ZomBessy: Respawn (1980 KE100)

Oh glorious day!

After many months, a bit of my own stupidity and a few ok what nexts, ZomBessy is fully road legal and was TTRed this morning.

I've taken it on a couple rides already.

First was this morning shortly after the picnic plate was installed to my inlaws in the next town over (South Elgin), only to find they weren't home, then to a friend's house in Elgin on the East side of the river before quickly heading back home to help another Jeep friend with her brakes.
Morning Ride

Second ride started at 4 PM and was to try the route I intend to ride to work to check the roads and see how much time it would take. I prepped things similar to what my morning routine would be and started the timer. Along the way I found myself thinking there are more stops than I thought. Just my mind adjusting to manual shifting I suppose. Just shy of work the engine cut out. I grabbed clutch, thought for a second and flipped the tank to reserve. Maybe I should have checked the gas level after all my non-legal neighborhood playing. Ended up at work in just shy of 50 minutes covering roughly 18 miles traveling at my desired 5 mph over the limit. Filled up the tank near work and absolutely loved the $6.60 total. I could get really used to that. Ride home had slightly less traffic and was accomplished in just under 45 minutes. Looking forward to my first 4:10 AM ride to work with next to no traffic. Hoping I can get the time down to 40 minutes.
Work Ride

Sitting here typing this I'm really fighting the urge to fire it up for my first night ride. I'm thinking it might be good to get some experience in before I'm actually required to be somewhere when I do it.

Second day riding the streets. Mostly using the bike to run errands, but ran it through a couple parks and on one of the few gravel roads in the area. Bike does a lot better in traffic than I thought it would.

I'm already thinking about longer rides. First will most likely be a ride along Route 66 from Chicago to the Pontiac area to my childhood home before my parent move out at the end of the month. The next long ride I'm thinking of is a non-interstate version of the Lake Michigan Circle Tour, tent camping along the way. Might like to have other small displacement riders on that one.

So, as I was getting ZomBessy running again I read on several sources that the KE100 is supposed to get roughly 70-80 mpg. Thus far I've been getting low 40s.



Are these bikes known not to achieve rated numbers? Do I need to spend more time tuning? Am I just a newb spode that is enjoying the RPMs and not shifting soon enough?

It comes down to the rpm and how fast you go.... IMO if youre cruising at over 40mph for any period of time you are gonna burn craploads of gas.... Least thats how my ke is....aroind town with sub 30mph speeds i can get close to 100 mpg if i dont wring the piss outta it.....

I'm spending a lot of time at 40 mph and above. Ran over 200 miles today, lots of time running 50 mph and had a best tank of 46 mpg.

If the carb is functioning properly maybe look at the brakes, bearings, and drive line for friction sources.

You should be getting much better economy with road riding.

Head light and tail light were the last things ZomBessy needed to be street legal. Been riding it a lot in the 18 days since then and have already put over 700 miles on it. This morning I pull the bike out and the low beam doesn't work. Ugh. Rode to woke using the high beam. Really hoping it's a bad wire or something. If not, I hope the dealer will help me out with a defect replacement.

The lights on the ke are so weak i pretty much soley run the high beam....

Probably just a blown globe I'd say.

I have a KH100 and the lights are piss poor high or low beam.

Figured out what happened to the low beam. Connector snapped off the bulb. There really is way too many wires and connectors inside the headlight assembly.

I don't like the idea of having to pay so much for the 4020 sealed beam every time there is a problem. I did find a Globe/H4 conversion on eBay for $35 that I think will work.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-3-4-MOTORCYCLE-6V-HEADLIGHT-HEADLAMP-HALOGEN-H4-LIGHT-BULB-6-VOLT-35-35W-/330992935255?pt=Motorcycles_Parts_Accessories&hash=item4d10b76157&vxp=mt

The H4 6v bulb is 35w vs the 4020's 30w, not sure if the extra draw will be that bad though.

Bonus is that the replacement H4 6v bulbs are $20 a pair.

If you go to the 35w i would convert the tail to led... I know mine even with the bike running if i am say sitting at a light waiting to turn, foot on brake, signal on, my headlight noticably dims with the blinker, and also with the brake light...

Wow, since I've been running the high beam only my average mileage has dropped to 39.5 mpg. That seem right?

I truly am addicted. Since legal I've only skipped one day riding to work, because the forecast was bad. In the first month alone I've logged over 1400 miles.

Nice... I need to renew the tags on mine, expired over the weekend, and i need to plate my 200cc china bike... That is a bit more fun to ride since its highway legal....

Stock chain and sprockets are officially toast. Will be ordering replacements tomorrow.

OMG! Building a new air filter out of UNI foam and replacing the chain and sprockets really livened up my little ZomBessy! Finished putting the bike back together Saturday morning, used it for my errands and noticed the difference, but in town speeds weren't that high. After the sun set ending my driveway wrenching time, I took it out for a ride. Wow, what an improvement. Bike doesn't need to be downshifted for hills as much. Towards the end of my ride I was on Westbound US-20 near Elgin, I usually get off before it switches to a limited access road with a 55 mph limit for a few miles. Since it was late and traffic was light, I decided to continue. Let the throttle have what for and to my surprise not only did I keep up with traffic, I was passing it. Speedo read 65 mph when I passed under a street light and could read it (really need to replace that bulb). I'm going to have to borrow a GPS and make another run.

Took ZomBessy out for a longer ride on my birthday, got as far as Rochelle before turning back towards home. About midway between Genoa and Hampshire the engine made a tinny noise and shut off. Spent about an hour trying the normal field repair things to no avail, then called for a ride.

Several days later, I pulled the head and cycled the piston to the bottom of it's stroke, which revealed two gouges deep in the cylinder with weird ridges above. Loaded the bike on the back of the Astro and took it to the local Kaw shop, to my surprise they weren't taking bikes in. Left there and headed over to Fornarelli Motorsports. There Alex was very helpful, he came out, looked at the damage, then we went back inside to discuss the repair options. He found a .5 mm overbore Wiseco piston in the catalog and informed me about sending my cylinder to Millennium Technologies for the overbore/repair.

Couple more days later, I pulled the cylinder and discovered the cause of the gouges/ridges. One of the piston pin clips had worn it's groove and was released into the cylinder, cut in two, then caused the damage. The ridges being two straightened pieces of the clip.

Cylinder will ship out today, hopefully returning within a week. In the meantime I'll daydream about all the extra power the 2 extra cc will give me.

That's a bummer dude!

So you're saying the circlip snapped out and stuck to your cylinder wall? Sheet.

I re-used an old piston circlip (well, 1000ks old) on my top end rebuild and it was sitting a little funny in it's groove. I got it in there as good as possible and after 200ks it hasn't let go, yet, *fingers crossed*.

I'm curious, does your KE100 have a square box that your air filter sits in or one of those cylindrical ones? What kind of UNI filter did you use and did you re-jet/tune for it? If it gets me more power on my KH100 maybe I'll give it a shot too. Same engine.

ZomBessy's filter is a cylindrical one. I cut the filter element out of the filter that was in the bike when I bought it, then using a sheet of the UNI foam I cut it to fit the filter holder and glued it in place using blue RTV.

The carb doesn't appear to have much adjustment available. Only has one clip groove on the main jet.