Kawasaki ZX14

I was quite excited when a good customer of our’s asked me what we could do to his Kawasaki ZX14R to make it beefier, not that this bike needs to beefier at all. Without hesitation I worked out a quote and a plus minus recipe without having stripped one of these motors before. After a couple of days the bike was delivered to us and to be quite honest, I think I was more excited than the customer......it was way too long since I have had the opportunity to do one these builds. This beautiful example of a well kept ZX arrived.

If you had to line up ten, red  ZX14s, this one would stand out.

I soon got to stripping the motor out, and started the measuring process.

First we had to understand what type of clearances and measurements Kawasaki had chosen for this engine. So, off with the valve cover and measure the valve clearances. Every measurement taken has to be taken thoroughly and accurately in order to get the ingredients for a good recipe.

....and without giving too much away, the valve clearance sheet before the strip down is about all I am willing to share.

Next was measuring the standard piston to valve clearances. These numbers are critical as far as safety and reliability go. Horsepower and performance are always secondary to this (but at the same time relative to it).

All this measuring can be tedious, but as I noted earlier, is critical to safety and performance of the engine.

Measuring the squish.

After confirming a couple of measurements with Eddie Henry, he of MotoGP and WSBK fame, and my long time pal and master engine builder, I knew what recipe I was aiming for.

Once the cylinder head was off, I started the very time consuming porting job. On first inspection, Kawasaki's cylinder head finishes look pretty good. But on closer examination you soon realize how bad these heads are, which is typical on a production engine. Below is a picture of the stock head.

After spending loads and loads of time grinding and grinding, finishing and polishing as guru Dave Caine has taught me...

... the head was finally done.

Due to unwillingness of third parties and time deadlines, I had to do the valves myself which I would have preferred to outsource.

With the chosen measurement skimmed off the head and valves seated, it was finally done. Because of an oversight of mine there are no pictures of the exhaust ports, but I am sure you get the idea.

Once I got to my desired squish clearance I could assemble and slot in the camshafts which we licked very slightly to get some extra lift. The stock cams are already pretty aggressive. Slotting the camshaft wheels is a pretty standard thing to do on a build like this as a lot of clearances have changed and more adjustment on the cams needs to be made.

I have to mention I was pretty surprised to see a well worn timing chain on a motor that was less than 10'000 km’s old.

Top is the old chain and the bottom is the new.

This is due to the fact that the hydraulic adjuster over-tensions the chain and wears the pins. Fortunately I have a solution for this, my good buddy Tertius milled a couple of manual tensioners for me.

There have been many cases where the factory tensioner has failed and resulted in this:

Okay, so just to confirm piston to valve clearances again after valve clearances had been done and the engine was ready to go back into the frame and onto the dyno.

Eventually the re-assembled ZX14 was on the dyno. My target was 225Hp and +/- 173Nm.
After doing the first pull I knew that after tuning I would exceed 225Hp.

Builds like these are very rewarding and I thank the customer for affording our business the opportunity. Results below.