New guy, old guy

Hey all New guy here. Got a KZ1000A from my old Air Force buddy and I'm going to get it back going after sitting since 1982 in his barn in upper Minnesota. Pretty much all there but pretty rusty and corroded. With the help of all my new friends here, I'll try to get it going as a remembrance of him and our friendship over the years. I was an aircraft sheetmetal mechanic for 30 years and worked mostly on military A/C so I kinda know which end of a hammer to grab. I've been retired 4 years now and loving it. I have some questions I'll be looking for answers to, so I'll try and find the right threads to search before starting a new one. thanks in advance for the help. 

Welcome to the asylum 

Welcome to our version of fun.   The combined knowledge and experience here will help with what you've gotten yourself into!   

Welcome from the UK

Welcome to KZRider...

Welcome from GA. There's some good riding in TN. 

WoodheadB2 wrote:

Hey all New guy here. Got a KZ1000A from my old Air Force buddy and I'm going to get it back going after sitting since 1982 in his barn in upper Minnesota. Pretty much all there but pretty rusty and corroded. With the help of all my new friends here, I'll try to get it going as a remembrance of him and our friendship over the years. I was an aircraft sheetmetal mechanic for 30 years and worked mostly on military A/C so I kinda know which end of a hammer to grab. I've been retired 4 years now and loving it. I have some questions I'll be looking for answers to, so I'll try and find the right threads to search before starting a new one. thanks in advance for the help. 

Welcome to KZR Woodhead! congrats on your (new bike) I bought a 77 KZ1000 not long ago and after seven months of tinkering with it during my retirement it turned quite nice.
Below is a link to my thread you might find helpful, your bike sounds like mine when I got it good luck and have fun bringing it back from the dead. Show us some pics of what your working with.

www.kzrider.com/forum/13-bike-related/61...and-i-blame-you-guys



 

Welcome to the best place for kz knowledge. Ask and you shall receive. 

Thanks all. Appreciate it immensely. My KZ is an early 1000A that is complete but really rough. I am the third owner. Pretty much every part is rusted or corroded. All of the rubber is cracked and/or dry rotted. So I bought it with the idea of restoring it to like new in honor of my really good friend and brother in arms. But it would need basically everything replaced to do that. Every chrome piece had from small pitting to complete scaling. The aluminum parts were all salvageable and all have been cleaned and polished. So the prices of replacement OEM or knock-off parts made that unfeasable. It would be a decent "survivor " but it would be very rough. So, I have been blown away by the restomod superbike thing and I thought "why not". For all the purests out there, I haven't chopped it up to bad. It can be taken back to original.   But I don't ever plan on selling it, so I decided to make it cool in my eyes. I will probably post a thread of the build in the project section as soon as I figure out how to post pics (pics are worth a thousand words, ya know). Again thanks for the support! 

See the post "posting pics is easy"  it helped an old guy like me learn to post pictures. 

When I retired a couple years ago I decided to revive (not restore) my 1974 Z1 that had been stored for 20 years in less than ideal conditions. (LOTS of patina, to be kind).  A lot of cleaning, some paint touch-ups and more than a little part replacement, (used where available and some aftermarket),  I now have updated the hot rod bike it was in the 80s and 90s before I put it away.  The guys here on KZR helped immensely with their advice.  See some of my posts in "Why a KZ before another motorcycle" thread for some looks at my project.
Once you get started it will become fun.   

Hey sf4t7: WOW! Yours started out much worse than mine. Mine was just bad enough that no parts were "nut and bolt, frame up restoration" quality. So I went with restoring it to my idea. I'm going to post my endeavor in the projects section as soon s I get my pics together and figure out how to properly post them. 

Thanks Woodhead.  The after pics aren't up close because it's still a "20 footer" - kinda rough around the edges, but for now that fits with a sort of barn find theme.  The plan was to ride it again without waiting on a 2 year plus restoration project.  Besides, I hotrodded it in the early 80's, so it will never be back to "original".  After a couple of riding seasons I plan to take the motor and wiring out of the frame to thoroughly clean, repaint, re wire, restore the cases finish, re spoke wheels, etc.  I guess it could be called half finished now.  But I get to ride it.