Making My Bike a Lot Cooler | 1986 GPZ1000RX Revival - Part 4

oh [Music] the last episode of this kawasaki revival project ended right about here prior to this point i removed tore down completely cleaned and reassembled the carburetors and got this bike to fire up for the first time in nearly two decades the bike runs but not for more than a couple minutes or at least i won't let it run any longer than that there's a fuel leak coolant leak and also an air leak into the exhaust i'll explain more about the latter later but in the meantime i want to take care of that fuel leak i actually yanked the carbs off the bike minutes after getting it going just because i knew it would be too tempting to keep running the bike with them installed but after ordering some brand new o-rings and getting back to work we are where we left off the source of the fuel leak was just one little fitting however i wanted to replace all the o-rings on all of the fittings and that's easy enough the carbs don't have to be completely torn down like last time just separated from each other so after simply unbolting the two brackets in the choke slide rail the fuel tubes can be pulled out and the o-rings swapped over the only thing that might make this a frustrating job would be if i completely forgot to line up one of the butterfly valves and didn't realize until the very end oh you gotta be me can't slide this thing out without undoing literally everything ah okay with that taken care of the last thing to do is god dang it i forgot to put the springs on oh my i really wish this was me doing this for laughs but no i'm just dumb you've got to be me you've got to be [Music] with the o-ring swap finally wrapped up these carbs can go back on the bike and i can get some fuel flowing to see if it actually made a difference after hooking the gasoline iv drip back up and opening the valve there doesn't appear to be any leaks cool let's start her up [Applause] that is quick to turn on this time [Applause] well that sounds fantastic and there's no leaks there's no leaks whatsoever and there's no smoking this time so that's also cool let's see if it uh we'll start easily now that i got it going something you may have noticed is the very audible change in the exhaust sound that occurs when i plug these two hoses on top of the engine now you might be asking why in the world does plugging crankcase breather hoses affect how the exhaust sounds well tanner they're not crankcase breather hoses they are in actuality part of the clean air system that kawasaki introduced only on the north american version of these bikes the system was put in place to meet strict emission requirements but having it installed now isn't necessary the way the system functions is based entirely on the bike's use of a waste spark ignition system the utilization of two ignition coils for the four cylinders inside the engine there's a spark happening in both cylinders that reach the top at the same time but the combustion cycles are 180 degrees out of phase one spark happens at the end of the compression stroke and the other spark happens at the end of the exhaust stroke the clean air system basically allows outside air to get sucked in through the cylinder head and into the exhaust passage and with that extra spark happening during the exhaust stroke combined with the now extra oxygen introduced any fuel that didn't burn off during the power stroke is now burnt off in the exhaust by producing harmful emissions and this system is actually only activated at higher rpms not at idle or anything because there's a little vacuum actuated valve that meters when the air is sucked in and that valve is exactly what's missing on my bike along with the factory air box that it tied into so the simplest solution is just to cap off the intakes ignoring the system altogether i did leave the reed valves inside the engine kind of just sitting there but functionally speaking it's the exact same as all the bikes produced for the rest of the world now adding to the list of things this bike still is is leaking coolant i knew it was puking cool out of the thermostat housing which was apparent in the last episode but now i can clearly see it's coming from between the housing itself and the little adapter plate for the cap the thermostat is what diverts coolant from the engine to the radiator to actually cool it down so i'd kind of rather not dump it to the outside world oh yeah that's smoking but on a positive note the temperature gauge started rising on the instrument cluster so i guess that means both the sensor and the gauge itself are functioning so that's cool what's not cool though are ghosts taking home inside your motorcycle and turning on the radiator fan at random oh why is it that when i touch the throttle cables the fan turns on okay there's got to be a short somewhere or something holy crap i did a bit of digging around and stumbled across the coolant sensor right here i thought grounding this might trigger the fan but no it just pegged the coolant gauge i guess that verifies the gauge is functioning though oh it turns out that the short was being caused by this little wire right here and the reason this loose wire exists at all is because of the coolant temperature switch this is what triggers the fan to come on i didn't recognize it at first because the wire that's supposed to be there has been totally ripped out this blue wire goes into the harness right here and this green wire just bolts directly to ground right there that's probably what that switch was for on the little bezel it's absolutely what it was for if the wires being the perfect length wasn't enough proof the missing terminals are still very attached to the switch i was wondering way back in part one when tearing these panels off while this was here now i know it's just a quick and dirty fix to keep the bike cool funnily enough i actually found the same figs done on another gp z1000 when scouring ebay for parts now i could keep this fix on my bike but i still went ahead and bought a replacement temperature switch so while i wait for that to arrive how about i do something about the leaky thermostat housing [Music] kawasaki in a cruel cruel act decided to not use any easy to remove hex bolts here even with the impact driver i still struggled a lot