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81' KZ1300 For Sale | ||
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Last Update 10/18/07
SOLD: 1981 KZ1300 A3 with 10,777 miles showing on the odometer as of 6/28/07, however, actual mileage is unknown. This bike is on ebay now with the custom fuel injection system installed as you see below. Click here to see the auction. I know mileage indicated is not actual mileage, but there's no way I can establish what the actual miles are. If I had to guess I'd say 40,000 - 50,000 miles or so. I purchased the bike in Kentucky and the owner said the bike had been sitting for 10 years since he last rode it. It did look like it could of been sitting as long as he said, and when I started working on it I could see why he couldn't get it running 10 years ago.
One of the common updates we do on these bikes is to cut the plugs out where the stator connects to the voltage regulator because this wiring tends to have a problem with bad connections at the spot where they plug together. The wiring can get hot and melt the plug or it can overload the stator and burn the stator up. I have a tech article on this and my recommendation is to fix this problem on your bike before it happens. If you cut these plugs out and solder the connections, the stator and regulator will last a lot longer and you won't be stuck on the road somewhere with a burnt wiring harness.
It looks like this bike melted the stator plug and I can see he replaced the stator, but they did a half way job making the repair. There were other wires next to the plug that were damaged and needed to be cut and soldered and they didn't do that, they just taped them up. They also soldered a new plug between the stator and regulator back into the system and that's what caused the problem in the first place. I took their plug out, soldered the stator wires up and cut the plug on the other side of the regulator and soldered those wires as well. Then I had to fix 4 or 5 other wires in the same vicinity that were damaged in the original meltdown, so I cut those, soldered everything up and used heat shrink on all the connections. This is the proper way to make a repair that will last and this is what I did here.
Before I tried to start the motor I modified the original cam chain tensioner to a manual adjust style and adjusted the valves. With the valve cover off I could see that the cam chain idler gear appears to have very little wear on it which means it must of been recently replaced. In this case, it just wasn't ridden for 10 years after replacement. I only had to adjust one exhaust valve and it was too loose, so that looks good.
No doubt this bike has not been a garage queen or the paint would look better, the chrome, the bolt heads and other pieces would look newer, so it's definitely spent some nights sitting outside. If you want a bike that's pretty then you should pass on this one. This would make someone a good rider though, for someone that's more interested in putting some miles on the bike rather than mainly what it looks like. You could do some small touch-up here and there and bring the appearance up quite a bit, but you'll still have to repaint all the body pieces and the frame if you want to impress your friends. The motor looks real good but there are some paint flakes on the head.
There's some small scratches and scuffs all over as you can see in the pictures and the gas tank is just beat up. The previous owner said it was knocked over in the garage and bent the right front headlight ear and turn signal and put 3 small dings in the front fender and bent the tank. The bike had a new rear tire (ie, new 10 years ago), and for the front, I just put on a new 100/90-18 Dunlop D404. So far I've ridden it about 3700 miles and it ran perfect with no overheating problems or other issues. I mounted new Steel braided brake lines, replaced the rear pads, bled the brakes and pushed new fluid through the system.
I straightened up the headlight ear and made sure everything will pass a local state safety inspection. Looks like all the electrical and gauges are working and it does appear to be charging the battery properly. I'm using ZN cables right now but they're a few inches longer that what we actually need so the stick out some in the front. I have pictures below that show the bike when I first bought it with the carbs mounted. Then some as I was test running it and working on the wiring, and then the last ones as I rode it with the fuel injection. The original coils have been replaced with Dyna coils and wires appear to be in good shape.
First set of images before anything was done to the bike:
2nd set of images as I was making repairs:
This is the original tank and I damaged this tank to the point I won't be
able to use it on a bike again. The
tank I was using with the DFI installed was a spare and it's the one the
bike will have to come with.
