KAWASAKI Z1325
Ralph talks recycling, securing the battery box and electrics for the very special Z1325.
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Ralph Ferrand sorts out some electrickery bracketry!
Previously, I explained how I had modified a battery box from a stock Zed to fit in this big block special. There was only one place in the frame where the battery could go but the fit between the top frame rails was as tight as a Yorkshireman deprived of his natural sense of generosity, but it was the only place it could go. I nosed around my stock of steel and came across some 3 x 20 x 20mm angle iron that was perfect for the job: yup, I re-purposed it, rather than sending it for ‘recycling’. Like keeping our old machines on the road, this is probably more environmentally friendly than melting it down for something else, same as scrapping my old 1977 Z1000 A1 rather than making me a newer, more fuel efficient one! I have piles of old bits of metal which I make into new and useful things. A lot of current metal stock now comes from China and is cheaper than the stuff we used to make in Britain, but the quality is not what it was and using bits of old metal often gets you a better end result. An old friend of mine had a great expression – ‘never let a bin go by’; like me he would regularly dive into skips to rescue items that could have the potential to be transformed into something else. Scrap yards are a great source of cut price quality metal. Many contain off-cuts from engineering and fabrication workshops that can be bought for an inflated scrap price – but still massively cheaper than purchasing from metal stock holders. There are companies that sell short lengths of metals to Diy-ers with a huge mark-up on the cost of full bar lengths, but I hate paying too much. To create the cross member supports for the battery box, I firstly measured up the job and then made a template from a piece of very thick packaging board. I initially made it well oversize so that I could fine tune it to fit perfectly.
Once I was satisfied with the template I covered the donor metal with marking blue and then transferred the exact shape by laying the template over the angle iron coated in marking blue and scribed around its contours. I sawed out the rough shape with a good old fashioned hacksaw – sadly there is no laser cutting equipment in my workshop. The final dimensions and curves were then produced with hand files. A hand file can be a far more accurate tool than often given credit for; in the right hands of course! The supports were then held precisely in place with some G-clamps and I set about them with the TIG welder. Once all had cooled down I fitted the battery box in place to make sure that if I drilled the cross members where I had marked them that the mountings would be in the correct place. I had measured everything precisely, but the old adage I was taught during my aircraft apprenticeship, ‘measure twice, cut once’ has always looked after me. In this case all was fine, so I centre punched the hole centres and carefully drilled the holes with a 2.5mm pilot drill and then the 5mm tapping drill. I cut the threads firstly with a first taper M6 x 1 tap and then with the final plug tap. Both taps were coated with Rocol RTD cutting compound which doubles the tool life and makes it a damned sight easier. When tapping holes it is of paramount importance that the tap is held perfectly perpendicular to the work piece. The next job was to make some electrical panels for either side in the triangular shaped spaces behind the side panels. The brackets had to be steel as they were to be welded to the frame, but I decided to make the actual panels from aluminium alloy as it’s far easier to fabricate, is lighter and doesn’t rust. I was using a premade loom for a Z900 A4. This was primarily because the Z1000 harness had the switch wiring running down the inside of the handlebars. They were connected into the loom with eleventy billion bullet connectors which is both untidy and bulky. The earlier Zeds in common with 99.9% of motorcycles ran the handlebar switch wiring outside the bars which causes far less trouble in the long term. Because the wiring is rammed into the bars with quite a few tight turns, particularly where the wiring exits the tubing, there is always the opportunity for wire breakages and shorts, which is probably why Kawasaki Heavy Industries did not continue hiding the wiring in the bars for very long.
