Zed’s Not Dead: Part 14

Zed’s electrical system was in sad shape. There were a bunch of melted wires and saving the harness seemed like more trouble than it was worth. The $139 Z1 Enterprises harness came with the small 4-plug harness for all the various circuits under the right-hand side cover. I was surprised at how complete the Z1E harnesses was, and highly recommend it for any Z1 project with an iffy harness. It will save you many hours of half-assing an old corroded harness.

The positive battery cable was swollen like a snake swallowing a pack rat. I cut the jacket away to reveal a green, copper powder. This is never a good sign and even though the cable will still read ok on an ohmmeter, under high current the flow of electricity will be restricted.

I de-soldered the original battery lugs and re-crimped and soldered a new 6-gauge positive lead. The original battery terminals are shaped to lay flat alongside the battery and you won’t find anything to match them at your local Home Depot. The terminals are solid copper so they clean up and take solder nicely. I also added a new 30-amp, inline fuse holder to replace the melted original.

This 3-way connection is the heart of Zed’s power supply. One lead is to the 20-amp fuse from the battery positive. One lead is charging current from the rectifier and the last lead supplies power to everything on the motorcycle (except the starter). This connection takes a beating and Zed’s was discolored, and overheating had taken the spring out of the female bullet connectors.

I decided to go off-script here because the three-way connection is one of the few bad design choices Kawasaki made on the Z1. Instead I used 3 soldered ring terminals and bolted the connection together. Then I insulated the connection with electrical tape and thick red heat shrink tubing (not shrunk).

With the new fuse holder, jumper harness, battery cable, grounds to the block, blinker relay, brake light switch and tail harness everything under the right-side cover is complete. It’s not the prettiest wiring and may not faithfully follow original Kawasaki wiring practices but it should work and hopefully not melt down.

Hardcore Zed’s Not Dead fans will recall the hokey swing arm zerk fitting that was gnawing into my Zen. The main issue is the swing arm is metric thread and I’m too lazy to find a stock metric grease fitting. I pulled the offending fitting and cut the entire top off of the thing then drilled and tapped the part that fits into the swing arm for a ¼-28 zerk fitting.

The new set up is much cleaner looking and even though no one will ever see it I’ll sleep better at night knowing it’s there. Oooooommmmmm…

The left handlebar switch cluster was a cluster. The blinker switch was stuck and no amount of WD40 would free the lever so I dismantled the switch and cleaned all the tiny, rusted parts.

The switch now moves in all the right places. It remains to be seen if it actually directs the electrons where they are supposed to go. The last major electrical challenge on Zed is the instruments and the connections inside the headlight shell. I’ll tackle those in Zed 15.

Catch up with Joe’s Z1 resurrection…read the rest of the story here!