3rd set of images as I was first test riding it:
I'm using an aftermarket adjustable fuel
pressure regulator which could be mounted on the left of the throttle body
with the gauge face pointing up. Then you could just look down and
visually see your fuel pressure at a glance. Technically, since the
gauge just screws on to the regulator, we could remote mount the gauge up on
the handlebars where it would be easier to see and use some high quality
stainless braided hose to make the connection back to the
regulator.
As you can see there's technically enough room to have the DFI computer on top of the
stock air-box if you use the stock air-box and remove the air-box lid. This is the mounting
location for the DFI computer on a ZG model, but there's still a wiring
harness with a whole bunch of wires coming off the front of the computer
that have to go somewhere. The wiring connections to interface this
with a KZ is not complicated by any means, but we will have to bring power
from a switched positive battery connection and I'm thinking the best way to
do that is with a relay. When I first put this on this I was using a 15 amp manual
on/off switch back through a fuse back to the positive side of the
battery.
So I start mocking up the pieces where I think I want them. It's obvious with the room I have to work in that I need a right angle fitting for the pump inlet, so I get some adapters from the auto parts to make something that has the correct sizes. Wish I could make something better looking that what I'm able to come up with, but that's all I can find that is 5/16" on one side and 1/2" on the other. I like the idea of being able to look down at the fuel pressure gauge as you're riding and being able to see that you indeed have 45psi of pressure showing on the gauge in case you're having problems and suspect fuel delivery issues.
Being able to see the gauge is better than having it mounted somewhere where you can't see it. To get it where I want it, I can see that the original straight fittings that it comes with are not going to work for me. Here again, I buy some right angle fittings, but I have to also buy a 1/4" tapered pipe thread style tap because the original threads on those straight fittings are not tapered. As far as I know all the fittings of this type in the USA all use tapered pipe threads, but this particular adjustable regulator was probably made overseas somewhere and they use some sort of common thread on their pressure fittings.
So I buy a tap and tap the threads out, but if you look closer you'll see I had to cut the end of the tap off and make a 'bottom tap' out of it. The holes for the fittings don't go straight through, so that's the reason for getting creative. I got creative on the 'air filter' too since I didn't want to be sucking up dirt into my engine while I'm experimenting with this setup. Just cut a shop rag in pieces and used tie wraps to hold them on. Later on I made 2 different sets myself till I got my custom filters, and they work real good.
I drill the 2 holes at the bottom like that so I can slip 2 large plastic
wire ties around the pump to mount it to the angle iron. I wasn't
thinking fancy, I was thinking about mounting the pieces where I wanted them
to be. Your results may vary.
Here's the modified fuel rail I had a local welding shop make for me. All they did was cut the fuel inlet off and move it over about an inch and point it down more. Charged me $40 to do that.
Now here's the funny thing. I took this picture with my flash on because otherwise you can't see down inside the hole. Yeah, you're seeing it right, he didn't drill a hole in the rail for the fuel to pass after he welded it on. Guess what, I didn't notice it either and I put it on like that! Guess what, I had to take it back off later after I tried to start the bike and there appeared to be no fuel pressure! That will make a good tech question... goes something like this; I've got 60psi of fuel pressure going into my fuel rail but there's no gas coming out the other side. What could possibly cause that?
Well, if I ever get that one I'll just send them to this picture. Note to self; check things that other people do for you. I mean, how much of a no-brainer is it that you have to pop a hole in that fuel rail after you weld that fitting back on?
So the good thing in that exercise is that you can see that it's possible to get the fuel rail back off and on without removing the throttle bodies from the motor. Still, it's a lot easier to do if you have some Silicone spray around when you're working with fuel lines and especially this high pressure line. This high pressure line doesn't come back off very easily, not like the standard 5/16 line will. The trick I use is to work the sharp point of my 12 volt test light very carefully down in between the hose and the fitting and shoot some silicone spray in there. Then you can kind of slide your point around the fitting and spray some more silicone spray in there at different places. So I did that on all 6 injector fittings and then I pulled the rail back and down and out.
