This is what Lisa looked like when I got her. She was in almost perfect condition. No dents, no scratches, overall super clean and under 8000 miles on the odometer. Tires had dry rot, but not a big deal.
As in most cases, the ZX did not run. She cranked fine but just would not start. This was carburetor related because some starter fluid fired her right up. From the previous owner I know that the second gear has an issue, which means transmission needs to be fixed - big job. I am a big fan of old full fairing bikes and since the plan is to keep her around for a bit, I am ok with putting in the work.
Cleaning Up and Replacing...
Even though this bike is very clean, there is always something that is either not correct or broken. Surprisingly there was only little wrong with the bike. The rear fender was chopped, so I replaced it with an original one. While I had the front end off, I upgraded the fork springs. All brakes worked but I still rebuilt them. I also gave Lisa new clutch friction plates as well as springs. The only other thing was to replace the tool pouch. The old one was beat up. Other than the above, the bike only got a good detailing. Looks pretty good now...
Rebuilding the engine...
The bike has a second gear issue and an awful metallic ticking coming from somewhere near cylinder #1. I decided to rebuild the engine.Half way through disassembly, I realized that looking inside the engine was the best idea ever.
It started with finding a hose clamp in intake #1. There was also a lot of metal debris everywhere. Have a look at the pics... Some were half of an inch long. Two pieces of metal were also stuck in between intake valve springs #3 and 4.
During the engine rebuild, I replaced the oil pump, all three shift forks as well as the shift drum and all gaskets and o-rings.
The manufacturing quality of the engine is pretty scary. There were a lot of grind marks inside the lower crankcase. As I was not able to find the reason for all the metal inside the engine, my guess is that they are leftovers from the factory when someone shaved down material from the cast. In the above gallery you can see a pic with marks inside the crank case. These marks were all over the case.
Last but not least, the manual has a few mistakes. The shim calculation has two numbers mixed up resulting in getting higher shim sizes than they should be.