Kawboy's restoration/conversion of a 1980 KZ13

That is the thinking. The flow path for the oil after being scrapped  didn't have a free enough path back into the crankcase.. Quite often , the drain back holes  in the piston are half in the oil scrapper ring groove and half in the skirt.

This "restoration" of mine is "the great experiment". , to boldly go where no one has gone before.  I'm thinking the license plate # should be NCC-1701.  I'm just having fun trying out new technology and see where it takes me.

I get excited when I read about things like the  Creighton CR700W   Could I play havoc in this workshop

Finished my  mods to the pistons today. Ceramic coated the crowns and micro slick coated the skirts with Cerakote.
Piston crowns had been previously cleaned up and polished years ago. Masked off the crowns and skirts with electrical tape to protect the portions of the pistons not to be sandblasted. Sandblasted the crowns and skirts with 100 aluminum oxide at 40 psi to prepare for the Cerakote, then 2 coats of the piston coating and 2 coats of the micro slick.
The cerakote products are really thin, especially the micro slick, it's as thin as water. What I learned from squirting these two products with the HVLP gun is that I can paint. Setting up the gun for each of the products, adjusting the air pressure, the paint gun needle feed and the fan air was easier than I had expected. No runs or drips. Shocked the Hell out of me. Now I'm looking forward to painting the rest of the bike. I had a big fear of mucking it up and the paint cost me $700 CDN about 7 years ago so I suspect that price would now be closer to $1000 just for the materials.


What the finished product looks like

 

All done and ready for install when the time comes. On to the next Kawboy Mod.

dcarver220b wrote:

Thanks for good info about oil consumption. My 79 burned from day one and just got worse. As in nearly a quart every tank.


 

Mine did too.  Kind of pissed off about as I complained heavily at the time but Kawasaki woudln't do anything about  (it was still under warranty) when clearly, at least in hindsight, they knew something was wrong. 

Pulled the oil pan today and found 2mm of mud in the bottom of the pan. Took an opportunity to measure the secondary chain slack and found it to be 18mm. Wow !! 65347 km on the clock and the chain is at the service limit. The slop in the chain is rediculous. and yet the service limit spec is 21mm. Engine is on its way out for new chains.

Pulled the oil pick up tube and removed the strainer. All things considered next to nothing for debris on the strainer screen. that's what we like to see.

 

Also pulled the starter motor and for shits and giggles took apart and inspected. Another good sign, a small amount of carbon dust inside but nothing to speak of.
Cleaned up the armature first with a smooth flat file on the lathe followed with 400 emery, then finally cleaned the grooves in the commutator to remove any bridging between the commutator poles.

 
Before cleaning

 
After clean up.
An interesting note - The end cap is drilled and tapped for a lubricating port for the rear bearing and yet the passage to the bearing was not completely drilled. In this case I'll pack the end cap with white lithium grease before assembly. You can see where the port was casted in to the end cap at the right of the bearing in the pic.
also tested the armature and field coils with an Ohm meter. All looks good.

Those pistons look great - almost a shame they’ll be hidden from view when installed.

I’m looking forward to reading about your adjustable cam sprockets set up, when you get to it.