shawn kloker
Well-Known Member
Is Gary still selling us OEM parts at discount? Where is he now. Thanks.
OEM parts?
- Thread starter shawn kloker
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No, he was let go 2-3 years ago and he moved west. I don't think he's in the motorcycle business anymore.
shawn kloker
Well-Known Member
That sucks. I saved thousands buying from him restoring 2 bikes. Thanks Mark.
I know, he was thinking he would stay in the business but it didn't work out. I have no idea who to buy from besides Morley or K&N in OK.
KansasBugkiller
Well-Known Member
Last edited:
I dont think your gonna get much cheaper than K&N but you have to call them to get the price & let them know your a VMOA member.
+1 Our group has 6 or 7 Maxes and has spent thousands at K&N since lost Gary. Also bought other stuff for old Yamaha's. They are the oldest continuously operating Yamaha dealer in US. They have a bunch of old stuff in their warehouse that doesn't show up on any searches. Just ask and they will look for. Friend got a NOS XS650 twin headlight for his 1971 from them. Ask for Tyler MacDonald and say in VMOA.
Rollie
Well-Known Member
Mine only has one ............ Oh sorry , you meant motor , my bad . :rofl_200:
Need more cowbells , errrrrr commas ,
Attachments
Did you see the Tracy's-style gas tank/side panels/seat combo Phil Little is producing for the XS650 twins? The latest issue of Cycle World, the one w/the Indian new engine on the cover, has it in the front of the magazine. And, if you look in the letters to the editor, there is mention made of our favorite bike!
Yep, got that issue. I have owned two 650 twins. Bought both new. First in 1971 (the gold one) and in 1978 (first year of the Special). There are two in our group in Dallas (1971 and 1972) plus a friend in Texarkana has several. Every year at Mid-Ohio the 650 group from all over meets. Been doing this for years.
I had a 650 Special II, I think it was called. A story in-itself, how I came to get it. It was given to me. I got it running & sold it & a KZ1000LTD to some British guys who were coming here to FL to buy old bikes to ship back to the UK where they refurbished them & re-sold them.
The bike was originally owned by a LEO who worked at the same city PD where I worked for the FD. A little Puerto Rican guy who wore a Browning .45 ACP to work. I often saw him on that bike coming & going to work as our station I rode rescue out of was right next to the PD & city jail.
Years later, another friend saw a junk truck w/(coincidentally) that bike on it driving by his house. He asked the driver, "how-much are ya gonna get for that as junk?"
The driver, an older black guy, running a junk pick-up route w/his grandson, said, "oh I guess about $20."
My friend told him, "here's $20, go leave it at my friend's home, I'll show you where he lives."
When I got home from work there was this rusty old 650 Special in my backyard, and then I got a call from my friend. I went to a tag agency, ran the VIN, & it came-back to the Puerto Rican guy I worked with, it had never been transferred out of his name. I got ahold of him, did a double-title transfer, got it running, & promptly sold it. Those shook more than the Honda 450 twins, the ones w/no counterbalance, first built in about '67/'68. The Yamaha 650's look pretty, I think, but the way they vibrated, I could never be happy w/one.
A friend of mine was one-half of the A/R 650 "Streettracker." Ever see one of those? Based on the Yamaha 650, re-manufactured & w/Omar's body panels. They even got a road test in Motorcyclist or Cycle World, I forget which. Totally-re-done as someone who cared about them would do it. They were better than new because they fixed all the cheapness Yamaha built into them & didn't bother to fix.
Here's one from Mule Motorcycles:
http://mulemotorcycles.net/ Lots of good lookin' bikes in here!
The Yamaha 650's were bad vibrators. Only bike I ever had that was worse was a 1970 BSA 650 Firebird Scrambler. EVERY time I rode it something vibrated off or broke from metal fatigue caused by the vibration. It was a beautiful bike but unrideable. :bang head:
I bobb'd one back in the day, cool little bike but the mirrors were only functional when the bike wasn't running. :biglaugh:
F/M, neat story on the Special! :clapping:
F/M, neat story on the Special! :clapping:
A lot of owners, including my dad, called it the 650 Shaker.
I think I mentioned it before, but awhile-ago, a story of the Honda 450 vs. my Kawasaki Mach III 500 two-cycle two-stroke, circa mid-late 1970's. A fire dept. buddy & I were going to the local community college for classes towards our degrees, tuition paid for under our collective bargaining agreement. Free tuition to go to college and to meet college-age women! Thank the labor movement.