Couldn't shoot a picture while I was doing it, but to grab the rail, I slipped a rag over the rail on both sides to make it easier to have something to grip onto and I pulled on one side then the other. Once one side started coming out I just worked it back and forth till it popped out. Try not to have to do this extra work when you do your install.
In the middle of doing all of this I decided to put a new front tire on and I had the center-stand on the bike removed to put the new exhaust system on. There's a jack point on the front of your motor there in the middle; it shows that in your manual. So I just used some jack stands under the frame, but notice that I strapped them down with heavy wire ties so they couldn't slip off. Nothing like having your bike fall on the ground to give you a really bad day.
Here's the first trial mounting bracket I made to hold all the new DFI pieces in place. Just cut a piece of angle iron and drilled 4 holes in it, the round tubes were straight pieces cut from an old crash-bar, a 1/2" solid flat bar with 2 drilled holes made the regulator mount, and the rear 'Z' tab piece was a 2" square tube cut in half and bent to fit with a groove ground in it.
I used a strap to hold the bottom piece in place while I tacked it on.
The bottom piece holds the radiator overflow tank in place which use to fit into
a hole on the
bottom on the now non-existent air-box. You can't just let the radiator overflow tank
hang there with one side dangling free, so it has to be supported
somehow. The 'Z' bracket supports the
rear of the mounting bracket as there's just the 2 screws in the front that
holds this whole unit down.
Next time I do this I'm thinking I may be able to get a bigger battery in this space where I mounted all these pieces, and if so, I could move the DFI box and fuel pump back in the hole where the original battery fits. So I think there's some experimentation in order for the next one of these I fab up. If I could fit a bigger battery in this space instead, that would be a big plus I think and well worth the extra effort to try. It looks like the original DFI wiring harness would be long enough to reach everything from that position, I just need to see what size battery I can wiggle in there. Only downside to doing it that way from looking at it is I probably wouldn't be able to get the battery in and out from that position without removing the throttle bodies first. But then, how often do we remove our batteries anyway?
This is what it looked like $45 later after it came back from the powdercoat shop.
So now we're to the wiring part. In this section I left most of the large images full size. After you click on the thumbnails below, on a lot of these you'll have to scroll left-right and up-down to see everything. Of course I did that so you could see just what to do if you're converting your own wiring harness. The wiring is not a show stopper, but it's nice to be able to just look at some pictures and see exactly how to do it. Granted, this is a ZN1300 harness and a ZG1300 harness is going to be a little different, but there can't be that much difference because ZG1300 owners are using DFI boxes from ZN1300's in their bikes. I haven't looked at the 2 different wiring diagrams, but I suspect there's only about probably 4 wires on the ZN harness that are missing on the ZG harness and that's it. Those wires go to things like the electronic dash or the trip computer on the ZN that a ZG model doesn't have.
Now here's a technical piece you might need when working on wiring. Some of you will recognize it right off if you own a gun. It's a barrel cleaning tip mounted to an extension. This is very handy when working with 25 year old wiring that tends to have corroded connections. You have a few round butt connectors on your 1300 and specifically there's 3 or 4 you're going to be working with on this conversion. Three are on your ignition coil harness up under the tank and you have to make a harness to reach up to your coils for the RPM sensor on your DFI box. Luckily, your coil connectors have a double connector, so you don't have to cut and splice anything up there. But do clean the existing round connectors up while you're there. You should also have some electrical contact cleaner on hand for the other connectors. You can buy electrical contact cleaner at Radio Shack among other places.
This is the original harness with just the tape pulled off.
The excess wires are cut off and this is what you keep.
Wires on the right are what I cut off. The Orange/Black stripe wire at
the bottom is the positive wire to the fuel pump and the Blue/White stripe
wire is a second positive wire that feeds a circuit in the DFI that needs to
be hooked up for the DFI box to work. It's a secondary power circuit,
the main power input wire is the White/Red stripe wire.
