Reputation is, in fact, the biggest thing going for a Kawasaki 500. No-one can possibly buy one to go shopping on. They've certainly become the myth motorcycle of the last twenty years (give them a big myth - ha! ha!), and if you want to own one just to find out if everything you ever heard about them is true, my advice is to put your money in one of those hard to break into investment accounts, and read the UMG's own summary of the type every two hours until the symptoms pass. Unless you can afford to run one only as a Sunday special, these bikes are more fun to want than to own.
If this isn't enough to deter you, then maybe the price will forestall your eager purchase. These aren't cheap hacks - although I think they should be. Minimum prices asked even for the detuned final model (KH500) rarely go below £600. I've seen one H1 sold privately for £1400, and creaking hulks sold as Collector's Classics by dealers (in guess what part of the whole country?) for around £700. I just won't talk to people who ask these prices, and I'm glad to say that sometimes they just don't get sold. It's amusing to read in MCN ads the dealers' ever more glowing descriptions of these masterpieces, the prices for which keep diminishing 'cos they can't shift them. Still, some people want these bikes and we have to remind ourselves, that they also seem to want old Triumph Tridents and Norton Commandos as well. Nostalgia's a funny thing.
I saw my first Kawasaki 500 a brand. new H1A - in a dealer's window (Bill Smith's) in Chester in 1970. I thought it was the most aesthetically pleasing motorbike ever - even more so than the Bridgestone 350 (good grief, I can even remember standing in the same showroom when it was stuffed full with those). I've only seen four on the road since then, including an H1B against which I had my most frightening race ever. I was on a Yamaha YR5 350, he was two-up - I won. A Bonnie (perennial victims, tee-hee!) got embarrassed, and the rider got all huffy and sulky and wouldn't wave to us when we parted company. I rode around on a friend's H1A for two weeks in 1973 and always wanted to own one, and always thought what a complete wally I must be.
Years of poverty suppressed ownership yearnings to an acceptable level until last year when I managed to do a bit of saving. A requirement for brevity prevents my detailing the overpowering urges which forced me to part with my hard earned money for a Kawa 500, but it is sufficient to say that my estimation of affordable machinery crept up to a modest 500cc, after which I was completely re-hooked.
I bought my H1F for £300, plus an extra £40 to pay the seller for transporting it to my home. Advertised as an ideal winter rebuild, it had been in a bump and wasn't running too well. Actually, judging from the accident damage, it looked like it had been subjected to a bit of marital discord by a disgruntled partner, and a trial separation had become necessary to restore domestic bliss. A cruel conjecture, perhaps, but that's what we all thought, and it's nicer than thinking that the seller was trying to off load a pile of trouble onto me. Anyway, I thought I'd benefited from the need for a quick sale, but in retrospect I would think the same only if during the period of ownership I'd actually been earning much more money.
The bike was taxed and tested, and had some bumps and scrapes, which remain, although the frame wasn't bent - important in the light of later discoveries. The forks needed to be sorted, though, and the bike needed a new rev counter, speedo, headlamp, mudguards, wires, cables, bulbs and lots of other minor bits, none of which could be bought from the friendly local Kawasaki dealer and few of which could be obtained from the much vaunted (actually they praise themselves) major Kawasaki parts suppliers, some of whom presented an honoured to be helped by us attitude, which made me very angry. Breakers yards I found to be run by pretty straightforward guys who unlike the aforementioned dealers willingly despatched COD orders and, were happy to give advice (except for a breaker in Huddersfield which appeared to be staffed by a bunch of complete drongs). Anyway, I managed to find all the parts in one place and a friend came along and put them all together.
Although the previous owner had stripped the bike, rebuilt the top-end and stove enamelled the frame, the reconstruction wasn't exactly ex-works. The wiring kept smoking, the ignition malfunctioned - for a long time I feared that the CDI had packed up - and investigations showed that at some stage in its career something yucky had been up the middle cylinder, leaving the cylinder head looking like a moonscape. K&N filters were fitted (bit dodgy these - tales of seizures abound) and the carbs had been re-jetted, which caused the engine to surge and splutter hopelessly when fitted with the stock air filter. The K&Ns also produce enough intake roar to drown out the engine rattles.
