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Stiggy wrote: The weather was good today, 9 deg C and dry. Took the z13 for its annual MOT test. It passed with an advisory that the right hand front brake disc has slight warping. I will get the dti on it tomorrow and check. The good news is, the temperature gauge stayed at the low end of the normal band with the new radiator guard, it was only 9 deg C ambient temp, but looks OK so far. My newly calibrated temperature gauge is working great too. It's on the low end of the normal range when the thermostat opens at 82 deg c. I have calibrated it so that 100 deg c is the high end of the normal range, above 100 the needle goes towards the red zone.
Just need some warm days to prove the new grill is ok.

Dayum, those inspections seem very, uhh, intrusive? And how did you 'calibrate' the oem temp gauge? Dropping resistor?

dcarver220b wrote:

Stiggy wrote: The weather was good today, 9 deg C and dry. Took the z13 for its annual MOT test. It passed with an advisory that the right hand front brake disc has slight warping. I will get the dti on it tomorrow and check. The good news is, the temperature gauge stayed at the low end of the normal band with the new radiator guard, it was only 9 deg C ambient temp, but looks OK so far. My newly calibrated temperature gauge is working great too. It's on the low end of the normal range when the thermostat opens at 82 deg c. I have calibrated it so that 100 deg c is the high end of the normal range, above 100 the needle goes towards the red zone.
Just need some warm days to prove the new grill is ok.

Dayum, those inspections seem very, uhh, intrusive? And how did you 'calibrate' the oem temp gauge? Dropping resistor?

The tester picked up the 'warped' disc on the brake efficiency machine, a powered roller that measures braking power. Not sure quite how he determined it is the right hand disc. He did point out some colour/texture differences on the disc. But thinking about it I did spray some wd40 onto some bike parts just before it went into winter hibernation. I'm thinking that maybe some got onto the disc and caused an area of less friction.... it is only about 3 miles to the test station with virtually no braking required. That may have caused the irregular reading he was seeing.

The temperature gauge calibration.
I used a bench power supply set at 7 volts the same as the instrument regulator on the bike.
Removed the instrument pod from the bike and dismantled it to remove the temperature gauge.
Taking the two mid resistance values from the service manual for 80 and 100 degc, of 52 and 28 ohms respectively , I made some resistors from constantan resistance wire to match the two values.
Then connected the gauge to the 7v supply via one of the resistors.
The gauge does have zero and span adjustments which can be administered with a suitably sized flat blade screwdriver. Keep alternating zero and span resistors and adjusting the gauge zero and span until it reads correctly.
Note the gauge should be calibrated at the angle that it is mounted at on the bike.... it does make a difference.

I have attached image below of my notes...I should have taken a picture of the zero and span adjustments...sorry.

Very nice! Did not know the gauge had a zero and span adjust! Wonder if the fuel gauge has adjustment too? I'm working away from home, so no FSM available..

Thanks again! Don

dcarver220b wrote: Very nice! Did not know the gauge had a zero and span adjust! Wonder if the fuel gauge has adjustment too? I'm working away from home, so no FSM available..
Thanks again! Don

I haven't checked the fuel gauge , but I can't see kawasaki making a gauge that isn't calibrateable.
What is Fsm ??

Factory Service Manual!

Got to thinking about the temperature calibration... I think I'll actually do an end-to-end cal... Put the sensor in a heated water bath, monitored by calibrated RTD, then adjust the OEM gauge.. when I get time of course.. LOL.

Great post, Sir Stiggy!

dcarver220b wrote: Factory Service Manual!

Got to thinking about the temperature calibration... I think I'll actually do an end-to-end cal... Put the sensor in a heated water bath, monitored by calibrated RTD, then adjust the OEM gauge.. when I get time of course.. LOL.

Great post, Sir Stiggy!

Rather than end to end first I would put the sender in the hot water and note it's resistance characteristics. Then use that data to cal the gauge with resistors. THEN do the end to end.

I took a stab at 80 and 100 being either end of the white 'normal' band...do you feel it is correct,??



FSM can be found on kz1300.com homepage... link here... www.kz1300.com/modules/ServiceManuals/Z%...00%20FSMl%201997.pdf
If you can download from your workplace.