You don't have to pull all the original tape off but I do because you have
to keep in mind this harness was originally wrapped in 1984 and that's 22
years ago. I start taping up the harnesses for the individual
injectors first. So I pull the Orange/Black stripe wire, the
Blue/White stripe wire and the White/Red stripe wire all together as these
all get connected back to the + battery connection through a relay.
Since I solder these 4 wires together, a few images down you'll see that I
actually have 2 on one side, 2 on the other, not 3 on one side, one on the
other like it looks like I'm doing here. I pulled the Orange/Black
stripe wire back out of this group, cut the Blue/White and White/Red wires
back some because they were actually about 5" longer in this picture
than what I needed, and soldered my power feed which was actually a Blue
wire and the Orange/Black wire together from one side with the Blue/White
and White/Red on the other side to make a smaller and cleaner looking
connection.
These are wires that need to be added to the harness. I've used wires
from old harnesses I had laying around but you might have to be more
creative especially with the wires for the relay. A Voyager harness
has about 6 of these same relays on it so that's where I got the one you see
in these pictures. If you had to buy a 12 volt relay from the auto
parts I don't know what you do for the plug side. You can always make
individual wires for each terminal as they're just standard size spade
connectors. It would be nice to have some different color wires when
you go to do this as trying to use 4 red wires or 4 black wires coming out
of your relay is asking for trouble when you get ready to connect
everything. It will make your connections more confusing.
The Black, Blue and Green wires are your RPM signal for the DFI box and they hook to your ignition coil wires of the same color. So if you have to buy wire I'd get Black, Blue, Green and Red colors to use at a minimum and maybe a Brown color to go with those. The Brown wire at the top with the plug on the end is actually the old harness for your fuel solenoid. So if you didn't actually throw your fuel solenoid in the ocean as Paul suggests on the site, here is a good way to put it to use. I use the brown wire for a 'switched' power connection to activate the relay. Below that is the relay and wires I cut from a Voyager wiring harness.
Below that, the Green wire with the 2 connectors on one end is one of the wires I cut off the fuel solenoid harness above. I have a few of these old fuel solenoid harnesses that came off bikes I've parted out and I notice that some have this style Green wire with the 2 connectors on one side and some are made differently. Maybe they changed the design on different year bikes but either way, if yours has this setup then that's perfect for what we're doing. I use that wire for an extension to the cylinder head temp connector because the ZN1300 harness has wire that's too short to reach all the way up to the front of our motor where the water temp sensor is. On the Voyager motor, the cylinder head is actually a different casting and it has a temp sensor mounted on the back of the head. (This was changed to a different design later as using the water temp sensor didn't work!)
When I solder wires I've always been in the habit of double heat shrinking
them and that's better I guess, but you do it the way you see fit. I
cut a short piece of heat shrink and a longer piece and put the short one on
first then the long piece over it. This Brown wire I'm soldering to
the relay is the switched power wire that originally turned the fuel
solenoid on. Now I'm using it to turn my relay on. Your relay
should be marked on the side or top to show how it's wired. I'm not
sure of the proper terminology, but the way it works is that there's a coil
on one side that when energized makes a connection between the 2 terminals
on the other side.
So think of it as a coil that activates a light switch for example. The coil side of the relay is a 12 volt positive '+' and '-' negative connection. The switch side is 12 volt positive '+' power in - power out, but it's only power out, or saying it another way, there's only a connection on that side when the coil is energized. Generally speaking, it only takes a small amount of power to energize the coil, but the connection on the other side will carry a lot of amperage up to whatever the relay is rated at. In our case these relays are rated at 15 amps as I recall. That's more than we actually need to power the DFI box and fuel pump, so they work perfect in this application.
These original ZN1300 Kawasaki relays are marked as terminal 1, 2, 3, 4 and it shows an 'open door' or 'switch' symbol between 1 and 2 terminals, and a rectangle symbol similar to this -[_]- between 3 and 4. The rectangle symbol is your coil side. You hook the Brown switched positive wire from the fuel solenoid to one terminal 3 or 4 doesn't matter and ground the other terminal. On terminal 1 and 2, one side will come from the positive battery connection and the other goes to your White/Red and Blue/White wires which power the DFI box and the Orange/Black wire that is soldered in with it which turns on your fuel pump. These are the 4 wires shown in the next image.