At least it had standard silencers. Overall, the bike was pretty much as the bloke described it and I've no complaints. In fact, at the time I was jumping up and down in glee at having finally acquired a Kawasaki 500 and I felt strangely compelled by the side panels that announced in surprisingly discreet lettering MACH III.
Now, I'm not a mechanic, and without my friend the bike would still be a non-runner. In fact, I might even have flogged it. There were times when I wish I'd never seen it, and as I'm still without sufficient funds to run it, it remains something of a burden which is almost impossible to unload simply because it's a long yearned for bike. There is no other reason for keeping it; and here's why.
First of all it's a two stroke, having all the attendant problems associated with running such a machine. Now that's not an entirely objectional factor (try an NSU Quickly - Ed), particularly if you happen to like two strokes. "What can go wrong with a load of holes?" asked a friend many years ago as I pondered the purchase of his Yamaha 200, after 20000 miles of unbelievable abuse of a Yamaha YR5 which, incidentally, achieved with some style and at considerably greater speed everything that my four stroke owning friends asked. of their machines, I had become quite fanatical about Jap two strokes. Although one felt compelled to congratulate them just for completing a journey, they did have certain saving graces. Kawasaki 500s however, designed to propel the rider forward in a straight line faster than anything else, are in practice so intolerant of all other considerations that they have no identifiable practical application whatsoever - it's the ultimate mean machine!
The H1F performs pretty much like the early H1A, the major differences being to the frame rather than the engine. The motor is very noisy (I'm convinced that through most of the rev range it's noisier than the exhausts) and produces an incredible wail at anything above 4000rpm. In this respect it's quite a head turner, people these days being unused to such a deep sounding two stroke, but it's all music to me. Quite honestly, it does accelerate like, well, hardly anything else you've ever ridden, although by today's standards it's not quite so remarkable. Up to around the ton it can hold its own (in straight lines on smooth roads) with slightly larger examples of the latest high tech multis, but it loses out on top end.
"I used to get a speed wobble at about a hundred and twenty, but just accelerated out of it," an ex-owner once informed me recently. I mean, what do you say to these people? He then proceeded to tell me how I could 'tune’ my H1F. Sounded amazing. Quite simply, there are much faster bikes than the H1 around these days. Makes the Kawa seem rather venerable, what? Usable practical speed, sitting upright and within the bike's ability to accelerate rather than merely gain speed depends on how you ride the thing. Opening up in top at 70mph produces an increased intake roar and nothing else. You can almost hear the extra fuel sloshing pointlessly through the exhaust.
It will pull rapidly in top above 5000rpm: you can pass cars and lorries quickly this way. However, accelerating to 8000rpm in each gear will take the bike in fourth to an indicated 105mph, and fifth will see you up to an indicated 115mph, after which you'll need to get your head down. A further 5mph can then be gained. The old nought to sixty in four seconds road test quote really holds true, - although it's a pointless figure for a bike which in this situation has just got into second gear. Same for anyone with a fast bike, but it does silence these Ford Fireball XL5 owners...
This acceleration is undermined by the poor gearbox. Owners who miss gears during rapid changes may absolve themselves of blame. The sloppy and complicated gear lever linkages which seem to go adrift even on new machines might be partly to blame, although the main problem appears to be in the box itself.
It's a noisy affair which sort of goes GRAARG all the time, or, even worse, GRAARG GRAASH when changing gears (this may sound silly but I can assure you it is an extremely realistic way of describing what happens). The changes aren't at all positive, even during slow riding, often giving the impression that a gear hasn't been properly engaged when it has, and vice versa, which at speed is worse. False neutrals abound, and during rapid acceleration will have you revving to 12000rpm while the bike goes nowhere.
