Talk:Kawasaki triple/Archive 1

Link resources
This article needs inline citations, not a list of external links. Below is the list of links deleted from the External links section. Please use these, as appropriate, to fix the missing inline citations in this article: --Dbratland (talk) 17:33, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The only forum in the world dedicated to the Kawasaki KH & S Series bikes
 * http://www.kawasakitripleparts.com
 * http://www.3cyl.com/~tripleed
 * http://www.kawasakitriplesworldwide.com
 * http://www.classickawasaki.com/
 * http://domi94.pp.free.fr/phpBB2/index.php/ (french forum)
 * http://www.classickawasaki.se
 * http://redlinemotorsports.net/
 * 1973 H1 modified as a four cylinder "666"
 * video of a running 5 cylinder engine built in 9 hours from 250 cc S1 motors
 * H2 1000cc 4-cylinder conversion
 * 
 * Motorcycle Classics article on 1974 Kawasaki H1


 * Please don't add links to your club or forum here. Wikipedia is not a directory. See WP:ELNO --Dennis Bratland (talk) 15:33, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Widowmaker
I wouldn't be surprised if the H2 made a few widows, more so than the H1. Although I do recall hearing that when the Z1 first came out, the first 9 that were imported into Australia killed their riders. I couldn't give you a source for this and I may have remembered the count wrong - it was a long time ago I heard or read it. Pedrocelli 07:30, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * A friend of mine said the same thing about the first H2 750 that were imported into his town, Vancouver. Xufanc (talk) 16:06, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

The "Widowmaker"
Having owned a new Kawasaki "500" triple, I can state without a doubt, it was quite possibly, the most ill-handling machine, (and I have owned a number of bikes, in my time)I have ever driven. It went like "stink" (in a straight line) it just couldn't turn a corner, or stop. This was the first bike, I could consistently "catwalk" in the lower 4 gears. Sometimes whether I wanted to,or not. I moved up to this bike from a Suzuki "X"-6 Hustler, and damn !!! Night and Day, don't do it justice !!Oh, yeah!! I almost forgot to mention, after appox 300 miles on the 500 Triple, it developed "piston-slap" so bad it was almost deafening. The first time I took it to the dealership, the serviceman said, he would repair it. He then said after that, I was on my own, as in all probability, it was going to occur again, and again. He was right!! It did........ NICE !! At the same time I also owned a 1969 440-"Six-Pack" Super-Bee,and when I would (rarely) get blown off by a big-block Camaro, or Hemi 'Cuda, I simply went home and swapped my four wheels, for my two-wheeled rocket. Hey!! Pride being what it is and all. I'm a lot older (56) (NOT necessarily wiser)and I now drive a Ducati 1098S.If I had ,had THIS bike back in 1970. My,my,my, how man has progressed.....'nuff said!! 16:52, 26 June 2007

Lead too short
I have added "lead too short" tag to the article during its wikification instead of actually expanding the lead. This is because a very significant portion of the article is unreferenced&mdash;once the citations are in and contents verifiable the lead should be expanded.--Tomobe03 (talk) 14:47, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Globalize
The article doesn't say so, but the models listed may be the USA models. I'm working from memory, but they don't seem to reflect the Australian models, particularly of the legendary 500cc version. I didn't ever own one but various friends owned five of them altogether, and I had the best workshop!

And the article mentions handling and braking but doesn't mention the problem of cooling (or rather not cooling) of the middle cylinder, which was seen as chronic in Australia at the time, and their worst fault by far. Andrewa (talk) 22:20, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Needs Citations
I know it's not proof but I owned and drag raced one of the first of the H-2s (blue) to hit town and a late 70 model H-1 (candy red) before that.

I can verify everything in the paragraph at begins "In 1972".

On my H-1 and H-2 I was never beaten in a street race by any other motorcycle or car, and this WAS the muscle car era. I even took money from a guy with a hopped up twin 4 barrel 427 Camaro with 12in slicks that he rolled off a trailer to race me with. (I picked to road knowing he'd go up in tire smoke and I'd be gone. I could go almost as fast on the street as the stip, he couldn't. Hehehe.) I gleefully took money from guys that thought their bad ass Harley's were fast. "Drive in" street racing at it's finest! The Kawasaki triples were what were known as "sleepers". People scoffed at the size and sound, until they rode or got smoked by one. (actually, I thought they sounded like the F-1 engines of the day, when running at full throttle that is.) They were indeed, king of the streets.

