling the cylinder liners. I don't know if anyone is interested in how I clean up gasket surfaces, but I'll go through my process and you'll see why in the pics.
First, I'll scrape off the remaining gaskets with an Ex-Acto knife.
Second, taking a smooth flat file single cut and large enough to span the entire face, clean off the remaining spots of gasket material.
Third wrap the file with 400 wet dry paper and go over the gasket surface and clean up to clean bare metal. I do this with a cross hatch pattern being careful not to remove any base metal if I can.
 

From this appearance after using the Ex-Acto knife to

 

this which is what I expect a clean gasket surface to look like.

 

this is a smooth single cut 12" lathe file and a piece of 400 grit wet / dry paper

 

and finally, you can see 2 spots on the front side of the cylinder in front of #3 and #4 cylinder with gasket / gasket sealer still there. using a straight edge, I found these 2 divots and without measuring, I would guess they are .002 - .003" deep. In this case, after the liners are installed, I'll have to send the block out and have this surface machined flat because the liners will likely not be on the same plane as the block deck . Had I come across this without removing the liners, I still would have had the block decked. These imperfections could lead to to an antifreeze leak. Don't think that gasket sealer will seal stuff like this. It might depending on what sealer you choose or it may not. Why take a chance. You have to realize that the coolant passages are subject to coolant pressure and depending on the pound pressure of your rad cap, the coolant pressure could be 8-12 lbs. 

From kz1300.com

Just because it's winter in Canada, doesn't mean that we don't go outside and use the BBQ.

Today we are cooking a cylinder block
Set BBQ temperature @ 300-350 Deg. F
Place cylinder on a piece of 2 x 4
Cook for 30-40 minutes
Turn cylinder block over onto a piece of plywood, top side down  and allow cylinder liner to hang over the end
Place a piece of 2 x 4 on top of the liner and hammer out with a 12 oz. hammer. 10-12 good solid smacks.
Once the liner is flush with the bottom of the cylinder block, grab the cylinder liner from the top and twist / turn it out of the block.
Repeat

Bob's your uncle , Mary's your aunt

 

Temp set at 300F

 

Set up in BBQ for heating

 

All done. 1 Hour later. 
allow to cool before bringing inside, 1/2 hour.

From Kz1300.com

So, here's where I'm at. Pulled the cylinder liners out of the cylinder block by putting the cylinder block on the BBQ @ 350F for 45 minutes. Knocked out the liners with a block of wood and small hammer. In the process of looking at replacing the liners with custom liners to accommodate KZ750 (66 mm)  pistons. In the meantime, I've cleaned up 5 of the 6 stock liners and they could be reused if the cost of the custom liners ends up being ridiculous.
 

Bare cylinder block without liners. Note that on cylinders 1,2,3,4 the brown grunge indicating that the upper o ring had failed allowing coolant to leak in to the area around the cylinder sleeve upper flange, yet this engine was not torn down for a leak at the head gasket, so this confirms to me that if I were to go to custom sleeves, I could get away with no o rings at the top of the liner. This practice is similar to what happens when you install Darton Sleeves in most V8 engines.

 

Cylinder 3 & 4 were the worst for leakage as noted by the build up of grunge

 

5of the 6 cylinder liners cleaned up and ready for reinstallation if I don't go with custom sleeves.

From kz1300.com

An interesting point to consider.
If I planned on racing this bike and planned on maximum output for sustained time periods, yes, I would have to consider upgrading the colling system, but if I use it like a normal bike with short bursts of WHOOPEE then i would expect the stock rad to handle the heat load. I have upgraded the rad fan to a 7 blade fan and I feel that the airflow is probably 30- 40 % more than the 4 blade fan was.

I've also decided to internally coat the exhaust system to keep the heat down at the front of the bike rather than letting all those 6 downpipes expose the front of the engine to heat from the headers. if I had the original stock double wall exhaust, I probably wouldn't go to this trouble but the DG system is a single wall and there's just too much info on this site about high temps frying the ignition coils and hot oil temps in the engine oil. The stock exhaust surrounds the oil pan. Did they not think that heat from the exhaust wouldn't heat up the oil pan??? 

I've also got Cerakote to ceramic coat the pistons, the combustion chamber and the exhaust ports. that should help contain the heat, reducing the heat to the cylinder head reducing the load on the cooling system. Cerakote on the pistons should reduce the heat absorbed by the piston and reduce the heat soaked up by the oil on the bottom side of the piston. Cerakote in the exhaust ports should help contain the heat in the port until it gets to the header and reduce the heat transferred to the cylinder head at the exhaust port.
 

So why would I do all this?? I do a lot of research on high performance engines and I've always wanted to try all the different strategies to see what I can do with the information and my skills just for shits and giggles. It's all fun to me.

