kawasaki factory r and d engineer and rider

[barnett468]

http://www.3wheelerworld.com/attachm...2&d=1108426566 I see that it is not removable now I think I was wrong

hello poohbe1

thanks for checking it out more and posting what you found. nothing wrong with making a mistake, yhe mistake is just not correcting it when one can.

you got a pretty good answer out of me though didn't you. it might have been kind of a cool idea and hopefully saved some weight if it could have lightened the bike and still been strong enough. i would have liked that project!.

I actually had prototype one of a kind front forks and triple clamps on mine for a short while. they saved 8 lbs. some rookie jerk crashed me during practice at the la colliseum and they got bent. i almost cried. put on the stock spares and still rode my mangled bike and body to second place! missed first by 30 feet, darn.


thanks again

[barnett468]

HELLO FABIODRIVEN

I just two more things.

1. RE T3 500 - Your absolutely nuts, i love it! lol. if the vibration doesn't kill ya the acceleration certainly will. i'll bet you a case of beer you can't accelerate at wot. it will remove your arms from their sockets if it even ever half way hooks up, then it will wheelie over backwards and crush you mercilessly. make sure to get a neck brace and a bible, oh and don't forget to sign over your life insurance policy to your wife and tell the kids you love em! lol

2. i see you have a little klt 160. this brings back memories of water testing horrors. i'll be happy to tell you about them if you or anyone wants. i actually drown a tecate doing a water test.

thanks again

[barnett468]

Barnett. Did you ever attend any races at Pine Lake (Ashtabula). Back in the haydays. Last year they ran a couple threewheeler races. Jackie Meadows raced a TPC 450r Honda I dont know if you are familiar with these trikes they are built from a honda 450r quad . Jackie won the race in open class.There was a vintage class for the 250s aswell.The races are on youtube.

helo atc300r

urortunately no. i was pretty much stuck in so cal as far as the races went. i will definitely check out the youtube though. love to watch the races on there. was anybody big there besides jackie?

thanks

[Mosh]

There is a huge movement of resurgence in trike racing up around the great lakes region that has even yeilded sanctioned points classes in Ohio and,? even has landed the trike racers on some AMA associated tracks. While verifiable trike racing history is very cool and has its place in the sport the new era is making history not only in sheer volumes of legitimate trike races and participants, but also modern machinery for trikers. There is hours of moderen trike racing on youtube over the last 7-8 years.

[poohbee1]

found a picture i think you will be able to see this one looks a little more race ready than the production model whats the story behind it are those the triples your talking about?

[fabiodriven]

HELLO FABIODRIVEN

I just two more things.

1. RE T3 500 - Your absolutely nuts, i love it! lol. if the vibration doesn't kill ya the acceleration certainly will. i'll bet you a case of beer you can't accelerate at wot. it will remove your arms from their sockets if it even ever half way hooks up, then it will wheelie over backwards and crush you mercilessly. make sure to get a neck brace and a bible, oh and don't forget to sign over your life insurance policy to your wife and tell the kids you love em! lol

2. i see you have a little klt 160. this brings back memories of water testing horrors. i'll be happy to tell you about them if you or anyone wants. i actually drown a tecate doing a water test.

thanks again

We're hoping the 500 will do just that! I thought I was being innovative when I first started working on my 500, but then I found this site and realized there were guys doing a lot more than I was! Before 2008, I thought I was the only triker that had the bug as bad as I do. Now I know different!

I would love to hear some stories on you drowning trikes. My little KLT is probably one of the best examples left of that bike anywhere (that I am aware of). It barely gets used though. It's good and bad at the same time.

[barnett468]

found a picture i think you will be able to see this one looks a little more race ready than the production model whats the story behind it are those the triples your talking about?

Hello poohbee1

Thanks again for the question however first i'm curious, how old are you and what kind of bike do you have exactly? i think your user name is great where did you come up with it?

Thanks for the photo it blows up nicely. If you are asking about a removable subframe again this bike does not have one. the appearance is deceptive!. the big bolt you see in the center is actually the suspension rocker pivot bolt and not a sub frsme attaching bolt. It is a steel rear loop that is welded to the rest of the frame. I can tell you this about the bike and the photo however. Iam 99.9999999 % positive that this is a photo of the pre production unit i recieved from japan. this is why i say this,

1. this obviously a professional photo done in a studio.

2. The floor and backdrop are 100 % identical to the one in kawis photo studio.

3. I personally took the pre production unit upstairs to the photo studio in our large elevator to be photographed.

4. They put the vehicle id on the floor in front of the bike.

5. the photo has 3 holes in the top. this was designed to go into a promotional 3 ring binder that either our pr dept or the dealers used. Since it is in the public domain it would have to be a dealer item.

Yes this one does look race ready however it is is a box stock unmodified production model. I engineered the prototype i tested to perform as well as possible at a high level on a very hard rough track. i did this for the following reasons, i liked rough tracks, it hadn't been focused on before by honda and it was more challenging than building it primarily for sand dune use. honda used a different approach. i and others at kawi tested the two stock for stock at saddleback and perris raceway mx track as well as other sand type locations. the kawi substantially outperformed the honda on the mx tracks. they were more similar on the sand. both were a blast on sand! the honda can be made to perform better than it does stock on an mx track however right out of the box ours was better. the asthetics [look] of the bike was done completely by the japanese. i honestly was not much of an artist. We designed it to be basically race ready out of the box. Looks pretty mean doesn't it? Just so i don't get hate mail i also like the look of the honda, they make some beautiful bikes. unfortunately kawi developed a reputation for designing bikes that had a bit more industrial look, kinda like an old tractor. they worked very well but occasionally looked crude.

the forks and triple clamps i had were one of a kind and were on my 84/85 bike not the 86. they never went into production. i think kawi japan preferred to take the safer route with the original thicker tubes. more resistant to bending in a crash. that's a reasonable decision. bummer though. the originals on the 86 proto type had a 4 mm smaller od. they were very flimsy however kawi japan never realized this untill i told them while testing it in japan. the whole bike was a flexy flier. they called this design "uniform flexibilty" i called it uniform "b_______t". sorry don't talk like that if you're young, you should wait untill you get old and crabby! Anyway the reason they didn't know is because they did not have professional testers to ride it and their test riders were very slow. i trained one for them and he was decent but they didn't use him. strange.

thanks again.

