Whymee's #1 & #2 Restore

[Whymee]

Agreed gents. Something is not right.

I have rebuilt the calipers, stainless lines, new motul fluid & bled. New pads, not my fav EBC HH though. Old Master.

My other RZ has the same set up other than the addition of a FZ07 master. I have no complaints with that system.

I will have to dig into it.

[nokturnal]

old master (not rebuilt?) and pads that have not bedded in to rotors will be an issue to start... also may need to bleed more?

typically i will bleed it to a safe place and then go for a couple rides... a few more bubbles always come out.

[Whymee]

old master (not rebuilt?) and pads that have not bedded in to rotors will be an issue to start... also may need to bleed more?

typically i will bleed it to a safe place and then go for a couple rides... a few more bubbles always come out.

Totally agree!

I think I am going to throw on a FZ-07 master, like I did to the other RZ.

[JonW]

Whymee, I see you sent me a PM but I cant get to it as the PM system isnt working right and I cant delete or move any messages for some reason, can you drop me an email instead thru my website? I'll try the PM system again later in the day but for now its broken as far as i can tell :/

[Whymee]

Whymee, I see you sent me a PM but I cant get to it as the PM system isnt working right and I cant delete or move any messages for some reason, can you drop me an email instead thru my website? I'll try the PM system again later in the day but for now its broken as far as i can tell :/

And I cannot get your site to work....

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Yamaha-NOS-29L ... Swxv1ejhqN

[JonW]

Cool thanks mate.

Ive no idea whats wrong with that as all my sites are down, must be ipage :(

[kobra]

My RZ front brakes are not particularly strong either and that's with freshly honed rotors, braided ss lines, and Vesrah sintered pads. I think a smaller master cylinder would really help since there is not much modulation. Then again, I'm used to supersport brakes with 4 piston calipers which will lock the front tire with 1 finger haha. Those might snap the stock fork though...

[Whymee]

I just wanted to say, that after a coupla years, I might, just might, tinker with my RZ's this winter. Then again maybe not.

Carry on...

[85RZwade]

If we're voting, I'm in support of "tinker"

[Whymee]

Well it has been a couple years since I fiddled with the R/W/B RZ. I did remember the last time I rode it for any distance (2 mi.) that the clutch felt odd and slipped a tad.

I decided a couple weeks ago to tackle the clutch and an oil leak on the left side.

My oil leak was coming from the neutral light plate. This is easy, I thought, order a new plate & o-ring.

Tore apart the clutch. Not being able to remember if I bought new items at the time of rebuild, as they did not look new, I ordered FZ1000 fibers, 3 FZ1000 springs, 3 Stock RZ springs and steels. I couldnt find a part number for the steels that would fit without the "divots".

Going back together I happen to grab the basket and twisted it, while it was mounted on the bike. It moved side to side approx 15mm. Hummm...

No worries I thought as I have a Wiseco Billet basket laying in wait. Took the stock basket apart after grinding off the rivets and punching them out. Attempted to fit the new basket to the gear I took off the stock basket. No go. The small gear would not go thru the center hole in the basket WTF. So dumbass me takes the new basket over to my lathe and proceedes to open up the center hole to accept the gear. trial fitting it together I realize that I was trying to make the gears fit backwards on the basket. And lets be clear I was not under the influence of anything except local air quality. What a senior moment. I ruined the basket...

Order a stock basket. 154ish usd.

This morning I go out to complete the tasks at hand. First thing up is drain the old fuel out of the tank. I am just letting fuel drain out of the 'cock, cause I have the time. I go to remove the gas cap and I find out I have no key...

WTF, I thought. I have had this cap on & off many times since I rebuilt the machine and I could have swore that I used the ignition key to remove said cap. I still hold this belief as I type.

Replaced the neutral cap & o-ring.

Now I am headed out to get that cap off after a search on a tutorial on how to accomplish this task...

[Whymee]

So I read about taking the cap off without a key. I pried the silver cap off the top, but did not see the snap ring (or any ring) to remove to get the key set out. So I proceeded to the shade tree way of removing the cap. Drill all the way around the key set and pry. That worked. I have a couple extra caps laying around and I selected one that had a key. In removing items from one to the other I noticed I had a ball left over. I never seen it drop out. It never got put back in...

Put the machine back together and adjusted the oil pump...

The spec is 10 thousandths at idle. Now we all know about the 2 lines that you align with the pin at idle. I always went a tad above. As the machine was idling I proceeded to adjust the cable for this 10 tho. spec, regardless of the alignment marks. My cable was too long. Not enough adjustment. Went back to my crusty, but trusty lathe and made a spacer to go between the cable and the case to take up the slack. Adj. to spec. The hash marks were way below the alignment pin. Humm...

