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Clay Campbell

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Joined
Oct 9, 2005
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Shelby, NC
Finally got a chance to do a little work on my old 84' Kawasaki KZ550 LTD shafty in the last two days. We also got some work done on our old 1995 Seadoo GTX. The bike was running well but had a seeping leak between the block and the head, it appeared that the rear hub was leaking, and the front brakes are pretty weak. The seadoo has a cylinder that has lost compression. Any way here are some pics and descriptions of what went down. Just thought ya'll would like to see some good pics.



Here is the jet ski after we got the engine out, its still hanging from our makeshift and very cumbersome cherry picker. we got all but one hose undone to the engine and the one we missed spilled oil everywhere once we pulled it out.

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Here is what the bike looked like yesterday before I started tearing it down.

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Things are about to get serious, I got the seat off and was trying to figure out the best way to tackle this job.

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Starting to reminder me of a horse skeleton. All the tins plus the shocks removed. Started to realize then that the leak we thought was coming from the rear hub may have come from the shocks. I believe they are the originals from 1984 so they are due to be replaced.

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Pulled the rear hub and everything in the shaft drive looks great. The fluid in there was way to thick to be what was leaking out onto the side of the tire, plus it was leaking out on the right side of the bike. That side only has the drum break on the rear and that has no fluid in it so that means it almost has to be the shocks. The shaft drive parts look almost brand new

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Got the rear wheel off and most of the motor unbolted. But I couldn't get the drive shaft out so that I could pull the engine. Had to take the rear swing arm off to get at the shaft.

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Once that happened it was time to battle the engine out of the frame. It really didn't want to come out. After much struggle with my dad and I both giving it hell we threw a bag of shredded paper that we were using to soak up the oil from the jet ski under the motor and laid the bike over on to it. Then we just moved the frame around until we could just lift it up off of the motor. For being only a 550 this joker is no featherweight.

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Finally got it out and I have to say the bike looks pretty sad. Got a lot of plans for it over the next couple of months. I wanna fix all the maintenance issues, put on some drag bars, get a new seat and fabricate a more cafe racer style rear fairing, and hopefully get it painted. I plan on cleaning up the engine and paint it flat black then sand the fins to give it some contrast. I'm probably gonna sand the exhaust down and paint it flat black for now. I may replace it in the future. Then hopefully be able to get it back together. I'd like to get it looking pretty close to new condition before I put it back together. I may have more pics to add over the next few days.

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:smile0002: That was a long post. Hope ya'll enjoy the pics
 
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Rodger and Georgia LOVE their toys! How to stay young. Cool indeed ! :banana:
 
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most bikes that me and freinds pulled the head on. The head always come off with motor in frame...The cam chains even could be disconected.

They Had long head bolts no studs...not familiar with yours though.
 
forget the sea doo doo.



get yourself a good ole kawi or yami :smile0006:



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Gary, that one is my dads but I am much more of a seadoo fan than any other brands when it comes to PWC's.



This is mine and it will spankity spank on some yamis and kawis! :smile0015:

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Oh yeah, I got the exhaust all sanded down and sprayed flat black this evening. I have a few more pictures to add but I don't know how well they turned out. Ordered some new parts though. All off ebay, New brake pads ($8.99:smile0006:), Service Manual($10:smile0006:), and Drag Bars with Pro grips ($32.99 :smile0006: :smile0015:) Things left to order are new shocks and maybe a head gasket. Pics will be posted shorty, unless they all came out blurry.
 
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clay,



wish i still had my yami gp800. also my old 92 kawi 650TS was like a caddy. big, slow but stable. great for the wifey. the kawi is still running strong after 17 years. the guy i sold it to beats the crap out of it. it may not be fast, but very reliable. the yami was sold in 04 and i have not been in contact with the guy that bought it.

i will wait to when i move to florida so i can use year round. it sucks here on long isle where i would ride from may to october. i do miss the fun i had.

never a fan of seadoo, alot of my friends has issue's with them.

good luck with your overhaul
 
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Here are the pictures I talked about earlier. Some are kinda blurry and they are all not very exciting to anyone but me



Here are most of the parts laid out during the tear down

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Here is the exhaust all sand blasted. They were chrome but had some rust spots and pitting so I decided just to sand them down and do them in flat black. I'll most likely replace it in the future.

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Here is the flat black paint I used. Stuff seemed to work pretty well, dried fast and blended incredibly well.

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Some shots of the process. Painting around an open flame from a propane heater, great idea.

