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I have a 1989 Kawasaki ZX750F Ninja 750R. Clear Mass Title. Has 19,130 miles. It was last on the road three years ago,(info) from previous owner. I bought it as a project bike, but with the arrival of my next child, I don't think I'm going to be able to touch it for a while. I have had some help with looking at the bike to get it running, and the last two oil changes there were some metal shavings in the oil, so at this point I'm going to pull the plug on getting it going since the investment is going to be too high for a questionable motor.
I have two sets of fairings and misc parts on it. Blue Set, a Yellow set. Bike is not currently running, it does run but chugs a bit. New throttle cable, oil change etc. I have it sitting at a bike shop that a friend works at right now.
Might be best to part it out, or to work on if you have the expertise. Bike has a clear signed over title, and currently has all the fairings off to work on. I have two sets of headlights, gauge cluster, and a bunch of extra parts from the yellow set. The Blue set is the complete piece minus some damage to the front fairing.
If there is enough interest in parts, then I will start to part it out. Looking to get around $1000 for all the pieces, but certainly willing to negotiate for the right person. I bought it for $500 and have put in a little more than another $500 to acquire new pieces such as a gas tank, throttle cables etc.
If anyone has some great ideas what I could do to try to recoup some of my money that would be awesome. Any and all interesting trades are all welcome. Bike is up in metrowest area and you'd have to trailer it out or I can ask a friend about helping if you cannot. Would be something cool for someone with more time and expertise than I.. chasing a 2 yo and tending to an infant, as well as dealing with a new house here is just not enough time for me to have a non-running project
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Last edited by rice_rocket; 07-15-12 at 11:40 PM.
Did you buy this in Weymouth?
Yup I did...
fun bikes1
my first streetbike was a 1989 zx600r....narrow, nimble, upright and comfortable, chugs at 3krpm all day, and when all the valves open up (or whatever mechanical change occurs at 5750rpm) it "feels" pretty fast!
Urgh, bad luck... there was some metal shavings in the oil.... I'm definitely not going to continue this.
What's my best options for this? I went onto the kawi forums to put posts for parting out, but I'm not sure how often I'm going to get hits on this old rare bike.
Any reasonable and unreasonable offers/trades accepted, I think I just want to clear it out and start fresh whenever I get more time.. or get a running bike and no more projects for now...
List all the major parts on ebay individually?
I don't get the metal shavings in the oil. If your bike has proper oil in it, and the low oil pressure light isn't turning on, wtf are they coming from? Is it possible you are just finding bits of the clutch material? If you can get compression numbers off the engine, that should help alleviate potential buyer's concerns about the rings still being in proper condition,
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I don't know a lot about bikes.. but for car engines, that would most likely mean that the pistons are scraping/rings no good. Unless you guys are telling me that its not a concern.. I figured that it meant taking the head off and fixing whatever is causing those shavings. If it's clutch material I can live with it?
Again, I'm just here with little to no time to work on this, so that news in my mind was telling me the motor is questionable/junk so its not worth pushing forward?
I've seen on ebay a lot of the smaller parts which could certainly net me my money back if I sold them all.. but the fact is they are still online, so I'm thinking its going to take a long time/patience before I get money back from parting it.
I know the gas tank is worth a good chunk of $200-$300 so that alone could help me out... Anyone give a bike to a scrapper? You think I could get close to $400 in metal?
