Z1R Resurrection

[The Living Zed]

Head on & Cams in ...

[The Living Zed]

I got slotted cam sprockets, so I had to dial the cams in.

[The Living Zed]

I had to old Harris 4 into 1 back from when I took it off the road. It looked OK and polished up pretty good to be fair apart from the collector pipes. They had rusted through in places and had flats on the bottom two from going up and down kerbs. Oh yeh! And the Harris logo badge was missing.

[The Living Zed]

I found a socket just the right diameter and fabricated four tubes onto a back plate. Cut the rotten tubes off and weld the new onto the old.

[The Living Zed]

Pipes good now apart from the badge missing. I’d got some 1mm thick ally sheet and some red spray, so I have a crack at making one. Found the logo on the net, sized it and printed it off onto self-adhesive paper. Cut the ally to the desired size, covered it with masking tape first because it comes of easy and the self-adhesive paper doesn’t. Stuck the logo onto the masking tape and cut out the bits I didn’t want, sprayed it and there ya go.

[The Living Zed]

Pipes ready, carbs are ready, they’ve been ready since 2015, all I need are the coils. A bit of wiring and a battery and I could get it running.

[The Living Zed]

See this :-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAjwhq1ec7c

The ignition timing was the static setting and the carbs haven’t had vacuum gauges on yet. The float levels were checked and set and the airscrews are 1½ turns out, so it’s your basic generic set up.

This isn’t the first time it ran. The very first time of starting it fired up pretty quick after turning it over for only a few seconds. Then as the fuel got through it ran.
Then I stopped it.
I was a bit worried because I’m not an expert engine builder and maybe I’d overlooked something or put something in wrong. Forgot to tighten a nut or bolt. Anything could go wrong. So what am I going to do? I ask myself. Strip it down and check everything. Don’t be silly. Get a grip. I’d just fired up my Zed engine that I’d rebuilt, for the first time in 25 years. Feeling pleased with myself (buzzing my head off really), I had a beer, as you do, then filmed it (see above). When the revs drop to about 1000 RPM it sounds like a bag of knackers and rattles and rumbles a bit, but it’s never ticked over anyway. I was told when I bought it that it wouldn’t tick over because of the cams. At this stage it seems to have previous characteristics apart from the whistling. Maybe the exhaust not sealed into the head properly. I was going to have a play with it on the bench and get it running better, but I thought I can do all that when it’s built and test ride it as well to get it running good. That was in June so I wanted to try to get it done before the weather turned, so off the bench and on with the build.

[Ultim8pc]

More excellent progress. I love to see people using engineering skills to solve problems and get stuff done.

[Taffus]

Awesome thread!

[richie56]

This is one of the best build threads i’ve seen for a good while, top level work mate, its always handy when you can make use of work facilities to help you along.

[VinnyE]

Excellent work!
Just a little concerned about the height of the auxiliary fuel supply!
The pressure head is much more than the stock one - the fuel tap is only just above the height of the carbs?!