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Review of the 1971 Kawasaki 500 H 1 Mach III:Riding Impressions from 1972 |
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Author: Jake C., 2007-07-03 | ||||||
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My friend John Wolfe had purchased this bike new, with his brother. They decided it would be better if they sold it. Imagine that! | ||||||
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I was 16 years old, and able to scrape together just enough for the asking price, Dollars 700. It had about 800 miles at the time. Stepping up to this bike from my Wards Riverside 125 was quite a shock. The engine made a great howling sound under acceleration. During the next two years of my ownership, I put about 10,000 miles on it. It was highly reliable and easy to kickstart. The main issue was vibration. For some reason, Kawasaki installed fluted handgrips, which were cruel. Engine vibration would soon turn your hands numb. Later, your ass and feet would become affected. . Handling was OK, although I recall I situation where I almost crashed on an ´S´ curve at the bottom of a hill. The bike suddenly got out of shape and a sort of ´tank slapper´ from the handlebars ensued. Fuel economy was very poor, even compared to other two strokes of the day. The seat was just fair, Ok for the standards of 1971, but pretty bad for today. . By the time I sold the machine, you could start to hear some piston slap under deceleration, and the chain and sprockets needed replacement. Still, it looked like a new machine. Somehow, at 16 years old, I managed to keep from ever dropping it. It never even fell over in the driveway, which is better than any of the more current bikes I own. . If you are thinking about buying one of these models today, be shure to have a mechanic check out the crankshaft seals. The crank is a pressed together design and it´s fairly involved to do a seal replacement. With bad seals, these bikes will often run, but not very smoothly or well. |
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