The Blue wire is terminal 1 or 2 from the relay as discussed above. I
'tin' these wires with solder first before I try to join them. Since I
don't have 6 steady hands to push all 4 wires together while I use the
solder gun with my 5th hand and feed in more solder with the 6th, here's a
little trick I was taught by someone that does stuff like this for a
living. Trim a piece of wire back a few inches and cut off just a
single strand. Use that strand to wrap the other wires together nice
and tight. Now that your wires aren't going anywhere, you only need 2
hands to finish the job, and guess what, the average human has 2 hands that
can be used for that purpose! Heat shrink - heat shrink it
when you're done.
The Red wire with the round male end is actually a crimp style connector
that I pull the plastic insulator off of. Of course you can buy these
in solder type connectors without the plastic insulators, but most bike guys
including myself probably don't have a bunch of those solder type connectors
laying around. Your local auto parts store may not sell solder type
connectors either, as these are something you may have to get from Radio
Shack or an electrical supplier.
You can see my double heat shrink pieces slipped over the wire. I could of slipped these on after the fact on this connection, but you get in the habit of putting them on before you solder wires together for obvious reasons. You also see the Orange/Black wire as I mentioned before paired with the Blue which is power in from the relay.
The Red wire in the image above and in this
image is actually a Red/White stripe wire and this is connected back through
the relay to the positive connection of the battery. Usually I would
connect this through an inline fuse and directly to the + battery terminal,
but this bike has a separate fuse box with 2 fuses that already connect
directly to the + battery terminal. One fuse is used and it goes into
the harness, but I don't know what it feeds. The second wire that I
suspect is an extra fused accessory wire was free for me to use and that's
what I plugged this Red/White wire into. I crimp these connections and
solder them both, but I tin the wire with solder before I put it in.
Doesn't get better than this except for the double heat shrink and you
should consider that the double heat shrink gives the wire better strength
when you go to insert it. You'll probably be using long nose pliers to
push it in with so the extra wire strength is a plus.
This is the 3 wires that go to your coils. You know the drill; tin the
wires, crimp, solder, heat shrink - heat shrink.
The completed wiring harness with the extra wires that were added.
From the bottom up. Brown and Light Blue wires are the coil side of
your relay. Brown is switched power from the fuel solenoid connection,
Light Blue is a ground connection. I chose to go directly back to the
battery with this one but I didn't have to since the fuel solenoid
connection also has a ground wire in that group and I could of pulled a
ground connection from there instead. Also, the next 2 wires just
above that one are the ground connections for the harness and had I been a
little more attentive I could of added it to that pair and taped it up with
them. No doubt I'll get a little sharper at this stuff as I go along.
OK, next group up are the wires to the fuel pump and the short plug you see sticking out with the 2 Blue wires is the air temp sensor connector. Red and Blue wires on the relay are + power in - power out. The Blue wire powers up everything in this system.
OK, you've got 6 connectors that go to your injectors and one that goes to
the throttle position sensor mounted on the right side of the throttle
bodies. These should be self explanatory. You've got the Blue,
Black and Green wires to the right which have round male push in connectors
and connect to your ignition coils. This is a section of wires I added
with about 2 feet of length to it. Originally it was just a short plug
sticking out and it plugged into the main harness on the Voyager, but it
still tapped into these same 3 coil wires in some fashion.
Technically, these wires come from the igniter mounted under your right
side-cover, but there's no good way to tap into the wires down at the
igniter where it's easy to do up at the coil connections.
The Gray wire is the cylinder head temp sensor connection with the Green wire being the extension that I made in a plug-in fashion to extend this connection to the front of the motor. I tried to connect this to the water temp sensor, but that doesn't work so farther on down you'll see a different solution for this connection as the bike runs too rich when it's not connected at all.
