the results of the reverse electrolysis on a part was in a shameful state of corrosion. It's shiny now. All thanks to a charger and some baking soda. I'll have a pick of the basement sink setup soon.



a shot of the crank case on the verge of being split. I'll need to dismantle the cam chain tensioner before I crack that sucker open and to get at it I'll need a flywheel puller. Oh well... just an excuse to get another tool. I'll take any I can get!



A shot of the front end. It's now dissasembled.



The smaller parts are in little sandwhich bags but the bigger ones are laid out in some kind of pattern desgined to resemble logic...



Poor emasculated little thing



A shot of the carbie. For some reason two metal screens were brazed into the outer wall of the velocity stack. Some other basement mechanic must have thought the air filter wasn't enough.





A mouse had actually made it's nest in the space between the air filter and the frame. We found a peanut.

I finally found a use for science! I got the idea of using some of the electrochemistry I learned last year to take the work out of the tedious removal of corrosion from the chrome parts. By hooking up the rusted part to the cathode and a chunk of expendible metal to the anode I can reverse the oxidation process as long as there is some kind of electrolyte in the solution the two bits are in. Right now the chrome from the lower left fork is being cleaned by a a useless old cell phone charger in my basement sink! It's only generating a current of .6 amps at 3 volts though. If I really wanted to get cooking I could use a car battery charger or something at 12volts.

I found a very thorough website on the kz400 with a few confidence inspiring engine rebuild tutorials amidst the massive heaps of other useful information on the model. I've seen these things up on ebay and craigslist going at around $300 and from what I've read they're definitely worth it. The model might not be as aesthetically pleasing as a candy colored cb350 but it might be slightly more rideable and mechanically sound with that vibration cancelling system incorporated into the engine.

I love the brochure picture with these two wholesome looking 20somethings pulled off to the side of the road. Even by the end of the 70s they were still trying to make biking look like it wasn't for people who used smashed jack bottles as wall calendars and killed people that stared at their tattoos of flaming snakes popping out of a skull shooting dice.

kz400.com

Even though I don't own one it's helped a lot to study how service manuals and tutorials describe stuff like this, so I do it as often as I can. I didn't know much of anything about bikes until a vt500FT I had gotten as cheap transportation broke down in the outer banks (NC) last july while I was on a road trip. I had to go through a hellish/character building ordeal to get it back to PA. I have made it a point since then to figure out how these machines worked down to the last nut and bolt. I'm not there yet but I've come pretty far. Too bad it was stolen from right in front of my house just as I was starting to appreciate it. That bike went through a lot in the year that I owned it.