to the point where struggling with the impact driver was no longer an option nope that's just mangled the next course of action which is one i'm not too happy with is welding a nut to the top because the adapter plate for the cap is plastic and i didn't want to weld too close to that and mess it up after welding i sprayed it down with a water asap just to cool everything off as quickly as possible but did it work [Music] no it just broke right off all right next best thing cutting a slot into the bolt allows me to get a flat head on here so that hopefully i'm still actually able to turn it with something but i'll spare you the suspense this time didn't work this is why you don't design a vehicle with phillips head bolts well it's actually jis but the point still stands bolts holding the two halves of the housing together however are hex and should turn a lot easier right okay when i turn the head the other end's not turning same for this i guess forget what i said about these probably being easier to remove yeah what about this one way over here just a support bolt that one broke too well there's still one more bolt oh wow this one's actually coming off i'm glad it was the last one because it was the first one it would have given me false hope for the rest of them i probably would have been more mad than i am now i was trying to remain optimistic hoping that i could extract the five out of six bolts that sheared off inside the casting but guess what nothing worked well i'm having no luck with this um i just realized also that i totally broke this part of the housing i'm having no luck getting these out if it's like 20 bucks on ebay i'm probably just gonna buy a used one well apparently a replacement of this is only 14 on ebay with shipping so however it's still not here yet so i'm gonna work on some other stuff maybe i'll work on shamelessly plugging this brand new fingerprints workshop merch i'm wearing this shirt commemorates this 1986 gpz project now you may be asking why does it say fpw when clearly the initialism should be fw based on the capitalization you use in your video's intro [Music] if you want to get one there will be a link in the description but in the meantime i guess i can also work on replacing the very broken radiator fan to do that i need to pull the radiator and to do that i need to drain the coolant now there is a drain bolt but i'm too scared that i'll shear that off too so just yanking the hoses off is the next best option let's see if this little container is going to be enough that is not enough and also there's just straight up concentrate yeah this does look very green but next i remove both the driver side horn and the driver side horn after undoing the bolts and unplugging the fan the whole thing can be removed this has definitely seen better days but not to worry i actually bought a replacement fan for this well over a year ago but before i swap it in i might as well do a flush first honestly everything came out crystal clear so i guess it should be good to go i noticed that the inlet pipe was a little distorted so i did my best to rectify that it's no spongebob squarepants circle but it's definitely better than what it was i also realized the protective mesh was a little messed up but after a little bit of it looked a lot better so all that's left now is to install the new fan um where is the ground strap for this one on the original one this little ground strap connects directly to this negative terminal on the plug and on this one the replacement one i bought same exact part number doesn't have the ground strap so i guess not all of these had what probably is a redundant ground just to be sure that it gets the ground and it's more than likely okay to not run it but i could just swap the blades right well actually hold on let's test this i reattached the negative terminal of the battery because i removed it for welding and then i grounded out the switch wire alright well that clearly works so i guess i don't need to have that redundant ground strap on there so cool after securing it in place i brought it back over to the bike and reinstalled everything i was about to install the new temperature switch that just arrived but i realized um how exactly is the radiator grounded if it's rubber isolated the answer it's not at least not without that redundant ground strap i four winds yeah that strap wasn't for the fan it was for the radiator so i pulled everything back off uninstalled the fan and swapped the good blade over to the original fan and hopefully that should work fine [Music] and with the fan plugged back in everything checked out oh yeah finally now to install the new switch kawasaki sealed the original one with an o-ring one that is very much now toast but luckily one of the replacement o-rings i got for the carburetors seemed to be a match the only thing more embarrassing than incorrectly crimping this bullet connector onto the wire is even attempting to do it in the first place because i realized while editing this that all i had to do was unplug the wire here and plug in the switch oh well it's not really a problem it's just an extra wire i guess i can test if the fan works oh right and that can be done with the introduction of a little bit of heat all right well let me just say that holy crap that fan bearing sounds absolutely terrible i thought the right thing to do was to use the ground that is built into the wiring harness but i'm thinking i might take everything back apart put the replacement fan back on that actually sounded good and just add my own little ground strap and that's exactly what i did i ended up splicing together the ground wire from the diy switch repair to the oem radiator ground wire i swapped the good fan blade back onto the good motor and reinstalled everything back here and back on the bike i connected the other end of the ground wire to the upper radiator mount the metal collar of the mount squeezes the terminal against the frame so it should be a good connection and it is i reinstalled the temperature switch with a new new o-ring because i'm pretty sure i just burnt up the last one but that's the cooling part of the cooling system completely wrapped up nice it's time to take a look back at the thermostat the broken parts and stuck bolts are still very