1974 Kawasaki H1
(Page 3 of 4)
July/August 2009
By Margie Siegel
A midlife crisis
While Kawasaki may have stopped building 2-stroke triples, people with a need for speed continued to ride them. The Kawasaki H1 became a cult classic, consistently showing up in Most Significant Motorcycles of the postwar years and Ten Worst Bikes lists.
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In 2002, Bill Swagerty had a self-described midlife crisis and decided he had to have a Kawasaki triple of his own. “I decided to turn back the clock,” Bill recalls. He bought an H2, the 750 version, sight unseen from a Canadian eBay seller. Somehow the bike made it through customs, but it was a lemon. Bill shoved it to the back of the garage and started looking again.
Another triple turned up on eBay, and this one was only 50 miles from Bill’s house. “I got there, and was amazed — the seller owned a warehouse filled wall-to-wall with bikes. This Kawasaki was set aside under a cover. He pulled the cover back and my heart jumped. It had less than 4,800 original miles on it.
“The good news was that everything was original,” Bill continues. “The bad news was that everything was original, including all the dry-rotted rubber parts like the snorkel between the air filter and the carburetors. Purple Haze Racing out of Lakewood, Colo., came to my rescue. They import new rubber parts from Japan.”
Since Bill’s background is “in software, not hardware,” he has had to locate knowledgeable mechanics. “I have worked hard on building a resource network. Parts can be had. The biggest challenge is finding service people within reach, qualified and willing to work on a 35-year-old bike. This is not a bike for the casual owner. You have to want it — and I want it.”
Owning the H1
Since this bike is Bill’s fair weather weekend toy, he hasn’t had to do a lot of work aside from making sure the tank for the oil injectors is full (“I check it every time I go out,” he says) and the battery is kept charged. Bill gets special smokeless 2-stroke oil from France, which minimizes the blue haze behind this notoriously smoky machine.
People who ride H1s the way owners rode them in the 1970s will likely have to rebuild the wet multiplate clutch on a regular basis. Although the clutch would be fine in a less performance-
oriented bike, it starts to slip after too many enthusiastic stoplight takeoffs. “The H1 doesn’t have a lot of torque off the line,” Bill explains. “You have to keep the revs up. Once you are rolling, it rides well in traffic. The disc brake [introduced for the 1972 model year] works well. The suspension is relatively soft in the rear and the front suspension is moderately firm. “The powerband is spectacular,” he continues. “Turn the throttle, and it will go faster than you expected. In a straight line, it’s raw performance.”