So, he had a Honda 450 DOHC twin and I had my Mach III 500 triple. I had never ridden one and when I got to his house on my 'smoker,' he asked if I wanted to switch bikes. I warned him about grabbing a big handful of throttle, resulting in a wheelie that if he wasn't prepared for it, could put him off the back 'right-quick! I climbed onto his Honda DOHC twin, and we were off to socialize, er, get our class in.
Being used-to the low-amplitude/high frequency 'buzz' of the 500 triple, I was unprepared for the low-frequency/high-amplitude shaking of the Honda. What a vibrator! To me, it seemed like there was something seriously-wrong w/the bike. I expected to see a trail of parts behind me, broken or shaken-off.
When we got to campus, I asked him if he had checked his motor mounts lately, because it was shaking so-badly. He laughed and told me, "that's just how it rides!" I never complained about my 500 triple's 'buzz' through the handlebars again.
I found the bike to be nothing that I would be able to put-up with on a daily basis, and the Yamaha was probably worse, because it was bigger-displacement.
http://www.motorcycleclassics.com/classic-japanese-motorcycles/honda-cb450-black-bomber.aspx
http://www.motorcycleclassics.com/barbers-best/1969-kawasaki-500-H1-Mach-III.aspx
Some fun stuff on the Mach III:
By this time (~1967), the Honda CB450 Black Bomber was being marketed and the Suzuki Titan T500 was for sale. Clearly, there was a market for mid-size bikes from Japan, but Kawasaki wasn?t interested in marketing just another motorcycle. Kawasaki wanted to make a splash, and had the resources from its ship and bridge building operations to fund the research and development necessary to build a truly newsworthy two wheeler. With engineering assistance from Osaka University, a new effort code named the ?N100 Plan? went forward. The goal was a motorcycle with 500cc displacement developing 60hp and able to lay down 13-second quarter-mile times, then considered over the achievable limit for a road bike. Two different two-stroke engines were considered: a larger version of the Samurai twin and a triple. Eventually, Kawasaki decided on the triple since three small cylinders and pistons were easier to keep cool than two large cylinders and pistons. The triple was also lighter than the twin, as the smaller individual power impulses allowed Kawasaki engineers to shave weight off the transmission and clutch. The triple used a metering pump to deliver oil to the main bearings and state of the art CDI electronic ignition for spark. Large piston ports metered air/fuel mix to the combustion chambers, and the mufflers were really expansion chambers, normally found only at the racetrack.
In the Sixties, triples were exotic. ?When this bike came out,? Tony remembers, ?my best friend?s older brother bought one. I was 14 or 15 and I knew it was too powerful for me. It was scary just listening to him start it up. The sound was memorable.? The brother managed to ride the bike for two years without crashing it before he sold it ? a remarkable achievement. ?That bike intrigued me from the beginning. The bikes I knew about had two or four cylinders. Three mufflers was oddball,? Tony adds.
A little racing on the side
A bike this fast naturally found its way to the racetrack. The speedy 500 did well at the drag strip from the start, but Kawasaki wanted road racing trophies as well. Unfortunately, getting the H1 to handle and convincing its not-quite-debugged electrical system to behave at speed for the length of a road race proved problematic.
Four H1s turned up at Daytona barely a month after the bike showed up in dealers? showrooms. They did not do well, due mostly to the usual mechanical and electrical problems that surface when you run a bike at sustained speed on a race track for the first time. In 1970, Kawasaki offered 40 replicas of the Sears Point bike ? with a different frame ? to aspiring road racers. The new frame was an adaptation of the 1969 250cc racer chassis with rubber washers between the engine mounts and the frame tubes to dampen vibration, and a longer swingarm to fix the traction problem. Jess Thomas, who test rode the new H1R in early 1970 for Cycle, noted, ?The workmanship and finish on the bikes is absolutely first rate. Usually, when one buys a racer, the first thing he does is look for the components that are obviously going to fall off on the first lap. The only things that looked questionable on the whole bike are the battery mount, the rectifier and regulator mounts, and two right side expansion chamber mounts.?
Kawasaki?s two-strokes remained winless in National racing until 1971, when they hired a French Canadian named Yvon DuHamel. DuHamel, who had made a name for himself racing 250 and 350 Yamahas, turned out to be one of the few racers who could keep the two-stroke Kawasakis on their wheels and headed in the right direction. DuHamel earned five National victories for Team Green between 1971 and 1973.
