This is part three of the ongoing saga of working on my old Z650 (my expectation of a couple of weeks just to get the bike back on the road has turned into a restoration lasting well over a year !).
I had decided to work on seeing if I could get the original engine up and running as a spare that could be dropped into the frame if the one currently in there broke or was no good.
In the end, I have come to the conclusion that while it could be done, there are a lot of significant issues that I'm not sure I have the equipment or knowledge to solve.
But I've got a second spare engine, which is more complete and has less known problems, although it has been under the porch standing for years and will need more cleaning than engine 1. I took it out of the bike years ago when one of the screw flanges for the manifold input broke off. Fixing that is a job which would require the head to be stripped down, alloy welded and the screw hole then re-drilled and tapped. The welding and re-drilling are beyond what I've got the tools to deal with !
Hoping to make it easier to work on this engine, I bought an engine stand - I wrote a post about it - My Christmas Present To Myself
Having put the stand together, I realised it's really designed to work with an engine winch, which I don't have. So what I did was lie it down on it's side and loosely bolt the engine into it...
All images in this post are my own photos
Getting it upright was a job for lots of pure brute force. My wife helped (she's strong !) and it was definitely a two person job.
As you can see, the thing is filthy ! Although it has been under the porch, which has meant it has (mostly) stayed dry, it has picked up a huge amount of wind-blown debris. It's also clearly a habitat for a large number of spiders, and I can't rule out the possibility of mice nesting in the combustion chambers.
An advantage of the engine stand is that it's possible to tilt the engine. It was only once I did that that I discovered it is so heavy it jammed the locking pin, so it will be a two person job to tilt it back again. I think the engine is actually so heavy that it's right at the limit of what the stand can handle.
So how does this engine compare to the first one ?
After taking these photos, I gave the engine a good brush down with a stiff but non-abrasive brush 9actually, it's a plastic dishwashing brush), just to get most of the loose debris off. Then I had to push it back under the porch and cover it because the incessant rain started up again. I know we need the rain to keep the garden green, but freezing cold heavy rain nearly every day for a month is getting a bit much !
When it stops raining, I'll carry on with the project and post an update.....
