Sporadically over the past month I’ve found pockets of time to finalise the 1984 Kawasaki KZ250. To pick an arbitrary place to start; the exhaust header pipe is now a single piece (no longer secured in two places with d-clamps), and has been wrapped with titanium fibreglass heat wrap ordered from Dime City Cycles.
Considering I am an advocate for leaving headers unwrapped where possible, I felt that this instance qualified as an exception. My reasoning for this was because the positioning of the header to the exhaust outlet comes precariously close to the position where the tachometer cable meets the motor. By wrapping the header, I was further ensuring that the cable would not come into contact with the header and melt the cable outer tubing.
Heat Wrapped Exhaust Header
The positioning of the 12 inch “Shorty” muffler was perfect following the re-installation of the freshly welded and wrapped header. A small alteration to the muffler bracket, and the exhaust was set.
Straight-Through Shorty
Following the work completed on the exhaust system, I spent time tidying up various other aspects of the motorcycle. A bunch of wiring required wrapping, so I got onto that – I also made sure to zip-tie sections to appropriate parts of the frame to keep them hidden, and out of harms way.
The fuse box needed securing so I fabricated a small L-bracket of sorts to mount it.
Fabricating Fuse Box Bracket
I have a bunch of tuning to get sorted in the next week or so; running a pod filter and straight through exhaust has altered the air/fuel mixture drastically and so it is necessary to give the carburetor a solid “once over”. I’ll also be servicing the front and rear drum brakes to make sure they are the best they can be.
Almost There…
A good friend should be taking this beauty off my hands at the end of the month, so the goal is to get her bulletproof for then!