H1 road machines for 1970
Meanwhile, the road machines were evolving. To differentiate it from the white and blue 1969 model, the 1970 version of the H1 sported a red tank with white stripes and red side covers with ?Mach III 500? emblems. A perforated grille between the CDI boxes and the seat eliminated a potential hot spot under the rider. As on 1969 bikes, the gas tanks featured impressions for decals accentuating the Kawasaki name: Later H1 tanks were smooth.
The 1970 H1 was every bit the road burner the 1969 machines were. In a Cycle Guide test published in September 1970, a stock H1 just out of the crate turned a 13.10-second quarter mile. A few weeks and a few hundred miles later, the same bike was running 12.72 in the quarter mile. In a display of honesty rare at the time, the magazine pointed out that some owners were getting bad CDI boxes, resulting in rough idling. Otherwise, the magazine announced that the handling problems demonstrated by the 1969 bikes had somehow been cured ? with a caveat: ?A great deal of care must be exercised when moving away from a stop light, because once the RPM reaches 4,000 to 4,500, if too much exuberance is displayed by the rider, it will break the tire loose instantly ... ? That level of ferociousness wasn?t to last, however, as Kawasaki started taming the beast in 1971, detuning the engine, stiffening the frame and altering the weight balance to make it easier to ride. A disc brake replaced the twin-leading-shoe front drum brake in 1972, and other ?improvements? were made over the next few years, most aimed at making the H1 more rideable. The 500cc triple went out of production in 1975, a victim of changing tastes and increasing emissions legislation that favored development of four-stroke engines.
Tony Silveira?s Kawasaki H1
One enthusiast bought a red Kawasaki H1 in 1970 and kept it up over the years, never putting a lot of miles on but keeping up the maintenance and polishing it a lot. In fact, he polished it so much that the red tank started to become dingy from repeated layers of wax.
When the original owner passed away his widow decided to sell the bike. The classic bike grapevine carried this news along, where it came to the attention of Tony Silveira, who is usually in the market for any extra-nice Japanese classics, and especially one he feels an emotional tie to. Remembering his childhood friend, Tony went to see the bike. ?The widow showed it to me. I could tell that her husband had loved this bike. There have always been people who were respectful of these motorcycles. There was not a nick on it. Even the vinyl on the seat was pristine. It had the original grips and pegs, the original K series Dunlop tires, and only 1,136 original miles. The bones were good.?
Tony bought the H1, took much of it apart, and started a careful cleaning process. ?I took the emblems off and detailed out years of wax. I disassembled all three carburetors and cleaned them, and I soaked the tank inside and out.? The result is the bike you see here, as original as any 1970 H1 you?ll ever come across.
Although reassembled, the bike doesn?t get around much; Tony thinks it?s too much of a time capsule to ride to the corner store. ?This Kawasaki H1 is unique ? it has never kissed the pavement,? meaning it?s never been down, he says. Tony has a slightly worn and less original 1969 that he rides ? carefully ? on a regular basis.
Why two H1s? Because he gets a thrill from actually riding an H1. ?It?s an exciting bike,? Tony says. ?The power kicks in and you can feel the engine. Riding one is fun. It will put a smile on your face.?
Tony says that when you ride an H1, you need to look straight ahead and not check the speedometer or the scenery. ?The front end comes up too easily. Going around a corner takes finesse. You have to use caution ? you can?t get on the gas in turns.? The Kawasaki vibrates some, but, Tony says, ?You don?t notice the vibration ? you?re hanging on for dear life!? Surprisingly for its time, it?s also a fairly low-maintenance proposition. ?The best maintenance is to ride it. I have to synch the carbs once a year at most. The CDI ignition does away with points and condensers. The drum brakes have easy to operate star adjusters, and you replace the shoes when you run out of adjustment.? Yet for all its fearsome performance, the Kawasaki starts easily. ?There?s a thumb stroke lever on the throttle side of the bars, it acts like a choke, then you turn on the electronic ignition. You kick two or three times and it?s off. Once it warms up, it?s eager to go,? Tony says. And as long as you can resist the urge to nail the throttle, it?s actually surprisingly docile. ?It is fine around town and runs well on the freeway. The double-leading-shoe front brake works well. The large, cushy seat is comfortable. The bike is not good in tight twisties, but on the straights it?s a blast.? And that, of course, is a big part of the draw for Tony, who adds, ?You can hear it coming with its special sound. It?s a thrill.? MC
http://www.motorcycleclassics.com/classic-japanese-motorcycles/1970-kawasaki-h1-mach-III.aspx
Plenty of places cheaper then me but few keep the amount of new OEM parts (or used OEM parts) on hand like I do.
Sean
Sean
Traumahawk
Well-Known Member
+1 and few support this forum like you do.
