Handsome in the 1970s. Even more handsome today
With a bike this old, many things tend to have happened. The original field coil alternator had been replaced with this single phase jobbie…
The switchgear wiring went through the bars. This looks original, but only the left cluster was actually designed to do it. The right was off another Kawasaki. I repaired the cables, fitted a new sleeve and re-routed it outside the bars
You have to pay attention with an old bike. This is the plug for the dash. The top middle hole is damaged, so the pin pushed out. No option but to replace
Scuff mark on the rotor was caught just in time
You’ll have to imagine the side panels and seat at this stage
Geoff’s Kawasaki Z650
Geoff got this Z650 as a way to get round the ULEZ charge. But first he had to sort it out.
He’d already stripped the carbs and bought a pattern wiring loom. The trouble was figuring out how the loom was supposed to fit. Which is how it ended up at the RR workshop.
Pattern looms are very affordable, but in my experience most of them need some sort of compensatory operation to get them operational. This one was no exception. It appeared to be for a different model Z650, and turned out to be an inch or two shorter than ideal. But the basic connections were all there. I ended up extending the switch cluster cables, making up new fuse box connections, and adding an earth or two.
The detail pics show the kind of thing you find on an old bike. They are the inevitable result of several decades of use and storage. Dealing with them takes a lot longer than fitting the loom. But if you don’t sort them out the bike will keep on throwing up problems.
One thing easy to miss was the Dyna S ignition. It had been fitted so that one of the pickups touched the magnet rotor. I re-jigged it to equalise the rotor/magnet clearance. With a bit of luck the damage will have done no harm.
Geoff was delighted that the whole bike worked.
The indicators were a bit dicky. One look at the contacts explains why
Fortunately they came up a treat
As did the wiper contact
A pattern loom usually looks a bit more random than a custom one, but it all works fine
Success!