From kz1300.com

I visited 5 machine shops in the past couple of days looking for a shop that could deck my block and possibly plateau hone the cylinders. 4 of the shops had antique equipment and were putting out work. 1 shop, had a Sunnen precision hone ( an older elbow stroker hone) and I talked to the owner about honing. He says he does plateau honing on his High Performance Engines he builds for drag racing. I asked him if he started with 120 grit and then followed up with 400 or 500 grit. No he says. I bore to within .005" then hone to within .003" with 230 grit and finish with 500 grit to finished size. Then he shows me a 500 cubic inch engine he just finished and the bores are as smooth as a baby's ass. No RvK grooves to hold oil at all and he thinks he's done a good job. A proper plateau hone job will hone to size with 120 grit and then follw up with 10-20 strokes at 400-500 grit, taking suface measurements to confirm the final finish. RvK of 60-70, RK of 40 and RpK of 30-40 would be a good goal to achieve. Taking out the last .003" with a 500 grit stone and all you've done is removed all of the oil retention valleys. You may as well piss your brand new rings away. No oil retention valleys and you'll overheat the rings. 
He has the equipment to measure surface finish which measures RK- average surface finish, RpK which measures the peaks above average and RvK which measures the valleys below the RK average. He also tells me that he uses Total Seal rings on all of his performance engines and he hones to their spec requirements, but I can't believe what he showed me and I'm to believe that he does good work ???
Hence why I bought a new hone. I wish people that offer services kept up with the technologies. I try to but bear in mind that I spend my time researching what I can on Google and not taking formal training courses, so I know more than most, but I'm far from an expert.

The KZ650 pistons are identical to the KZ1300 pistons in all respects, including bore diameter. (62mm)
The KZ750 spectre pistons are identical in all respects except are 66mm in diameter. Interesting note that there are an addition 6 oil drain back holes below the oil scraper ring plus the same 6 holes behind the oil scraper ring
All 3 pistons, 62mm KZ1300, the KZ650 and the KZ750 pistons all use the 15mm wrist pin.

  From kz1300.com

You can see in the picture where I used 2 wrist pins and inserted in the 3 pistons in order to compare the crowns of the 3 pistons for height and curvature. The valve pockets are really close and I suspect the only way to determine use of a different piston would be to assemble the engine and do a clay impression between the valves and the piston crown to determine if some minor machining of the piston crown needed to be done

From Kz1300.com

Some "High Temperature Paints" have ingredients to dissipate heat and some have ingredients to contain heat. Anything listed as an engine enamel will have properties to dissipate heat.

I've been doing a fair bit of research on "coatings" at  Cerrakote  and if you follow the "Shop" tab, then "Coatings", then go down the left side, they have a tab called "Special Attributes". You'll find coatings with either high thermal emissivity (the ability to give off heat), or low emissivity (the ability to contain heat)

KawaBCN, You have selected a high temp paint that has the ability to withstand 690 deg C. and that's in the range of exhaust header paint and I wonder if it's able to dissipate heat like what you want. You need a paint that will dissipate heat from the crankcase because there's no oiler  to cool the oil

From kz1300.com

While I had the carbs off, I swapped in the manual adjuster. I would like to say first that I quickly found out that moving the o-ring seal back out of contact improved the "feel" by eliminating the majority of friction in the assembly. All you have to do (BEFORE you install the tensioner) is to turn in the bolt by hand with the lock-nut backed off. This will slide the o-ring clear of the body of the tensioner. Once it's clear, you can gently slide it farther out of the way. Try to avoid cutting the o-ring on the bolt threads. A shot of WD-40 will help.

Once I could feel what I was doing, I turned in the bolt using fingers only. It felt just like you would expect for a system using a silicone/rubber tension roller. That is, no clear "tight point," but just a smooth increase in the effort required to turn in the tensioner bolt. I settled for turning in the bolt until I felt first contact, then just a bit more, perhaps 1/4 turn. I then tightened the locknut. I figure this will give a slight preload on the tension roller, without crushing it so much that it wears out prematurely. I'll recheck the tension after I run the engine in a bit.

Speaking of wear on the tension wheel, does anybody have a gut feel for how many mile/years the roller would be expected to last in the real world? I have no reason to believe the one I've got is not the original, which would put it at 5600 miles and thirty-eight years. I haven't looked in the Service Manual yet.

From Kz1300.com

Recently, I started a topic called “Cylinder Sleeve Removal / Installation” to provide an instruction for doing the job. Upon removing the cylinder sleeves, I noted that there was significant build up of lime like deposits and under the deposits was significant rusting. Both the scaling and rust build up was easily removed from the surface of the main portion of the sleeve, but I also found minor porosity at the o ring sealing areas of the sleeve.

 

Picture of a removed sleeve as found

The interior of the cylinder block was found in excellent condition and needed nothing more than a reasonable cleaning especially in the o ring sealing areas primarily due to a build up of some kind of sealing goop that Kawasaki used during the installation of the sleeves into the aluminum block. My concern is based on the scale build up and rusting of the sleeves. Why was the rest of the coolant system in good state of repair and the sleeves showing significant corrosion? I went back to the Factory Service Manual to see if there was a spec on the coolant and found it on page 203 of the manual.

 

 Kawasaki calls for a “coolant containing corrosion inhibitors made specifically for aluminum engines and radiators” and this is where I feel Kawasaki missed the boat. When Kawasaki design built the KZ1300, Z1300 and the ZN1300, they opted to build the cylinder block with a wet sleeve design. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first and only use of the wet sleeves in any of their engines. Most aluminum cylinder blocks with cylinder liners are cast in place liners, meaning that the aluminum block is cast around a cylinder liner and therefore the aluminum bonds to the liner and shields the liner from the coolant in a water cooled engine.