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Here is the finish that I came up with. Hard to tell much from the picture but it came out almost perfectly smooth after two good coats. Dried very even and looks great. It is slightly blacker than the picture makes it look.

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On the agenda for tomorrow is to start cleaning up the engine and get it ready for tear down and paint and polish. If my brake pads come then I'll get the rear end back together and put the wheels back on so he bike can stand on its own two feet and it will be easier to move around.
 
Its great that you have the room and benchs. To lay out and organize parts.

Thats the way I work. But with a single car garage, most gets laid out on the floor.

I have a pretty good memory forparts though. Most of my freinds get amazed when I start tear downs. They make comments like it will never run again. Especialy when I dont organize. They always get suprised.



My dad took 10 hours to change the plugs on an '89 302 lincoln. The next time I did it for him in 2hrs. That included wires and distrbutor cap.

He said I looked like cat in a trash can..LOL... I tore everything out from the hood that was in the way. My dad is 83. he came from the days that everything was right in front of you. He was afraid to start unpluging harnesses and pulling things he had no knowledge of.



I give him the credit. As a mechanic himself. He ran a Mobil station till I was five. He taught and got me intrested in repair at age 13. By the time I was eighteen I was deep into moding. At almost 60 I still do. Still today I try to learn as much as I can. But Im not no ASE tech......LOL!
 
Got post Ed. This bike was is my first road bike and it was a gift from my dad. Although I am planning on doing most of the work, we are restoring it together. The only problem is my mom and step dad are pretty much against me having a bike at all. I get a lot of grief from my mom about it and she can make me feel pretty guilty about it. But doing things like this with you father is an irreplaceable experience in my opinion, no matter what age you do them at. Some of the best times my father and I have had together were spent in the workshop doing one thing or another. I am hoping that I can take this bike that dad gave me and turn it into something we can both be proud of.
 
A lot has been done over the last few days. Today is the last day I had to work on the bike before I have to go back to school tomorrow. I live about 3 hours away at school so finishing the bike will be a while.

Here is the frame completely stripped down and getting cleaned up a little bit. It was in too good of shape to worry about painting it.

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Here is the wiring harness. It was pretty dirty and confusing so I took it off to go through it and clean it up a bit

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Realized the head light bucket was shattered. They are around $50 for one on ebay and this is a low budget build so I decided to try and fix this instead of buying a new one.

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You know the magic putty stuff Billy Mayes used to sell? Well, it is awesome. I have used it for so many different things but ironically I have never used it for any of the things they use it for in the commercial. Here i was able to fill in that big hole, let it harden then sand it down. I smoothed it out with a little filler and painted it up. It turned out perfect and strong.

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The original plan was to polish the forks but that didn't go so well because they had some weird coating on them. I ended up just sanding them down and decided to paint them black

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Here are the forks all finished and painted. Got a little bit of reassembly done. Got the brakes and wheel back on. Test fit the new drag bars and got the newly painted/repaired headlight bucket in place.

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Decided to paint the engine covers rather than polishing them also. I think this fits the cafe racer style a little better.

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To be honest this is the first engine I have done by myself that I own. I have messed around with some old car engines but this is a 0 tolerance motorcycle engine and I was a little anxious messing with it. This picture was taken right after I finished painting the rest of the engine. I had just gotten the camshafts all torqued down and the timing set properly(hopefully!!). The service manual I bought was really helpful.

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Here is the motor after final assembly. So the leaky head gasket problem should be fixed. I started to do some of the sanding that I want to do on the fins and a couple other areas to give the motor a two tone look. Some of the fresh paint got nicked in the process but I will touch it all up when I get it back in the bike (whenever that will be). Over all I am really happy with the way it turned out. The covers are all painted with high temp semi gloss and the head is painted with high temp flat.

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Here is the bike all loaded up to take to the shed behind my dads house where it will sit and collect dust until I can get some time off from school to come home and start putting it back together. I fixed all the problems that were the reason I took it apart in the first place. I just ran out of time and wasn't able to put it back together. I am just hoping I can get back on it by the time warm weather comes around. It's parts are all spread out in 4 boxes. I hope I can remember how to put it back together months from now.

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Here is where it will sit for a while. I know it is blurry but the camera was messing up, I was lucky to get this good of a picture.

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I have a lot more pictures and there are a lot of things that got done but don't really show up in pictures. But these are a basic outline of how its coming along and where it sits now. Again, I hope you guys enjoy. I think working on the engine and learning about it was probably my favorite part of the build so far. After we get it back together, there is a good bit of body modification planned. I'll add more pics when I get them.
 

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