OK, so now I start feeding the wires into place. You can see the extra
White/Black wire laying in the bottom of the battery tray. That's the
extra fused accessory wire I adapted to be my power wire for this DFI system
and it plugs into the Red/White wire on the relay.
Tie wraps are very handy to bundle wires together with.
You can see my 3 coil wires running along the top frame rail in this last
picture, and the Gray cylinder head temp sensor wire tie wrapped to the bottom rail.
I'm making a mount to fit the ZN cylinder head temp sensor to the back of a
KZ head so the gray wire can be hooked up.
Here you see the 3 coil wires coming up around and back to the coil
connectors.
Fuel pump wires go back and under my bracket with tie wraps on both
sides. Using black tie wraps instead of white is a big plus.
The plug sticking out is for the fuel level sending unit. This should
be positioned so it comes out on the inside of the frame rails, not around
the outside. Makes it easier when you go to plug it in. Also you
see the other 'crankcase vent' filter that's clamped to the back of the air
injection valve. That originally had a hose that fit to the top of the
air-box. Since that's supposed to be clean air coming into that valve
you can't just leave it open. Some people remove this whole air
injection system and cap it off; your prerogative. There is one
positive thing you can say about the stock air-box. We can talk all
day about how restrictive it was to our airflow, but there is a little more
air induction noise using these open type filters than there was with the
original air-box.
Here's what happens when you use ZN cables on a KZ. They're about 3
inches too long. The best solution would be to have custom cables
made up.
Here's the finished installation from the other side.
Here's the pictures showing the rubber fuel return bung and Pingel petcock installation.
Drill a hole, insert the rubber seal and press the connector in
place.
I purchased the bung from Pingel also, but it's a press in type and there's
no check valve in the one they sell. On the next ones I'll go with
a weld on bung and try to find something with a check valve.
I have a tech article on the Pingel install,
but on that page I show a larger opening for the valve. This is closer
to what you actually need. You don't need to grind on that opening too
far and open it up as much as I did before.
By the way, I just put some nylon thread tape on those screw threads.
I didn't use their gooey stuff they provide.
On these 4 images above I show the easy way to get your throttle cables on or off and this applies to the Voyager 1300 also that these throttle bodies came off of. With the throttle bodies in their normal position mounted in their rubber mounts, it's almost impossible to get the throttle cables on and off. I did it once, but I won't do it again. It's much easier to put the cables on after you've removed the throttle bodies and slipped them out to the side some as you see here, or put the cables back on just before you re-install the throttle bodies. I roll up a big towel or a floor mat as I did here and cushion the throttle bodies on that so they don't try to fall down too far.
Loosen and remove the pull cable first (throttle on cable) and slip it all the way out and then they'll be plenty of slack to remove the return cable (throttle off cable). You'd have to be the Wizard of OZ to do it any other way or you need long skinny fingers like the type only found on aliens.
Here are some of the final images I shot of this first conversion 'kit' I made.
These 2 pictures show how I mounted the 'Cruise' switch. On the
Voyager fuel injection system there was a 'Cruise' switch mounted up by the
ignition switch. As the story goes, once you get in 5th gear if you
clicked the 'Cruise' switch on the computer would lean out the DFI system by
about 10%. There was an indicator light on the left side of the dash
that indicated when it was in cruise mode. Now there may be other
programming logic involved that would override the lean running mode under
certain situations like under a certain RPM point or below a certain
speed.
I have no way to know if it ignored or disabled the cruise mode under these circumstances, but I can see from the wiring diagram that basically all the 'Cruise' switch did was ground out a certain green/yellow wire that runs back to the DFI box so I did basically the same thing with this switch. I ran the green/yellow wire through the switch and back to ground and used the bracket for the cables under the tank as my ground attachment point since it screws into the frame right there.
Here I show where I put the cylinder head temp sender. the Voyager
cylinder head has a boss on the back side of the valve cover where this
sender just bolts into the cylinder head. We don't have that boss in
our head so I had to put this sender somewhere and I figured down by the
exhaust was a good hot area. On the
next kit I moved it to a better spot and I'm going to look for a sender off a newer car or bike or
something that specs out the same as this one if possible.