Imagine what's happening to the engine! All of this requires deliberate changes rather than flicks, but while even in this mode the bike demonstrates an arm jerking eagerness to get going again, as the engine is subjected to rapid deceleration between changes, the motor having little torque - it's a serious shortcoming in a bike that was designed to burn off anything else on the market. A problem not helped by having neutral at the bottom of the five-up pattern. The instrument console features a neutral light and experience proves it to be more than a gimmick. I often imagined that hardware at this level was pretty much the same between manufacturers, but Kawasaki 500 gearboxes aren't particularly good, and don't compare with my old Yamahas.
What you have to remember is that you get all this performance at the cost of only 25mpg. Riding into a headwind over a two hundred mile epic trip, brought it down to 18mpg, but this did include thrashing the arse off it most of the way. I've had to leave motorways in search of petrol stations, running out of fuel five bloody times. How does this happen so often? A combination of small tank and an engine which will not struggle along on a last half pint. It just gives up. The spark plugs really do pack up at 1500 miles and, during a spell of hot weather in July, the bike ran so badly it was on the point of seizure - it was only safe to ride at night.
Chain wear is enormous 5000 miles and it's finished. And the rear tyre is almost illegal after eight thousand miles. These things aren't cheap and running costs hit you very hard. It can be quite heart breaking to see how quickly things wear. The H1 is the first bike I've owned which has remained under its tarpaulin on hot Sunday afternoons because I just haven't got the money to take it out; I've often cast wistful glances at larger bikes which offer far better all round performance at much lower cost. To think, I nearly bought a GS550. It was that bike that got me thinking in terms of five hundreds.
The Kawasaki 500 is a stupidly dangerous bike which has plenty of performance that cannot possibly be used. In straight lines it weaves at speeds above seventy; above eighty it gyrates and twists. If you then throttle down, the gyrations increase alarmingly, needing either rapid braking or acceleration, depending on road conditions, to survive. This can be reduced by placing an eight stone girlfriend on the pillion. It's at this point that you begin to realise that regardless of how good a rider you think you are, there are things that this bike will do over which you have no control AT ALL.
The extent of the weaving and wobbling is determined by road conditions and the weather. For the latter, I don't mean ice and floods. Gusts of wind, even those created by lorries, have you performing like a circus horse rider as you try to keep the bike from crossing the road on its footrests. It also gets stuck in those thin, shallow holes in the tarmac, a situation that needs the same kind of stunt riding, while seams or minor areas of unevenness bring on even more frightening gyrations.
The worst situation arises when crossing white lines while overtaking. This will send the bike heading off across the road while you struggle, er, manfully (in terror) to return it to the right lane. Re-crossing the white line causes the whole bike to skit along at an angle. I reckon that the bloke who tried to design the frame rode his bike up the pavement at a forty five degree angle when he was a kid and liked the effect. You also have to remember that while this is going on, the car you were overtaking has caught up and is now trying to mow you down as punishment. Occasionally, I've failed to get back into the place I'd aimed for: so far I've survived.
The bike wallows and pogos alarmingly on long slow curves, and any attempt to speed through bends will result in the thing taking a wider and wider line until you run out of space on the far side of the road (or into someone's front bumper). You can't get the swine back into line, whilst throttling down to escape danger makes it gyrate violently and (and!) start to sit up and go straight ahead. That's what it like - not just occasionally - all the time.
Once in trouble you can't make corrections. Things just get worse and you just have to pray that traffic conditions allow a safe escape. So if you enjoy zipping heroically down country lanes, then this bike ain't for you, because it won't have it. And if you like getting into little races prepare to be seen off by just about anything because however far ahead you get, they'll pass you on the first turning. You can't even get away from those twerps in Montegos and the like who take it upon themselves to demonstrate their superior motoring skills by driving about one inch behind you.
I've ended up on the wrong side of the road and at the wrong angle enough times now to turn me into a relative trundler. Anything else just makes riding a deeply unpleasant experience. The thing is really incapable of performing even the most straightforward of tasks. The main problem is that the motor's just unhappy until it reaches a certain status. Along with the all or nothing nature of the chassis, this sums up the character of the bike, and it's difficult to see any redeeming feature at all.
