Steve Collison

OK – I feel some guilt about my KZ550 restoration project. That post was written in March of 2009 – oh boy! I had every intention of working on that bike, except that I didn’t have a place to work on it. The fact that it’d leak fuel intermittently didn’t help me when pleading my case to friends and family – they really didn’t want their garages burned to the ground.

Since then, the plethora of problems with the bike have remained intact, and I’m sure more rust has begun to eat at its heart. Luckily though, we now rent a large house with a basement – where the bike now resides! Except I’ve removed the fuel tank.

An advantage to this is that the basement is always relatively warm, a garage wouldn’t be this time of year. I’m hoping to get down there in the next couple weeks and actually start working on the bike. I’ll be tearing it apart and cleaning it up. I can already see where the wiring has been eaten by mice – it’s going to need a lot of work.

Wish me luck guys.

This post is part of my KZ550 restoration project.

I bought my KZ550 from my father-in-law, sadly it wouldn’t start! I had my friend Paul come to collect it, but before we moved it we tried starting it some more. The battery was flat, so we hooked up some jump leads from his truck to the bike’s battery.

That instant, the bike started smoking. I ran away in fear of a wild gasoline explosion, but luckily Paul’s quick reactions found the culprit and disconnected it. From the positive terminal on the battery, following the cable down the side of the bike to where it splits into two, one of the two connects to the regulator.

It took me a while to realise what the problem was, but the symptoms were as follows:

• Riding the bike for a minute would be followed with the engine stalling. There was no stutter, just complete death!
• After the bike had shut down, it would start right back up if I turned the starter.
• The battery seemed to flatten quickly.

On the KZ550, the regulator and rectifier is built into one unit. This unit controls the voltage coming from the bike’s stator (a series of magnets that create voltage), without this unit the battery won’t be charged and the bike will be forever running on battery power.

After investigating, I found that the wire connecting from the regulator to the positive side of the circuit (leading back to the battery) was shortcircuiting against the regulator’s casing. Because the unit is sealed, my only option was to replace it.

After a long tedious search on eBay, I found a replacement unit. The difficult part was matching up the connectors – as some have four pins, some have five, and they all come in different shapes and sizes! Bear in mind that when you order a regulator, more important than matching the socket is making sure the number of wires and their colours are the same as the original on your bike.

When the regulator arrived, it became quickly apparent that it wasn’t what I ordered! It was for a different KZ, I ended up having to solder the connector from the old regulator to the new regulator. This was simple:

1. Cut the wires on the old regulator as close the regulator as you can.
2. Cut the wires on the new regulator as close to the connector as you can.
3. If any of the wires look damaged, cut off the damaged part.
4. Strip and tie each wire together according to their colours.
5. The yellow wires can be connected in any order, as these come directly from the stator which produces AC power.
6. Solder the wires to enforce the connection.
7. Wrap the wires in wire tape.

Once repaired, I added the regulator back to the bike and promptly started the bike. To make sure it’s providing power, follow these instructions:

1. Start your bike and warm up the engine.
2. Disconnect the negative connector on the battery.
3. If the regulator is providing power, the bike should continue to run.
4. Note: You may notice that the headlight flickers and that revving the bike results in rough running while the battery is disconnected. This is normal behaviour when your battery is disconnected. But there should be enough power to keep the bike running at idle.

And that’s it! Let me know about your experiences.

Last year I acquired a 1982 (I need to confirm the year) Kawasaki KZ550 from my father-in-law. I still owe money on it, but we’ll come to that later.

I’ve spent a few months fiddling with the bike, and have finally concluded that there’s a whole host of things that need fixing. Here’s the problems I’m aware of so far, in no particular order:

1. The carbs are overflowing – I believe this is being caused by the floats that probably need to be adjusted.
2. There’s a hole in the side of the air box.
3. It didn’t come with an air filter.
4. The battery won’t hold charge.
5. The rev counter wasn’t working – the cable turned but wasn’t connected, the connection was rusted but after some dedication I eventually managed to get it on.
6. The speedometer doesn’t working.
7. The front and back tires need to be replaced as they aren’t roadworthy.
8. I should probably change the oil.
9. I’m not sure there’s any brake fluid in the reservoir.
10. It has trouble revving over 5K rpm.
11. Due to the trouble it has revving, I am lead to believe that the carb may be full or varnish. Perhaps a rebuild is in order.
12. Lots of split ends on hoses.
13. The breather hose doesn’t have a connecting pipe at the end that reconnects to the air box.

Luckily, my father in law gave me the KZ550 manual in PDF format! So I at least have some direction with these problems.

That’s all so far, if I can fix these problems everything else is aesthetic. Speaking of aesthetics, I need to upload some pictures.

This is the only picture of the KZ550 that I have so far. Stay tuned for more!