imho, having just gone through a 14 year old dirtbike from the inside out, it's not a good economy to make money back on broken bikes
1.) do your posted research - pull off the clutch cover, pull the valve cover off, or do whatever you can to see if you can figure out what's causing the oil shavings to come off
2.) if it doesn't work, ask a scraper how much they'd give you
3.) if all else fails, you will have to part it, and honestly - just sell the bigger parts that fetch a return (fairings, gas tank, forks, wheels, complete engine), and scrap the rest. When I parted the dirt bike, I was getting bids of $1-10 on seats, the clutch, plastics, etc., so it just wasn't worth the time to sell each and every part for an extra $2-5/part
It is worth being concerned about, yes. But the clutch and transmission share the same oil as the engine, unlike a car. So you are far more likely to see material appearing. If the rings were no good, you would have no or very low compression, hence why a compression test (google will tell you how if you never have, it is simple) would reveal the condition of the rings/vavles and their ability to seal properly. The common reason for rings to shave down and become metal scrapings is if the bike is oil-starved. If the bike has oil in it, and it is properly being circulated (usually deduced by the lack of a low oil-pressure light), there is little reason to suspect there is serious ring damage. If you ran it dry, or very low on oil, or left it running for a while with the bike laying on it's side, that's a different story.
Last edited by aldend123; 07-18-12 at 04:16 PM.
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I'll give $100.00 cash and i can pick it up.
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Take that offer. Just my 2cOriginally Posted by FAST GSXR750
Let me try to get to the bike and do a compression test then and see where I stand. If I get lucky then, I suppose the metal would be from somewhere else.. which still then I'm not sure where that leaves me. As for the $100 offer, at least it's a start. The gas tank alone I can get $150 or better since I had to search high and low just to get it...
If compression comes back good, would it then be okay to run the motor and then see if the clutch and/or tranny just solves itself out or else wait until those parts may fail? I just had thoughts of a bad piston and I didn't even want to bother running the bike anymore, hence the part-out/selling as is idea.
And what am i gonna do with a bike without a tank? $100.00 and i can take it this weekend. Your call. Costs can and will spiral on any project..ask me how i know. $200 started out as a basket case and ends up $3500+
GSXR750 GS650 Street Tracker
^^ unfortunately that's not even an exaggeration...internal engine problems end up being thousands of dollars when everything's said and done. And on an old bike, what can go wrong will go wrong. And since everything's so old, you end up re-doing everything else that's overdue for good measure.
regardless, I still think the 3 steps I outlined above, are your best option...and when you part it out, stick to the big ticket items to make your money back and dump the rest.
FAST GSXR750, I'm going to work on more troubleshooting as outlined. For $100 I'd recoup more money just taking it to the scrap yard, or even selling the gas tank. I'll pass on the offer but thanks for even offering! I'll still cross my fingers that at least the pistons/rings might be okay.. not to say that it makes it any better that the clutch or tranny might be shooting off metal.
I sort of knew what I was getting into by buying a project bike... just bad and depressing news about the metal since the oil wasn't checked before I moved forward in getting a new tank and other misc items that cost me. Since the motor actually ran/chugged I just thought it would be fine. Crappy luck.
If you bought this thing to ride it, or it's your only bike, I'd get the carbs cleaned, fix that turn signal and whatever other things to make it road legal, and ride it till it blows up. Make sure you have tow-coverage and you're all set. Then cash in on the scrap yard, the metal will still melt down.
nedirtriders.com
Yes and yes.. it is my only bike now, sold my R6 for a mini-van.. life got in the way. I'm only a little worried about riding a ticking time bomb since I don't want to be on it when it blows up... I do have AAA plus, but I've only heard that they won't tow you on a motorcycle... we'll see how this all pans out when I look into this compression test..
http://www.nestreetriders.com/forum/...-get-flat.html
This thread here has a decent amount of info about the towing options. From what I gathered, AAA plus in MA will not help you, however, AMA has a package that will. Read thread for more on that, it was beat to death.
Others can certainly chime in, but 'blows up' is usually just an expression. While possible, it is pretty rare to have anything physically dangerous happen. The greatest concern on a bike is having a rod punch through the engine casing, and having oil end up going under your tire.
nedirtriders.com
No problem, My offer still stands. I did a project and it did snowball way out of hand. Like i said it started out as $200 and three motors and a second bike ended up @ $3500. It's now ridden daily but i've got WAY more into it than it cost new. And i can never sell it for that reason. Best of luck and if you change your mind lmk.
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