I came home this weekend to do a little more work on the Kawasaki. It’s been a learning experience since the other one went down a thousand miles from home. I can confidently say that I can tear down a KZ650 engine and put it back together. The only problem? I can’t get it running after I put it back together.

However, I have made progress.

The problem I set out to fix this weekend was a low compression in all of the cylinders. Last weekend I deduced that I had low compression because my timing was off. My manual makes it sound straightforward to adjust the timing. But they don’t tell you all the

little extra things to make sure it goes smoothly (Ok, they do but when you don’t read the manual until the fourth time doing it, you blame the manual to try and save some face). So four engine tear downs later, I have the timing set.

Now my problem lies elsewhere. The next thing to tackle is the clutch. As far as I can tell, it either is or isn’t disengaging. Simply put, it’s stuck.