TOPIC:

The signals are the old bulb type not LEDs so I just wired them up like the stock ones. It turns out that wiring wasn't the issue and the pressure sensor was telling the truth. Unfortunately the motor really has no oil pressure.
I'll know more if I ever get the pan off. It's really on there.
Thanks,
Dogfight.

Understand your thinking re. LED's but you might be thinking of not needing "Load Resistors". The two Diodes I refer to are to prevent volt/current reversal within the circuit which (I am only speculating) is to prevent conflicts due to the wiring for the lighting through two keyed switches and flasher circuit. None the less, if everything works good for you. Some one jump on this if I'm wrong, please.
Hope the bits and pieces in the pan are not as ominous as they sound. Good luck.

It sounds like you've found either pieces of the cam chain gear or the water pump gear which looks similar but is a smaller diameter. Most likely the cam chain gear. The older ones were not made of good quality material.

In any case you are going to need to take the head off. Bummer. However, its better than having to need to replace pistons and go through all of that.

dogfight wrote: Am I just being too gentle or what? I stopped for the day before doing something stupid out of frustration. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Double check for a missed bolt, I always miss one somewhere
here's that oil filter screen to clean and my larger sump after I got it off mine a while ago (I have a 79 A1)

Well Guys, thanks for all your input. Yes I did drop the oil filter bolt first and double checked the screws and the front pipe is loose so checked off all boxes. The darn thing is just glued on there tight.
I found an easy solution to the whole problem that doesn't involve disassembling the motor! What?!
I found another motor with low mileage so I'm going to do a swap out for now and maybe rebuild the original this winter.
I'll have to swap oil pans though as the new one is a '79 and I want the extra oil capacity, so I'll still have to get the pan off this motor. Once it's out of the frame I figure a good swing with a sledge hammer should shift it.
(Kidding?)
Obviously I'll check out the "new" motor before installing it but I'm thinking that this might be a good time to swap in some new sprockets, rollers and cam chain guides. From what I'm hearing though, they are not easy to obtain.
Any guidance on procuring these treasures? Do some of the Z1 parts really work?
BTW I dabble in engineering and machining and I'm wondering how many of these machines are out there. If there's enough demand, I might get someone interested in producing some of these internals. If these parts were supplied to Kawasaki by an outside source, they may consider a limited run if demand can be demonstrated.
Any one hazard a guess? I believe that there were only about 29,000 six cylinders produced but a higher enthusiast/collector rate might put the survivor rate at 10,000 machines worldwide?
That might be peanuts in the Japanese manufacturing world but may attract a domestic shop.
What do you think?

Dogfight.

There is a company that makes a metal cam chain tensioner cog, the links on the forum somewhere, I got one and put it in, so at least one thing I don't have to worry about wearing out for a while, most other stuff I either search on the web using the part number, but it always comes back to "E-Bay is my best friend" especially down here in Australia, but postage is the killer, not many 13 left down here, cheers