KZ650 cafe-racer. Engine assembling. Part 1.

So, everything was ready for Kawasaki KZ650 engine assembling . There are two workbenches in my garage, and one of them I designed according to my idea of comfort engine assembling. Here is how my engine assembling space looks like:

The main feature of this table is shelving I made and installed at back side of table. Since most engines I am working on are inline fours, I made sections of shelving large enough to accommodate average cylinder head, cylinder block or crankshaft.

Before starting the next stage of assembling I load all necessary parts on the shelving, thus I always have at hand whatever I need.

I started engine assembling traditionally for me: from installing valves. This action tunes me up for more complicated assembling works. For cylinder head assembling I use a valve spring compressor tool of my own design. There is a layer of rubber under the tape wrapping (bicycle tube actually). It’s a highly recommended mode for those who don’t like banging freshly painted cylinder heads with bare metal rods.

New genuine valve seals finish setup of NOS cylinder head and new (and again genuine) valves.

I use a mix of engine oil and LM48 molybdenum grease for initial valve stems lubrication.

Cylinder head assembling is a simple process and with only eight valves per head it was finished in no time. It seemed that you only started: installed all lower washers and seals, took the first valve…