On my Z1000A1 I made my own new loom using thin-wall wire and ran the switch gear wiring inside the bars; God alone knows how KHI managed to get the standard insulation wire with PVC sleeving though the bars and out the holes! It’s not a mistake I would make again. I am not sure why they bothered with the bullets as there is no way in this world that you would get the switch wiring through the handlebars with the bullets installed. I think from memory I used 2.8mm multi blocks instead on mine, as used on previous models. Under the side-panels of a stock Zed you have four coloured sockets into which are plugged the feed from the alternator together with the oil pressure and neutral indicator light switches, the regulator, the rectifier and the connection to the main wiring harness. When using a combined regulator/rectifier (reg/rec) one of the colour sockets remains empty. Also under the left-hand side-panel I wanted to fit the reg/rec, the starter motor solenoid and the flasher relay. I made up a card template first, into which I could fit all the components and ensure that everything would fit and make any adjustments required. I also needed to make a lug so that the lower side panel spigot had somewhere to attach. Making the outer shape of the panel was fairly easy; I simply transferred the shape from the template and sawed it out from a sheet using my band saw and then cleaned it up with files and emery cloth. Cutting out the rectangular holes for the four sockets presented quite a challenge and the originals would almost certainly have been made on a massive powerful press tool; not practical for a one off. It took a bit of head scratching, but in the end I decided to screw the shaped panel to a piece of hard wood which I then clamped in the machine vice of my milling machine. I selected a small diameter slot drill (3mm) and fitted it in a collet chuck in the mill. I had carefully and accurately marked out the four rectangles; aluminium alloy sheet usually comes with a protective film on both sides, but to mark-up precisely I cut it away around the holes and applied marking blue before scribing the outlines. I got the slot drill set up just inside one corner. All I had to do then was move the cutter the width of the hole minus the diameter of the slot drill and then repeat to cut all four sides. My little mill has what is called a DRO (Digital Read Out) which displays the position of the X, Y and Z-axis of the milling machine. On mine X is side to side of the table, Y is the back and forth of the table and the Z-axis is the cutter head’s up and down movement. On better milling machines the Z-axis is usually the table going up and down.
On big manly mills the DRO is a purposebuilt display box, but mine has a cheapo tablet being used as a display. The tablet display is connected to the reading scales by Bluetooth. It’s not perfect by a long way, but made this particular operation very easy. In the old days you would have to move the table by using the scales on the handles, keeping a tally of turns of the handles, but with a DRO all you do is zero the scale where you start and then wind the handles until the desired measurement shows on the display. I hope one day to be able to afford a better milling machine, but in the meantime this baby mill is massively better than no machine and an improvement on its predecessor. With such a small slot drill in aluminium I was running a very high spindle speed. Once the holes had been cut out, I needed to make a slight kink in the plate to get the correct angle for the bottom spigot of the said panel, which I made using my bench folder. The spigot would ultimately be gripped by a big fat rubber grommet. I fitted the reg/rec using two 6mm stainless bolts. Starter solenoids are usually rubber mounted and on old Zeds they tend to use the type that sit in a rubber basket which is supported using a pair of flat fingers. On a stock Zed these are attached to the side of the battery box, but due to the lack of space caused by the monoshock, this wasn’t an option on this bike so it had to sit next to the reg/rec. Because the fingers needed to be so thin I used stainless steel sheet for this part, as aluminium that thin would not have had the strength. I cut this out and hand filed the shape, before bending the ‘fingers’ using my folder. I had pre-drilled the holes to attach it to the panel before folding. I decided to use anodised aluminium pop rivets to secure it as it shouldn’t need to be removed once fitted. Under the right-hand side-panel I wanted to fit a bank of modern blade fuses which are massively more reliable than the dreadful old glass fuses the bike was originally fitted with, and are so hard to get your hands on in an emergency situation. This required another big rectangular hole so again I used the milling machine to cut it out in the same manner as before. Because there were holes required for the securing bolts I didn’t need the G-clamps this time. I wanted the connections for the fuse holder to enter from behind, but I didn’t want it to stand very proud of the panel, so I used a pair of stainless countersunk screws which I bolted though the panel to act as studs. I used a series of nuts and washers to secure the fuse carrier with the minimum amount protruding from the panel that would still permit the fitting of the clear cover. Next month – brakes.