what a pain!

[Jameson, George E.]

If you do decide to piece together a motor be sure to blow or flush out
all oil lines and the oil cooler.  You wouldn't be the first to trash
the fresh motor with various pieces of the last one.  Another option are
the ZRX's yes they are a 5 speed, but the fifth gear ratio is identical
to sixth in the gpz, and first is very close.  The 1200 with zzr cams
and anybody's air box or pods and stage 3 jet kit with a pipe, will be
around 140 hp at the rear wheel.  That was always my backup plan.  With
the zrx cam horsepower is about the same but with a much stouter bottm
end. No engine work required, just a straight swap

-----Original Message-----
From: John Soliday [mailto:johnsoliday at msn.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 8:35 PM
To: Jameson, George E.; 'Dave Daniels'; 'GPZ LIST'
Subject: RE: what a pain!

IMHO, find a junk yard motor and replace.  Probably a ZX11 long block
with your carbs would work.  If you wanted to be totally trick you could
change out your heads/cams onto the ZX11 to make it a true GPZ, but I'm
not a total expert on the delta between the ZX11 block and the GPZ other
than heads, carbs, and cams.  Anything else that we should know from the
gurus out there ?

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Jameson, George E. [mailto:george.jameson at mirant.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2007 5:45 PM
To: Dave Daniels; GPZ LIST
Subject: RE: what a pain!

Gold flakes in oil is bearing backing material, there is no good news
here.
You have reached a difficult decision making point.  Inspect/rebuild
yourself, buy a salvage motor, or part out. Professional rebuild will be
close to what the bike is worth. Good luck.

________________________________

From: Dave Daniels [mailto:dwaynedaniels at sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Tue 1/9/2007 4:21 PM
To: GPZ LIST
Subject: what a pain!



Well, I've gotten my new clutch in, and it is operating properly now it
seems. But, my problems are far from over. I'm going to summarize below
what I've gone through to this point. Maybe all you experts could help
me/lead me to what I should do next.
  
  My clutch was slipping which was the first problem. Somebody suggested
that maybe putting in that synthetic oil, which has anti-friction
additives in it, caused those additives to get embedded in the friction
plates, which could be causing the slipping. Afterall, the bike only has
just over 4000 miles on it. How could the clutch be bad yet? So, I
thought, maybe I'll try running some Gunk engine flush through there.
Actually a friend recommended it since he's been doing it for 30 years.
Maybe that'll clean off those plates and it'll stop slipping. So, I
tried it, then refilled with regular Kawasaki oil. Yep, it stopped
slipping, but soon, the bike started running badly and was acting like
the clutch was gonna sieze up. My guess was that, when I drained the oil
after the flush, I didn't get it all out of the oil cooler and the
remaining gunk-filled oil mixed with the new oil and messed up the new
oil. So, I drained it again and made sure all of it was out.
Refilled again
 with standard oil. Still running badly, and ticking now. So, I do a
valve adjustment and it needed it. Still ticking, and now when I get on
the throttle, I get a strange rattley, growling noise(hard to describe).
Plus, the clutch is slipping again. Finally, I get mad and open up the
clutch to discover one of the fingers(tangs) on the clutch basket has
broken off and is nowhere to be seen. This is when I drop the pan and
find it to be a horrible mess. gold metal flakes all over the bottom and
especially around the magnetic drain plugs. Oil pump sucker screen
almost completely clogged up. And, I found the broken tang in the bottom
of the pan. I got a new basket and some new plates, cleaned out the pan
and replaced the screens and put it back together. Except for the clutch
slipping, it seems that these noise problems began after I did the
engine flush. Still have the noises and it's getting worse. So, tell me
all you experts, what's the prognosis? I'm really really  discouraged
here. Thanks very much for all the help you guys provide. It is
priceless!
  
  Dave D.