So what next? The bike has now clocked up 36000 miles - I have done 8000 of those in the last four months. Apart from the initial problems getting it running, very little has gone wrong - yet. 2000 miles ago the right hand carb jet unscrewed itself (just as I was wreaking vengeance on a Fiesta driver) - the Kawa performs very badly as a twin, and this definitely isn't the kind of bike you can struggle home on.
About 4000 miles ago it kept sticking in gear, but this has cleared up now. The rear light lens unscrewed itself and fell off (I rode back 15 miles to find it). In fact I've lost lots of nuts and bolts this way some of them seem quite important. It won't tick over properly, and to keep the middle cylinder firing it has to be held at 2000rpm. It loses its high state of tune after a couple of days, although it will maintain a fairly balanced state for about 200 miles. Then, with disturbing suddenness, it will go very rough, and won't run at all unless you sort it out. The strangest feature is that it starts first time, even if left standing a few days. Not exactly a catalogue of disasters, but I said nothing has gone wrong yet because everything the bike does suggests that something really awful is about to happen. It's trying to lull me into a false sense of security, but I know what's going on...
A few years ago a friend told me that a pensioned aged workmate, having seen the light, had decided to trade in his Daytona twin for one of the new Jap bikes he'd seen so many of in the work's shed maybe a Honda four. Anyway, some arsehole of a salesman had flogged him a H1C. Why or how I don't know. How the old chap got on with it I can only guess, but I imagine the Kawa was a great disappointment. It certainly doesn't compare with Yamaha twins, from YDS7 to RD400 (similar era), although in its way it's a much better bike than those Suzuki triples, particularly the 550, probably because it does not suffer from the same kind of GT identity crisis.
And, interestingly enough, the Kawa triples weren't that popular when new. Certainly, something to marvel at, but people proved reluctant to part with their cash for a bike which when compared with a Honda four just didn't make a lot of sense. This was about the time when those "Green Meanies" weren't actually dominating the race tracks, but were blowing up in a spectacular manner. Consequently, few were imported about 1500 in all, I think, and 500 of these were KH500s.
To most people under 24 the 500 is an unrecognisable machine, often taken for a KH250 and ignored. This is understandable: in 1974 when the H1F was new, I was riding around on a Yamaha CS3E 200. There were plenty of 13 year old bikes around then I still had an old Bantam, friends had C15s and the like, but I don't recall that any of us actually admired these old machines. There was always the odd punter from days of yore who waffled on about Thrunge Wanglers or whatever, and it's likely that I've become the eighties counterpart. Still, recognition when it does come is usually appreciative - some people go to inordinate lengths to stop (or get me to stop) so they can have a good look at it.
Anyway, if you really must have a 500, buy a KH. They're a bit slower but have benefited from a number of mods that make riding a bit easier. They are also cheaper and there are plenty of spares around. Lots of 500s come with expansion chambers which should be dumped in favour of stock silencers at the earliest moment (the H1F,D & E have similar silencers to the KH, which are more readily available). There are plenty of H1As around, particularly the second version with the blue, rectangular tank which had a progressively lighter panel design. I have always lusted after these, but they do look a bit dated now, and unfortunately they're not attractively primitive or quaint in a CB77 sort of way.
When all's said and done, I think my H1F is most disappointing because due to its shortcomings: it cannot be employed to what you would imagine should be its fullest potential. It's the sort of bike you just can't get off because you think there's something more you haven't yet had (pardon? - Ed). And partly because it's irresistible. Waking up at dawn one sunny morning, I went out on it rather than resume sleeping. I can assure you, that is very strange behaviour for me. On the other hand, I've been offered a temporary job fifty miles from home and it's cheaper to rent than commute on the Kawa. Logic dictates a sale, but I just can't get rid of it, and in this respect I feel much as must Mr Sivyer (Vincents, Issue 6) - more owned than owner, and this is how you'll end up if you buy one.
Roger Ledsham