I purchased a 1971 on June 1,1971. It was beautiful. I also drag raced it rather regularly. Despite Kawaswaki´s claims of 12.4 quarters for a pure stock triple the best I ever got was 13.20s at about 102. The fastest I personally saw was a 12.80 at 109 with a really skinny rider. There are a lot of these still running. A company called Purple Haze has some outrageous triples. They have a modofied 750 that has dipped into the 9.70s. I noticed that some respondents remarked that the bike was slow off of the line. The best way to launch it for drag racing was to take it to 6000 R.P.M. and drop the clutch. When you did this you would smoke the tire all the way through first gear and go into second where the bike would gain traction and wheelie for about fifty feet. Once you got the sequence perfected you could get the bike to really scream off of the line. The bikes were also very tough. I would guess that I probably raced on 10 Sundays over two years and had about 100 6-7000 RPM launches and I never broke anything on the bike. I sold the bike in 1982 and bought another 71 two years ago. I ride it occasionally, but I don´t hammer it like the old days. It is nice to see the interest in the bike. If you have one visit californiatriples.com to look for parts and purple haze racing for parts and racing stories.
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