Sickly six
Our Ralph lusted after a Z1300 and found this Godier Genoud five years back – but now it’s got a temperature!
Anyone who has read my outpourings in this honourable organ will be aware that I am a massive Zed head. Although the bike I have loved most is my 1977 Z1000A1, my Z1300 comes a close second. When I was 17, I was a dope smoking, long-haired, soap-dodging Hell’s Angel lookalike. I was also ruining my hearing with loud music and destroying my liver with seriously excessive quantities of alcohol. It was then I met some lads from Merthyr Tydfil who were doing some contract work locally. They were a bit older than me but seemed to enjoy my company and we enjoyed a few evenings in their digs frying our brains with wacky-baccy. One long haired biker chap, by the name of Roger, showed me his pride and joy, a Z1300 in holly green: I was in love. It had such an imposing presence; the English language simply does not have superlatives sufficient to cover the majesty of this mighty leviathan. Some don’t rate the behemoth, but those of us who have ridden one will tell you that they handle far better than a 640lb (290kg) dry weight motorcycle has any business to! The vast majority of tests at the time stated that the testers were very surprised that the enormous bike handled so well, though they were dogged by a lack of ground clearance and the early A1 models had complaints of oil starvation levelled at them, which Kawasaki answered by increasing the oil capacity to well over six litres, by fitting the most complex and huge sump I have ever seen on a bike. Eventually, five years ago, I had the cash to buy one, but soon found they were thin on the ground. I eventually found a very rare Godier Genoud Z1300 A5. Riding to Cornwall to look at it, with £5500 in my back pocket, I could see the thing had been neglected and the tyres were shot. But head was overruled by heart and I was soon parted from five large ones, without even a test ride! Within a mile I realised I had purchased a right dog. The steering head races were shot and the fork seals blew straight out the first time I used the front brakes, covering both fork legs in ancient oil. The brakes were also terrible… After an execrable ride home I stripped the front-end down and sorted all the failings. She soon became the bike of my dreams. I have ridden thousands of happy miles on her and she provides the most luxuriant ride of any bike I have had the pleasure to ride.
Last year I decided to take the big six to the Z1 Owners Club Yorkshire rally. The journey was plagued by her refusal to start on the button, which I put down to my neglect in the battery charging department. I then realised that she was coughing water out of her header tank, which was surely not a good thing, but I buried my head in the sand and carried on. We fuelled up and then I realised, after brimming the six gallon tank, that despite travelling 10 miles the battery was still as flat as a pancake and the overflow still seemed to be pumping out an unhealthy amount of coolant. I returned her to the workshop and that’s where she stayed until a few months ago when I finally found enough time to commit to providing her with a laying on of spanners. So here we are then. The first step was to check the battery with my costalot battery tester which unhelpfully told me the battery was as dead as a flightless bird from Mauritius. It’s a big battery so was not cheap to replace. Next job was to find out what was wrong with the cooling system. I was hoping that it would be the thermostat, as I already had a genuine Kawasaki part in stock. First job was to remove the tank, having remembered to remove the breather pipe, petrol pipe and of course the easy-to-forget fuel sender wiring connection. Once I started to lift the tank I received a reminder that it had a full six gallons of
fuel in it, which I pumped out into other bike tanks before causing further damage to my back. I then removed the drain plug from the bottom of the radiator and allowed what little was left in the coolant circuit to drain into a plastic container. Be aware that, if full, it piddles out at an alarming rate, so be prepared. I next undid the pipe clips on the various coolant hoses. Once the mounting bolts were removed the radiator came away with the greatest of ease. I disconnected the fan wiring and then unbolted the fan to give me the access I required to get at the thermostat housing, where I naively hoped the root of the problem lay. There is a solid bypass pipe that connects the thermostat to the front of the water pump housing and one must remove its circlip. The pipe can then be pushed down into the pump housing and once the two bolts are released from the thermostat cover that can be released to reveal what looked like a perfectly healthy thermostat.
Rather than muck about with heating jugs of water and messing about with thermometers I decided to check the water pump. Two cap screws were removed and away came the cover over the water pump impeller. This was where the really bad news was broadcast – the water pump impeller freely rotated with the engine being stationary, which meant that somewhere or other there was a break in the transmission of motive force to it. Bugger! Because this bike came with lots of ‘fascinating’ history, I was aware that there had been a problem with this before. Kawasaki Heavy Industries decided on what, to me, seems quite a convoluted method of driving the water pump impeller. There is a light roller chain drive from the bottom of the engine driving a sprocket on the end of a shaft running through the rear of the cylinder block. Half way along this shaft is a bevel gear that drives another on the end of the shaft running forward through the block, to drive the water pump impeller. One of the two bevel gears is made of an engineering plastic, which degrades as a result of being kept in oil over the years. Better still it can only be removed by removing the cylinder head to gain access. The icing on the cake is that the part has been unavailable from KHI for years; the last time it happened a new one had to be specially made. Making one-off gears is
very expensive and bevel gears even more so: fortunately, a German company (www.z1300.de) have them made, though you do have to send them your shaft and they’re not ‘two a euro’ either! As the bike had been passing the odd whiff of smoke from its six into one devil pipe, I figured that I may as well remove the block and pistons too while I was at it. This was now beginning to be a bit of a major task. There are lots of pieces to remove to get the head off, starting with the lower two ignition coils followed by the three twin-choke carbs, which come out as one unit, once the manifold to the air-box is removed. I chose to take off the whole exhaust system, though only the headers had to come off. The upper radiator hose manifold had to go as did the cam cover. Mr Kawasaki’s book of lies informed me that I needed to remove the alternator to ascertain TDC (Top Dead Centre), but this is not necessary on an A5 model as there is a window secured by two countersunk machine screws that allows access to the timing marks. Next to leave its home was the camchain tensioner which in common with most Zeds was just two M6 bolts. Last to be extracted were the cams, being careful not to allow the chain to disappear down into the crankcases. The head has four M6 bolts which were initially undone. I then dug out the head torqueing diagram from the manual and undid the sixteen M10 nuts in the reverse of the tightening sequence. Always remember when undoing fasteners, particularly tight ones, NOT to use a ratchet wrench, until they are loosened; a breaker bar is the tool for the job – the clue’s in the name! The head came off without too much grief, just a few encouraging taps with a hide mallet and I was tugging the not inconsiderable weight of this gargantuan cylinder head across the workshop, ready for further dismantling and some more pocket lightening. That’s all for this month, but if you part with your pennies in the newsagent next month you can see the most spectacular sump I have ever seen on a bike and the not terribly nice stuff that had taken up residence therein! See you next month for more.