I can verify the quarter mile speeds consistently right at 12 flat and 105-109. My best was an 11.95 that I ran by letting the bike sit in the shade for 3 hours between qualifying and the race, pushed it stone cold to the start line and kicking it started right before tire warm up, shutting it off again, pushing it up practically right to the staging beam before starting it again. Yes, that is right, those 2 strokes make the most power the colder you got them. Guys that could afford dedicated stock racers would trailer theirs in. In fact, the national record holder in the class was "Pistol" Pete Griselli, and his 11.81 was set first run in the morning, cooled with ice water in the pits, and the back up run was done before 10 or 11 am. All the 2 strokes lost a little power as the racing day went on, but just a little. I saw a guy with an H-1 that used dry ice to cool his between runs. I was the best of the guys that actually rode there bikes to and from the race. :)

I learned to ride the back wheel with my H-2, but, as I learned the hard way, it wasn't hard to end up looking up at it, instead of down on it. They were easy to flip backwards.

And as much as I loved mine I admit the H-1 almost killed me a few times with speed wobble and once because I had a little bit of trouble making the H-2 turn coming DOWN the mountain above San Bernadino. The speed wobbles almost always happened getting into the throttle to hard exiting a corner. Just a touch of wheel spin would get it going.

While writing this I found a site that may be a source for all of what's needed for the page, but it will take some wading through it.

http://kawtriple.com/mraxl/articles/articles.htm

Jackhammer111 (talk) 01:16, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

"Widowmaker " 1.2
I can attest to the poor handling of the KH500. A friend bought a new one in 1976 and let me ride it. I cracked the throttle and *almost* (man what a scary experience) went over. I shakily went back at 5mph and told him "never again". I was an experienced rider at the time and the "handling characteristics" discribed are correct. I can see how someone with no skills could have hurt/killed themselves on this bike. Later I did buy a KH400 and it was a sweet handling bike, and was a lot of fun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.49.243.125 (talk) 13:37, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

A couple refs to add


--Dennis Bratland (talk) 00:36, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

locked out
I've been editing for years. I've never tied to do any more than follow rules and contribute so I've never been in a dispute.

Now Dennis, a couple of days ago deleted the part of the page about "king of the streets" and sent me a condensending message about it as though I was responsible for it being there, when in fact, all I had done was remove a citation tag relate to what "king of the streets" meant, which I though was perfectly clear from the rest of the sentence and was kind of absurd to begin with. Just that, I removed a tag.

Here is what Dennis wrote to me.

We welcome and appreciate your contributions, including your edits to Kawasaki triple, but we cannot accept original research. Original research refers to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist; it also encompasses combining published sources in a way to imply something that none of them explicitly say. Please be prepared to cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. ''Please use your personal experience with the Kawasaki triples to help locate and verify facts from published sources. Your own experiences are undoubtedly true, but that's not what we do here at Wikipedia. Instead, we research and summarize verifiable facts. '' Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:27, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

I was NOT the person he should have sent that to as I had nothing to do with it being there and resented the condensending and accusitory tone of the message. He was evidently to lazy to find who actually put it there and decided god on high message to me. I've been here a long time. I know what origional research is. I had not written it so it could not be my origonal research, regardless of what I wrote in the summaries about removeing the meaning tag.

I know from long experience here that it's not possible to reasonably ask for references for every single thing someone writes her. There has to be a degree of reasonable discretion and judgement involved in what is important to document and what is not. Even though I hadn't put it there in the first place, the king of the streets thing I know to be true as I drag raced and H-1 and an H-2 both on the strip and the street during that era. I thought his deletion of it was arbritary and not important especially given no one had sited it for reference anyway, just meaning of the phrase. so i put it back. He removed it again, but didn't stop there. I have made efforts to improve the page all afternoon and night. Wrote a whole new section with references that Dennis decided he didn't like the grammer on or that there was a misspelling or an internal tag lost in the process and he made wholesale changes what I wrote instead of addressing them individually. King of the streets aside, he's wrecked everything else I wrote today. It has gone all downhill from there because the next message he sent me was a threat.

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Kawasaki triple, you may be blocked from editing.

Look at my record. Never a dispute with anyone over an 8 year period. No accusations of vandalizme edit wars or anything else. Not take a look at his talk page. There are complaints about his deletions from 3 users TODAY ALONE, not including me!

His deletions and revisions removed some of the citations I had added today. Now I go in and try to add the references again only to find the page locked.

Being a particapant here is not supposed to be a time gobbling exersise in futility.

I'd be glad to post to anyone all of what has gone on between us today.

I'd be glad to post the rest of what has gone between us.

Am I somehow the only person locked from edits? I can't even understand how it got the the point of it being locked without hearing from someone. Is Dennis some privileged character with authority that's not apparent?

As I said, I raced these bikes. I've had my life at risk riding them, not because there was ANYTHING wrong with the bikes, but because I street raced including long races on winding country road at night with several bikes at a time. I can't think of anything in my life that was riskier or more intensely exilerating and thrilling the the time on these bikes. I pushed the envelope. Moved to California because they were going to revoke my license in Ohio for getting six speeding tickets in well less than 2 years. Us average joes aren't going to be famous racers or fight pilots what these incredible machines asked of us pushed us into rare air. I know for some of us it was a kind of peak esperience we are never going to experience again.