It is my guess that I need to adjust the 2 upper throttle cables to take up the slack that the oil pump is seeing.? I also have a oil pump hiding out in my NOS parts bin. I could try that to see if it is shimmed any better... I will put that on my "to do list".

Now its time to try out my clutch...

[Whymee]

Just got back from a 75 miler. Rode it to where I work (today was my day off). Figured if I had to wrench on it, that would be as good as any place.

It has been several years since I put any miles on a RZ. I forgot how smooth the motor is. Light and flickable. I fell in love all over again! I have stock gearing on this one. I can see where it is advantageous to drop a tooth on the countershaft sprocket. I was going 70mph on the interstate just right below the powerband, at about 5.5K rpm.

Clutch preformed flawlessly!

When I left the house I had a tad of a high idle, horns sounded funny and the tach did not work. When I arrived at work, horn was fine, but I noticed that my left shoe was wet. This will come into play on the ride home. Checked my plugs, they were a tad rich, but still brown. Perfect. Set the idle.

I put a magnetic tank bag on the scooter before I left the house. To my dismay, as I was leaving the dealership (work) I forgot to zip up the flap. Lost a couple items, most notably my paycheck. Turned around and looked to no avail. Went back to work & had them stop payment on that check and issue me another one.

So I head on down the road. The good news is the tach started working! Yay!! At about the 7 mile mark, while I was on the interstate, I buzzed the ole RZ up to about 80 mph. I looked down and water (antifreeze?) was blowing all over. Pulled over the next exit, at a Sheets, and discovered my rad cap was very loose. Tightened up the cap and on down the road I go. I was about 2 needles from the red on the gauge for the first mile or so. Luckily I filled the rezzy with coolant to the high mark when I left the house. Fairly fast it dropped to half way on the gauge & I buzzed on home.

All & all I had a great time, minus a couple fopaux, but that was totally on me. The bike preformed flawlessly!

Now I need to get #2 out of hibernation and see if that Toomey motor was worth it!

Blue skies

Stan

[Whymee]

I woke up this morning and thought, today is the day to get the Toomey motored machine started.

The motor work was done by ED Toomey of ET Designs sometime in the last quarter of 2019.

This consists of:
Level 2 Cylinder Porting & match power valves to exhaust port
Level 2 Cylinder head mods
Level 2 Case to Cylinder transfer port match
Modify Reed cages (stock) and intake manifolds and install TZ pedals

At the time i did get it running, but was still jetting it leaner until I ran out of leaner sizes to try. Went to the Toomey UNI type of filter/boot and battery box. I was trying to use the stock box 'cuz I really distaste the added intake noise. That did not pan out...

Today I slipped in 155/42/JJH -3/ 3.5 slides into the PWK28's. Motor cranked right up on choke, bled oil lines and shut her off.

Started the bike outside in anticipation of a couple seconds of road time. Sans helmet even. After taking it off choke and blipped the throttle a coupla times, my first though is this trying to sieze? Was VERY lethargic off idle. Did not want to gain RPM's. Did not want to idle (off choke). Did not go past a tad off idle. Barely on the pilot even.

Decided to look at plugs and find my Toomey invoice as it had jetting specs which I did not follow, as I remember it was something weird (to me) about the setup.

Plugs were rich (BPR8ES I think).
Toomey recommends 155/45/AOO/3.5.

Now, I could find no info on the AOO needles, let alone to purchase them. I did find (Jets R Us) where to buy, but no info on taper. Site did say Similar to JJH.

Brings me (us) to the present time as of this typing.

It just popped into my head of the advice that would be given from the brain trust. Call the builder, dumbass...

[Whymee]

Eddie was not around. Left a message asking about the differences between the JJH & the AOO needles.

Without outside assistance I have to start somewhere. Jetting I usually start low & work my way up. Against my gut feeling, I threw in a 45 to replace the 42. My reasoning, better safe than sorry, at least starting out. I felt the bike was rich. Bloody rich.
Started on choke. Few seconds took choke off. To my amazement it idled and had some throttle response from the pilot! Glad I went against my guts!

Went out on a helmet-less cruise. Air screw (1.25T) and pilot (45) seemed close. Did not get off the pilot.

Time for a real test, but alas, this RZ has no plates. DO I switch plates from the other one (just for testing, yanno) or do I do the correct thing and plate it and insure. Or I could park it in the corner for another 2 years...

[kpke]

It sounds like you're making progress on the jetting. I hope you get it dialed in properly.

I know a guy that has a bunch of RZ350's. He lives in the silly state of California and because the registration fees are so expensive in California, $144 each even on these antique motorcycles, and this makes him quite irritated to pay this fee to ride a few times a year on each bike, most of the bikes remain on non-op. He has been known to do the plate swap to keep the fluids circulating. Crazy guy.

Enjoy your ride.