Here's the stock air temp sender and I just tie wrapped it to a spot where I
thought it would get a good air temp reading. I was going to put it in
the end of the center air filter but I never got the chance before I sold
this first kit to one of my members.
Seemed like a good idea at the time to just tie-wrap the relay to my bracket
in the left image. Next time I'll see if I can do something better on
mounting this more permanent. Right image is looking down from the top
at how the bracket fits in with the DFI computer and battery removed.
Here you can see I actually had 2 DFI boxes mounted to the bracket.
When I first started running this system it would intermittently just start
running real bad. I assumed it was the throttle position sensor or
something like that, but it turned out to be a bad computer. When I
stuck another one in I saw there was room for 2 so I mounted a spare.
The kit will only come with one of course! Wiring looks more
complicated than it really is. You can see the kit below and all the
wiring is shown in detail above. I do all the hard work. When
you get it everything basically just plugs in. Only plug I have to cut
from a Voyager wiring harness is the fuel pump plug and I may be able to
source a new one as it's a standard 2 prong design.
So this is what the bike looks like as of 12/20/06
This has a new BSM exhaust system and new case-savers, both of which I sell on my parts pages. Contrary to what BSM says in their literature you cannot put the center-stand back on with their exhaust system installed. It will bolt on, but it will only fold up about half way before it hits their pipe. I do have the emblems for the gas tank and I will provide a set of pod style air filters as soon as I'm able to have them made. This bike has a new Hawker battery as we discuss on this site, Dyna ignition coils and the other things discussed above, but you will want to fix the dents in the tank as I mentioned and repaint the bodywork to give the bike a better appearance.
Did a local ride with the wife on the back so I fashioned a tank bag to carry the extras. Everybody had to walk over and take a look at the bike and only one guy said he'd ever seen one before. Most of the other guys had never even heard of a 6cyl Kawasaki before. Doesn't say much for Kawasaki's marketing department during the 80's. My guess is that they were losing money on these bikes and didn't really care how many they sold, it was just an image thing most likely.
OK so here's my concept of how I was 'going' to fit some tapered oval filter to our throttle bodies. This filter was just a little too small even after I cut the back of it out as big as I could. Still it wouldn't fit over the throttle body flange anyway because in a couple of images you can kind of see that it's hitting on the fuel injector mount and wouldn't slide all the way up. The other issue is that you can notice in the pictures that the spacing between the 2 throttle body air filter mounting flanges on the left is tighter or closer together than the 2 throttle bodies on the right where the throttle cables fit.
At the width of the filter body as you see it there, and assuming you could otherwise get them to slip on, the 2 filters on that tight side would be touching each other. In fact they'd probably interfere to the point that you could get one on and not the other. So this idea of mine to modify existing filters doesn't appear to work the way I envisioned it might. I did find some ovals like these that have 2 round mounting flanges on the backside, but they're spaced further apart than what we would need. Let's face it, you don't see carbs with round flanges that are fitted on a bike this close together.
So, option B is that as of 12/17/06 I'm looking in to having some custom pod filters made. A filter manufacturer is looking at them now and I should have a price on these this when they make the first prototypes. If I'm successful in getting someone to make us filters, I'll be making pod filters for the bikes with throttle bodies, and other ones for the bikes with carbs as these are a half inch larger diameter ovals than the throttle bodies. In the meantime I fashioned some filters similar to the ones the Z1300 South Africa Club sells on their site. Only real issue I have with this design is not enough airflow.
Basically I cut some wire mesh in an oval and laid it up on the inside against the throttle body, then I cut some foam from an old air filter I had and laid it in, then another piece of wire mesh on the outside. The plastic pieces I cut from some old water bottles and wrapped them around and clamped them on. To keep the outside mesh piece in place I punctured some holes in the plastic and threaded a real long tie wrap all the way through all 3 pieces. Looks odd but it works more or less. I still need more airflow.