So, to me, and others I know, it seems very important to write frankly about these machines so others might get a glimmer of what it was like. Yea, I know.. 12 flat is childs play on some bikes now, but it's sort of like comparing flying a F-18 to flying a Grumman F-6-F hellcat and landing one of THOSE on an aircraft carrier at night.(which my dad did btw.. lol)

There was something about taking on a race with a guy in a 427 Camaro after hearing him describe what he'd done to the engine and showing up just outside the city at night to race, and seeing him back it off a trailer as happened one time, then seeing him in the mirror in a cloud of tiresmoke because he couldn't get the power down in the place I had chosen to race, then taking his money, that seems like an experience worth passing on.

King of the streets indeed!

A bit hard to find acceptable documentation for something like that. I'd rather have that up on the page and let one person come forward and claim they ever beat us. I understand that's a bit un wiki like but parts of this page, this bike is about legend and myth even though it IS true. This isn't a page about brain surgery, and I think plenty of us find much more problematic content in certain places on Wikipedia than the claim the H2 was and unbeatable street racer. I already documented it as the fastest of all it's contemporary motorcycle competitors. Fastest quarter mile, shortest stopping distance, most horsepower, lowest price and most of all I referenced an article that should put to bed the notion that they had weak frames that flexed too much on twisty bits, as it was tied with the fastest lap on a real road racing course with the Z1. It was perception. It didn't feel like it was stopping fast on brakes, but it was the best. It felt like a wild beast on winding road but if you had experience and had the nerve you cover road faster than all but it's big brother. That is, I documented and wrote it unless Dennis has deleted it or rip the guts out of the telling.

And if it was the fastest stock drag bike, as it was just as fast on the street as it was on the street and cars are NOT then King of the street is by no means an extraordinary claim.

To be clear, and I know most of you know if you're familiar with the surface on a road you can adjust how you launch enough that you lose very little from what you have on the ideal surface of a drag strip. And drag racing a stock motorcycle is ALL about the launch. Once you're out of first gear there is vurtually no advantage to be gained by one experienced rider over another. The rest is, hold the throttle open, put upward pressure on the shifter, hit red line, rotate the throttle of then on just as fast as your hand can move and it will shift. Once out of first gear you could train a monkey to do it.

Cars on the other hand on street asphalt are nothing like that. You have to get it hooked up coming off and you're screwed if you smoke the tires, then you have to shift gears with hundreds of horsepower at stake and hope it hooks up in second, and some could still get away and smoke them in third. And the real kicker, the thing that created glee was that I knew I was always going to cover the first hundred feet faster than a car, and seeing me jump out like that was going to make the guy in the car nuts. I'd given them all the reason they need to to try to hard and screw it up worse. Really, there was only a handful of times someone would make a race out of it in the last hundred feet. For the most part they were great guys that had really cool cars. I LOVED the sound of the big block guys with headers and trick cams and twin four barrels and such. But they just couldn't imagine losing to the skinny guy on the little.. thing.. that sounded like electric bees in a tin can.

The most dangerous part usually was getting the money from guys who had friends around and were really really pissed that they got humiliated.

Getting this page right is important to me.

Jackhammer111 (talk) 03:08, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

this page, and others rely far too much on the work but one author, roland brown. it is not possible that roland brown referenced nine different items found on this page on a single page of his book and the reference to zero to a hundred miles an hour in 13 seconds on an H2 is glaringly wrong. Dennis writes "mainstream published sources are wrong, then Wikipedia is going to be wrong too." There is no reason for Wikipedia to be wrong when there is evidence to the contrary as in the case expansion chamber's. No reason to leave 0 to 113 seconds on the page right after the claim of a 12 flat quarter-mile regardless of what it says in a book. the 73 superbike article is contrary evidence. Roland dennis roland claims that the H2's bikes were"adequate". That's an opinion that is contrary to actual data in the 1973 superbike comparison test where the H2 generated more braking force then all 7 of its competitors. That is not adequate brakes, it's the best brakes. Actual data, not writers opinion.

Protected edit request on 19 October 2014
Please merge in the changes from Talk:Kawasaki triple/Workpage (and remove colon prefixes from categories at the bottom). I've revised the formatting and section headers to make more sense and align them with the subject, in place of the three redundantly named sections "Model history", "Lineup changes" and "Model summary". I've revised the first section to have a fully cited summary of the H1, addressing missing citations and adding specific support for the boasts of the bikes extraordinary performance under dispute. I didn't include the title "king of the streets" or the claim that it was faster than all other street legal vehicles, but I did provide attribution for the opinion that was faster than "just about anything", etc.Hopefully I can soon fix up the subsequent sections as well; I have the sources at hand, and the specific issues that the edit warring was over may be resolved separately.

Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:59, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Padlock-bronze-open.svg Not done: The page's protection level and/or your user rights have changed since this request was placed. You should now be able to edit the page yourself. If you still seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:29, 22 October 2014 (UTC)