HELP! Trying to bring 1981 KZ1300 back to life

If you're just trying to get it started, leave the tensioner for now. Turn the bike over via the stator (right side cranshaft cover, clockwise) a few times to make sure nothing is hitting, then get to actually firing it up. Once you get it running well, then you can decide what you want to do about it.

The biggest problem is the design of the tensioner itself- a spring makes the plunger actually take the tension out of the cam chain. A ring of ball bearings then wedges themselves between the plunger and the angled interior wall of the tensioner body to prevent the plunger from kicking back. While it does work, the bearings can wear grooves in the parts of the tensioner and get loose, allowing the plunger to kick back, the cam chain to skip teeth, and then either bend all your valves in the engine, or put one of them through a piston. A ratcheting-type tensioner had a much more positive anti-kickback design, but then you have to find one with a spring that's not so strong it OVER tensions the cam chain, leading to premature idler gear wear.

If you're going any deeper into the engine, I recommend either downloading or buying a paper copy of the Service Manual. It's got loads of great information, and will walk you through, step by step, any part of taking apart or putting back together this bike. Apart from a few quirks, this is really a very straightforward engine- there's just more multiples of parts because you have more cylinders.

The nylon idler gear is absolutely worthless. I replaced mine with a steel Liska Racing unit; a little spendy, but it needed to be done. I think that's why my bike sat: The nylon gear ate itself to an idler wheel rather than a toothed gear, which caused the bike to run like arse. This was likely caused by the CCT putting too much pressure on the cam chain.

When I did the cylinder head I cleaned up the chambers and did valve guides/seals. None of the valves or chambers were lunched, thankfully, but I'm glad I did the work.

Well, at least I think I'm glad I did the work. I'm a long way from this thing running, but this isn't a simple "resurrection" build.

I run Liska rollers in my kz650, they are really nice parts but they do make noise, to the point of being annoying. I don't mind though as I run that bike pretty hard at times.

As far as your bike 2short,

I would get your electrical sorted out and verify the engine turns over and that you have spark on all 6 cylinders before doing anything else. The 81 has an odd ball ignition system that is known to go up in smoke, parts are rare and expensive.

Hi,

In case you fry the igniter, we produce replica igniter for the 1981 model (unique for that year)
The last batch of 10 units is now in manufacturing and we will not produce any more.

You can get one from me via this forum.

Best regs,

New battery and got the engine spinning freely with no issues apparent, but no spark at the plugs. Thoughts???

how much for an igniter? don't yet know if this is the problem...