broken and still very stuck but that's okay because the 14 dollar replacement arrived unfortunately it came already mostly disassembled all i had to do was remove the adapter plate i didn't capture the full process but basically i torched the hell out of the aluminum casting to really loosen up the bolts and i gave them hell with the impact driver now the adapter plate for the cap got pretty toasty and hacked up in the process so i'll be swapping that out with the original one the new housing is in pretty decent shape but it looks pretty bad i mentioned in the last episode working on the carburetors that a great way to clean up parts like this is by vapor blasting and that taylor over at the classic octane youtube channel has some really great videos on the process something that i completely forgot about until right now is that taylor's workshop is only one wipe transition away [Music] when i asked permission to use some clips for the last video he asked me if i just wanted to come over and try out blasting myself and i said okay like i already mentioned he has a whole lot of videos that feature the whole process of april blasting so i definitely recommend heading over to his channel to check that out and all of his projects but the basic gist of the vapor blasting process is taking a good long look at the very very nasty pieces loading them into the booth and just going to town on them [Music] it's definitely slow going but it really couldn't be easier but that's pretty much it really the only bad thing is it's pretty much impossible to see anything after a water bath and a blowout with compressed air off camera the parts look like this getting these to look like essentially brand new parts is all thanks to taylor so thank you taylor again i'll have his channel linked in the description below these parts turned out just absolutely incredible compared to the older ones the ones that the bike originally came with it's just night and day seriously they look so great in comparison i'm actually pretty glad that i broke the original ones because i wouldn't have ended up with these otherwise but all right enough blabbing let's go put these on the bike well hold on you gotta put it back together first with brand new hardware and o-rings of course the cleaned up thermostat was dropped in place the new o-ring added then the parts were secured together the only seal i didn't replace is the radiator cap and that kind of worried me at first if it being old wasn't bad enough there's also the fact that the plastic mating surface that seals against is a tad bit splotchy due to welding right next to it i pulled out the myvac which you might remember from my brother's twin turbo wait i still haven't released the videos in that series yet i gotta stop doing this but it wasn't wanting to hold any vacuum and then i remembered that this thing is a piece of crap because even with the end completely capped off it still wasn't holding any vacuum but it did pass the tongue pressure test though seems fine so we'll find out soon enough the cap adapter plate was screwed in place with brand new bolts after adding in the new o-ring of course and lastly the bleed nipple and the temperature sensor were installed and that is the thermostat housing wrapped up now to throw it back on the bike plum it all up secure it in place and plug in the sensor before i get ahead of myself and add coolant and start the bike there's one last part of the cooling system that needs to be addressed and that is the overflow tank or lack thereof the radiator cap has a pressure relief valve built into it so when the coolant heats up and pressurizes some coolant is ejected out of the system so it doesn't over pressurize when the engine's off and things cool back down the pressure decreases in the system creating a vacuum and sucks the ejected coolant back in if there's no tank to store the coolant it would just suck air into the system and that's a no-no now the coolant tank is specific to this bike and the only replacements i could find are on ebay from germany where the price is 50 minimum plus shipping and with that whatever wait times there are for things coming from overseas so it does not make sense financially or temporarily to go with that route so instead i got some paper and tape this paper tube is roughly the size of an inexpensive generic overflow tank that's available from amazon i wanted to make sure i could actually find a spot for it before i make the purchase though i threw the front fairing back on just to make sure there'd be plenty of clearance to have the tank where i want it and i think i want it right here a couple days later this shiny thing arrived at my door and the plan is to attach it to the subframe bolts right here and to do that i'm pretty sure we're gonna have to get a little bit funky [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] oh my goodness i've said it before but i'll say it again life moves pretty it's no nick blackhurst creation but hey i've only just started to dip my toes into the world of bracket fabrication so i'm still proud of it if you're wondering why i bothered to use the supplied brackets is to tuck the tank inward as far as possible decreasing the stick out by the length of the radius but even with that there still might be some clearance issues with the side body panels now it's possible that you're wondering ronnie with this coolant overflow tank sticking out like a sore thumb how in the world are you gonna fit the body panels back on the bike well i'm not i said in the description as well as in the pinned comment on part one that this is not going to be a full restoration but i'm just going to give it enough love to get it back on the road safely and reliably i've learned with the fiero that driving it now is just as much fun as driving it when i first got it going way before i restored the entire thing i mean i wouldn't go back and change anything i love everything i did to the car but going forward i don't think i want to do that with every single project that i start if i can enjoy this thing just getting it going safely and reliably then i think that's all i want to do to it but if those reasons aren't cutting it for you there's also the fact that i have a finite amount of time left in this barn and i have other projects