To start off, I better explain what I had to start with. I have no mechanical skills whatsoever. I can check tire pressures and fill up with petrol/oil, and that is as far as I can go. I broke my back in January, and over six long weeks of being bed bound I formulated a plan to buy a bike in India and ride it home. As part of that plan, I decided I needed to be better mechanically, so I wanted to buy an old, cheap bike and use it to learn how these newfangled internal combustion engines work. I also needed it to be a bike I was excited about riding at the other end - I know if I tried to restore a Bantam I would lose interest in what looks suspiciously like a mechanised bicycle. So doing my research, I tracked forwards through timelines until I found the z series - first series of bikes that went fast and handled. Couldn't afford a z1, so z650 it was.
The bike I bought was a total shed.... everthing I took off in the first two weeks was broken or wrong. The previous owner complained about the handling - even with my lack of skills, it took two minutes for me to notice his piggyback marzocchis were fouling on the (non-standard) chainguard, which may well have contributed. Later I found that the engine bolts that go from one side of the chassis to the other had also been replaced with ordinary short bolts. It must have flopped it's way everywhere...
It had been resprayed in some nasty metallic bergundy; badges were home made stickers; sidepods had holes of bolts (?); a slug was masquerading as a saddle, and there was rust and corrosion everywhere.
The first thing was the total stripdown - it didn't take long to get the bike broken down into parts, and more bits were written off during this process - the center stand was not pivoting on the bushes and had to be cut out - a friend applied 4 tonnes of pressure to the pivot to try to remove it before giving up on the grounds that if it did go it would probably kill someone as it tore across the workshop, so new stand was required. I also discovered that the pillion footrest brackets were almost rusted away as soon as I got the frame upside down... I paid a local specialist three times what I could get another frame for to fabricate new metal and weld it into place.... I could already tell my plan to just fix what was obviously broken was flying out the window as the bike took on a personality.
The bike is a c2, so it should really be plain metallic silver - I didn't think this is a great choice today, so I decided to stray from councours and picked out a z1 colour scheme (the Olive green/yellow scheme).... I asked a local company, Altamura in Camberley, to spray the body (including new side panels) in this colour scheme, but to modernise it slightly by moving the green more towards a British Racing Green type colour. They did a great job, digging out filled in badge recesses, and sealed the tank for longevity.
The z650 tank seems to be a little more squat than the Z1 tank, and I was worred about the proportions of the paintwork, but these photos exaggerate the effect - it looks pretty good in place.
By now, I've probably upset everyone - not only am I putting a z1 colour shceme on a z650, but I've fiddled with it too! The thing is, I'm not interested in pretending to be a z1 - I'm doing the bike for myself and I want it to look how I want it to... I dont know what I'm doing in terms of resale value, but that's not why I'm doing it either.... Let me know what you think, but be gentle - I've got plenty more stuff to follow, god knows what you'll all think of the wheels... :-)
I ordered a new set of faces from beeezees (great service), and proceeded to snap off the tachometer spline while trying to remove the needle. While waiting for an ebay auction on a tacho to end, I did some research and discovered the 'two teaspoon' method of safely removing a needle. Once the new tacho turned up, I stripped both speedo and tacho, cleaned them up with brake cleaner, ran the other bits through the dishwasher, polished the glass with windowlene to within an inch of its life and sprayed the needle tip red while tidying up the clock light cover with black bumper paint. With new chrome shells on, it all looks absolutely brilliant - photos to follow when I get back from the US - but I think it sums up how something that should take two minutes (new chrome shells) can wind up taking weeks. In the end I paid out for new shells, new faces, red and black paint, but I still came in at less than half what a third party restoration would have cost - and more importantly I did it myself.... 
you're a brave man... well done 
I've got a huge box of stainless steel bolts ready for as the rebuild progresses.... but I'm having such fun, if I get the £600 I paid for the original bike (yes, I know I overpaid, it's a long story) and not a penny more, I'll still think it was cheap fun.... The wife worked it out the other day - 'When you finish this, you're going to want to do another one, aren't you?' 
Maybe thats where I'll get my z1 - but I'll keep the z650 at least until the second one is finished...