As of 3/07 I got tired of waiting for my prototypes to be made and decided to just make my own air filters, so I went to a local industrial air filter supplier and bought some wire mesh and foam filter material. You can get the gist of what I did by looking at the following pictures, but I cut an end piece and made a body piece and used a wire to string it together. Initially I thought I'd use some plastic wire ties, but I canned that idea after one just broke off and I was thinking what would of just happened had it broke off while it was on my motor and got ingested through the engine at 5000 RPM!
The wire ties holding the end foam on don't really have any real pressure on them so I don't figure they'd be likely to break off and get sucked up.
These last 2 images above are what I ended up with. I used the metal wire down the center like that to act as a stop when you push them on the throttle bodies so they don't slip on too far.
I made 3 complete wraps with the foam, but after I rode it for the first time like that I decided 3 wraps was too restrictive to the airflow. You can tell by how hard it accelerates with one wrap of foam versus 3 wraps. Big difference in power when you put too much foam on the filter. All the images here show the original filters I made with 3 wraps of foam. If I can come up with a better design I will, but I don't know what that may be at this point. Having proper filters made is the best bet, but so far no company has stepped up to the plate for such a small order of filters. K&N wanted a $10,000 minimum order to make us something. The molds to make the filters are actually their cost about $3000 I hear, so this thought probably isn't going to happen. Gee, my design doesn't look so bad after all!
Original European style ZG1300 throttle bodies, fuel pump and bracket. You can see some differences between the ZG and ZN parts in these pictures such as where the fuel rail inlet and outlets come out, the different size fuel pump inlet (5/16" on the ZG versus 1/2" on the ZN), and different pump mounting bracket. Still, there's no reason we couldn't use these pieces to do a conversion versus the ZN1300 pieces I'm using and in fact, it should be easier because you won't have to modify the fuel rail as I did or come up with an adapter for the fuel pump. The ZG pump already has a 5/16" inlet.
You live and learn when you do stuff like this. Next time around I think I can make improvements over this first install you see on this page. If you look closely you'll see that there was some interference between the left air filter and the fuel pressure regulator. I'm thinking of moving the fuel pressure regulator, the DFI box and the fuel pump back to where the battery is now, and moving the battery forward. Then if I paint the front part of the battery black on the side where it can be seen (which will be directly behind the air filters in this new location), if you look in you'll see the air filters and just something black behind them. You won't see the 'ugly' parts you see now.
Other thought is that if I relocate the battery I may be able to get a bigger battery in our bike and bigger is better on this monster motor. The Hawker is good, but when the starter is heat soaked and the engine is real hot it can still pull all the current that the Hawker puts out to get it started. A little extra 'backup' current never hurt anyone. I'm thinking on a hot day if there was some sort of problem getting the bike started (unrelated to the fuel injection of course), having plenty of extra juice in the battery might be a good thing. I hate having to jump batteries to get my 'old' Kawasaki started. I'd rather be the guy that my riding buddies count on to jump them off when theirs fail.
So here's some of the mock up pictures from the new bracket I'm using.
Go here to see the Custom made Fuel Injection Conversion Kit, aka 'The Kit'.
NOTE: On these newer browsers I've noticed that they don't always display my large images in full size when you open an image from the thumbnails. Once you click the thumbnail and open the larger image, if you 'mouse over' the image you should see a " + " symbol or some other indicator like a box with arrows usually on the bottom right edge of the image. If you click on the indicator, then the image will expand to it's full size which displays full screen on computers that use a 800x600 resolution setting for the monitor. If you click the indicator again it will go back to the smaller image. Some people use a resolution setting of 1024x768 or higher on their monitors and for those users the images will appear smaller in size instead of full screen. You can change your monitor settings easily enough if you desire. Also, the indicator I've noticed is slow to appear even after the image appears to of completely loaded. The indicator in Netscape seems to be a lot faster to display than the one in Internet Explorer.