that i want to work on too so full restoration is not possible even if i did want to well it's possible but that means i couldn't do other stuff and i want to do other stuff other stuff like adding coolant and this stuff is silicate free which is apparently what motorcycles like i didn't even realize that until someone mentioned in a comment which is after i used this stuff guess i got lucky to mitigate air in the system i popped the plug from the water pump added coolant until it started pouring out just a little bit plugged it back up and continued filling it up is that leaking from there or is that just no that's absolutely leaking from that hose [Music] if you already left a comment on this video pointing out the pitting on the housing and how it might be an issue for sealing go ahead and award yourself 10 points but also take away 10 points because you're the kind of person that leaves feedback on videos before you finish watching them but the solution to fix this jb weld it really is the answer to everything after slathering it on both the inlet and the outlet and letting it cure overnight i got to work sanding it smooth getting rid of cavities has never been easier but just to be doubly sure there's not going to be any leaks i went ahead and bought a brand new length of hose and brand new hose clamps in addition to the new clamps being cleaner than the rusty factory ones they are also wider so theoretically they should provide a more evenly distributed clamping force making a better seal and it looks like they have i'm seeing no leaks whatsoever [Laughter] [Applause] okay batteries charged let's try again i let it run for a good long while and the temperature gauge is reading about halfway so this fan should be kicking on any minute hey there it is very cool pun fully intended after a while the fan shut off automatically and the coolant overflow tank is working exactly as it should so yeah i guess that wraps up this cooling system adventure i can finally run the bike for an extended period of time without risk of doing any damage and that means i can finally vacuum balance these carbs and really dial them in by this point you probably realized i'm not going to be running the factory air box if one came with the bike i absolutely would but because one didn't i'm not and because used ones are pretty pricey not to mention i still have to buy a brand new filter for it it just made way more sense to go with pod filters the carbs are already jetted for pod filters and i nixed the cleaner system that ties into the factory air box so that's all good to go but there is one more teeny tiny thing down below that i gotta take care of my pee the crankcase breather hose it was supposed to plumb up into the air box that way any oil vapor is leaving would just be sucked into the engine and burnt off instead of just venting to atmosphere so i gotta do something about this hose going nowhere the plan is to keep the little hose use one of these and connect the two with this this is a crankcase breather filter a filter specifically for what i'm doing right now it'll allow any air to escape the engine if need be but it'll capture and retain any oil vapors in the process originally i wanted to just stick it right on the nipple of the casting but the room i had available didn't really agree with that plan after cutting the tube down cleaning up the edges and securing these down with definitely the correct clamps on both sides i popped it on the bike and clamped it in place not too shabby and you can also see i finished this area up by pulling the decrepit battery tinder off the toasty but now we can take care of the pod filters which couldn't be easier to install for the anal retentive among you i'm sorry about that one filter having the sticker on the opposite side of the logo but okay time to balance the carbs and syncing these up is the exact same process as it was in the last episode by adjusting these three screws on the butterfly valves the outer screws adjust the ratio between the outer pairs and the middle screw adjust the ratio between the pair of pairs but instead of eyeballing how open the butterfly valves are we're going to measure the airflow with this kit right here now out of the box the dials aren't perfectly even with each other they all measure the exact same but their baselines have to be adjusted by turning these little screws with that done the vacuum caps can be popped off the carbs and the hoses can be slid on now the idle should be higher than normal when doing this so i brought it up to around 2000 rpm then all of the valves are opened up enough to where it's reading accurately but not too open to where the needle is bouncing around all crazily the name of the game here is just to match the needles up and right off the bat they're not too far off of what they should be carbs 1 and 2 already look perfectly in sync but carbs 3 and 4 are a little bit off so i adjusted the screw until everything looked good and of course doing that is absolutely going to affect the idle speed since you're changing how open the butterfly valves are so i brought the idle back down to 2000 and honestly these are all right on the money we're good to go i brought the idle back down pulled the gauges off and cap the nipples [Music] but to actually feel like i just got a motorcycle properly running and not just some machine on a bench i threw on the gas tank and hopped up on there [Music] all right this is absolutely fantastic the only thing that would make this better if i could actually write it but with there still being 19 year old tires that can't hold air zero functioning brakes a chain that's rusty as hell and front forks that are clapped out i wouldn't trust this thing going down my driveway and back and even if i did the bike is still tethered by the iv drip meaning it's going nowhere there is still a lot to do before this bike is ready to hit the streets i guess time for me to get back to work so until next time i'll see you guys later [Music]

Channel: Ronald Finger

Views: 294,979

Keywords: kawasaki, motorcycle, restoration, ninja, 1000, carburetors, carbs, fuel leak, cooling system, radiator, thermostat, fan, balance, sync, vacuum

Id: Ys68IUNsjlc

Length: 33min 9sec (1989 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021