Zed’s Not Dead: Part 3

There’s never a good time to work on carburetors. I was hoping for a quick rinse out operation on Zed’s fuel system but besides being dirty, sleeping in the rough has corroded Zed’s right-side carb. The other three carbs show less water damage, lessening towards the left side. No doubt due to Zed leaning to the right against The Carriage House (Tinfiny Ranch’s future guest quarters after Metallica, the main house, is finished).

My idealized, simple douche with carb spray has turned into a complete tear down of the 4-carb bank. I haven’t counted but there must be well over 100 parts between the set. Cleaning the white, calcareous deposit liberally coating the inside of the float chamber has kept me occupied and humble.

Certain parts of the carbs are well and truly stuck. The levers that raise the slides are age-welded to the pivot shafts. I gave them a firm shove and I’m not in the mood to break anything right now. The float bowl drain plugs have resisted my better efforts to unscrew them so I’ll be leaving those as is also. One screw has already broken off on the intake port and another one was pre-broken in the ignition area. I’ve got plenty of drilling and bit wrangling to do. I want to get the carbs clean enough to run the engine before destroying them with my ham-fisted efforts to achieve perfection.

Parts for Zed have begun to trickle into Tinfiny Ranch’s high altitude motorcycle shop. I scored four new intake rubbers for $50 off of Ebay, which seemed like a good deal to me. Not such a good Ebay deal was the ignition advancer bolt and grooved washer. I paid $19 and later found the two parts on Z1 Enterprises for $13.

Z1 Enterprises has a lot of Kawasaki Z1 parts for not unreasonable prices. I bought a complete new wiring harness for $139. The harness comes with the main wiring loom, the gauge cluster loom, the rear tail light/blinker loom and the loom underneath the battery box that the regulator, stator, main harness and some other junk I can’t remember plug into.

Also coming from Z1 Enterprises are fork seals, fork dust boots, a right-side handlebar switch and a few gaskets and o-rings. As I’ve yet to receive the stuff I can’t speak to the quality of the parts but I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.

I’m into Zed’s resurrection for about $240 so far. I’ll be going back to carb cleaning now. The things are a mess and every time they dry out a new, white-powder film appears. I’m using mild solvents so far but I may have to step up my game to get the carbs spic and span. You know the routine; Part 4 to follow.