 Wet Sleeved engines are typically industrial diesel engines and also larger diesel engines found in semi -trucks. The purpose was to provide better cooling of high horsepower engines and also the ability to rebuild an engine block by replacing the cylinder sleeves and pistons instead of boring out the cylinders and using oversized pistons.

One of the problems with wet sleeves was pitting corrosion on the exterior of the sleeve on the thrust side of the sleeve. Investigations determined that during the combustion process, the sleeve vibrated at a frequency very similar to what happens in an ultrasonic cleaner and the coolant surrounding the sleeve acted like the fluid in an ultrasonic cleaner causing cavitation bubbles to form and collapse on the liner, eroding the surface of the liner. Eventually, pit corrosion would turn into pinholes and migrate through the liner, causing a coolant leak into the cylinder as evidenced by white smoke.

That was the problem that needed to be addressed. There are a couple of ways to address the corrosion issue, one being an anti-corrosion coating on the exterior of the sleeve. Darton Sleeves are a prominent manufacturer of wet sleeves for converting engine blocks with cast in liners to a wet sleeve block primarily for racing engines. Their Modular Integrated Deck (MID) sleeves have a Phosphate coating applied to the exterior of the sleeve to combat corrosion. Darton also recommends using Evans coolant but do not specifically tell you which coolant Evans produces to use. Evans coolant comes in several different types depending on use. There is Evans High Performance Coolant, Evans Heavy Duty Coolant, Evans Powersports Coolant and different versions of their Evans NPG coolants for racing applications. 

This leads me to the second way to address the pitting issue and that’s the coolant used. Since the primary use of wet sleeves was in diesel engines ASTM D-6210 or RP-329 by the Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC). This antifreeze is sold with an SCA package already blended in, typically including nitrate to protect iron and steel, tolyltriazole to protect copper and brass, borate or phosphate to buffer acids (formed as glycol breaks down), silicate to protect aluminum and nitrite (sometimes accompanied by molybdate) to form a cavitation-resistant barrier on sleeves. 

Kawasaki only required an antifreeze designed for aluminum engines and radiators so they basically forgot to account for the cylinder sleeves which are ductile iron. As noted above, diesel engines with wet sleeves need a nitrate additive to ward off corrosion of the sleeves. 

I also sent off an email to Evans asking them which of their coolants to use for engines with wet sleeves to which they replied,
John. Sorry about not seeing your email. HD coolant has an additive for steel parts that contain commercial diesel engines. I  don't think that your engine has the same parts. But you can use the HD if you prefer, It is the same coolant as the HP but with more additives for steel parts.
Guy 
My interpretation is that Evans HDC coolant was designed for engines containing ductile engine components and is more likely a better choice for the KZ, Z, Zn 1300 engines. 

In the last 10 years there has been development of coolants called “Extended Life Coolants” which are a group of coolants designed to accommodate what happens to coolants in engines with wet sleeves. Typically, the additives in wet sleeved engines will plate out on the sleeves to protect the sleeves from corrosion and this depletes the additives in the coolant. Part of the maintenance of diesel engine coolants requires topping up the additives every couple of years to replenish the depleted additives. Another group of long life coolants is the newer Organic Acid Technology antifreezes which use a completely different technology to address corrosion including aluminum, copper, brass, lead and iron, so similar to Evans HDC coolant, would also have additives to accommodate the ductile iron liners of the KZ,Z and ZN engines. 

That’s my research findings to date. Hopefully this might change your mind as to which antifreeze to select and why you would want to do this.
 

From Kz1300.com

Sync'ing carbs. It's important to have the Choke/Fast idle static adjustment done first to ensure the throttles are closing near the required measure. The synchronization will fine-tune this setting. There should be a tiny bit of slack in the throttle cable with throttles closed on the idle adjustment screw, with no choke. With FULL choke the throttle plates should close completely for full vacuum/full choke plunger lift.

I've found that setting the throttle plates statically prior to installation, makes the sync'ing easier. Cut 3 strips of stationary/printer paper 1/8" to 3/16" wide and about 4" long. Open the throttles and insert the strips in the venturi and allow the throttles to close on the paper strips. Adjust the sync screws so all three carbs close on the paper. Use a strong source of light from the opposite side of the venturi's to see the gap.

If you've pre-adjusted correctly, the very slight resistance to pull the strips of paper out, should be the same. Lightly "snug" the lock nuts and reinstall on engine. Sync as required. It takes VERY little adjustment on the sync. screw to effect a vacuum change. With every adjustment "snug" the adjusted locking nut. It's not uncommon to go back and forth a number of times to get the 3 carbs equal.

If the engine RPM is slow to return to idle (or does not at all) you may have one or more of the sync adjusting screws turned IN to it's limit. In other words - The compression spring in the adjuster link has been compressed tight and this causes the ball-joint(s) to bind. This will make sync'ing impossible.