[barnett468]

We're hoping the 500 will do just that! I thought I was being innovative when I first started working on my 500, but then I found this site and realized there were guys doing a lot more than I was! Before 2008, I thought I was the only triker that had the bug as bad as I do. Now I know different!

I would love to hear some stories on you drowning trikes. My little KLT is probably one of the best examples left of that bike anywhere (that I am aware of). It barely gets used though. It's good and bad at the same time.

Hello fabiofriven

Thanks for the reply. So you want a water test story great. I’ll give you the best one.
I had been at kawi for just a short while and we had been doing some dry weather testing on the klt 250. So one day I come in and my partner at the time said kawi needs us to do a severe extended waterproof test on the klt so I said ok well what exactly does that entail and he said they want us to try and drown it until it stops, I said ok for how long, he said 5 days and I said oh, nice. So my partner made a plan

We headed off to the san Gabriel mountains in the middle of winter to ride it in a creek/river that ran through there. Well we got there and the river was running well at maybe 8 mph. it was about 25 feet wide varying in depth from 1 ½’ to maybe 2 ½’ feet. It had a sandy bottom with a ton of big rocks mostly about a 1 ½’ below the surface. So I geared up in my leathers/ rain suit and boots and rode in. well guess what it was a nippy 58 degrees outside and the water was around f___n cold degrees. Well going downstream with the current wasn’t all that bad except for thise annoying rocks but then I had to turn around and go upstream. Yeah I just couldn’t get out, go upstream and try it again oh no. my partner said they want “us” [yeah “us” right, how about just me], to drown it so against the xurrent I go. Well do the math, water at 8 mph me at 3 mph [when possible] makes 11 mph through 1 ½’ of water. Doesn’t sound like much one says, go ahead try it some time in a frozen rocky creek for 100 yards at a time.

Anyway I found out three major things on my first pass, first I didn’t like cold water in cold weather, secondly the son of a ____ wouldn’t drown, lastly it wouldn’t sink therefore I couldn’t intentionally sink it to end the test! It actually sort of floated a bit in some areas due to the big balloon tires creating buoyancy. So up and down I go for about 4 hours. Yes 4 hours with periodic rest stops. Now at the end of the day I was suddenly realizing that because it didn’t miss a beat I would possibly have to do this for 4 more days! Oh my god! Well that’s not the end of the story. We get back to the unheated shop, I change, and leave my boots next to my desk. I come in the next morning, grab my now frozen still wet boots and we head off again. Of course when we got there I had to put my still frozen wet boots on. Ever have to do that for 5 days in a row cause the stupid bike you were riding refused to die?


86 TECATE WATER TEST

This story is much shorter. kawi asked me to do a moderate wet test on the 86 t3. They knew it would drown under severe conditions and they didn’t design it to be a submarine, go buy a klt if you want one of those. So this was easier we took it about 25 milesay to a place called prado dam in Anaheim. There was a shallow river that ran from the base of the dam. We got there unloaded and rode it in and oiut of the river staying near the edge where it was shallow. Well I guess I got a little zealous once because it wouldn’t drown either under our conditions. Well guess what, I found that the tecate didn’t float quite as well as the klt and I sank it deep enough to fill the motor with water tgrough the airbox and it died in the river. We had to drag it out and get the water out. We then removed the tank turned it upside down with the plug out and turned it over a few times, turned it right side up then upsidedownone last time. We then sprayed cleaner in it jacked it over to remove any remaing water, fixed the air filter and tried to start it. Well we only had to clean the plug onbe more time and it fired right up so off we rode again.

I have another hilarious story about doing an accidental severe water resistant test on a brand new $4000.00 yamaha outboard motor if anyone wants to read it.

Thanks again



thanks again

not for publication

[midsouthtrikes]

Great stories, I can read stories like that all day long. Keep posting!

[barnett468]

Great stories, I can read stories like that all day long. Keep posting!

hello midsouthtrikes

thanks for the post i appreciate your comments. feel free to ask me anything you can think of. i have lots of stories including some pg rated on the road ones, but everyone has those. i don't want to just randomly post unsolicited stories. but if you ask i'll gladly tell you what i can.

thanks again

[barnett468]

this topic came up thought i would post my response here. the guy raced a stroked klt 110.



YOU RACED A POWEROLL STROKER 110? That is absolutely hilarious, i would have LOVED to do that. they never had such a thing here. I spent some many hours on that thing testing it for kawi at WOT i probably could have been national champ if there is such a thing for a 110.

how much big it stroke it too?

what did you think of the optional hand clutch?

i can tell you some testing stories about it if you want, but i'd love to hear some of your racing stories. we actually had big wheel races here. it was just one class and lots of pro's intermediates and novices would race together and smash into each other as much as possible and the last survivor would win. last place could often go to first place by simply staying out of the mayhem. the true winner was never who crossed the finish first, rather it was the one that crashed the most people!

thanks again

[poohbee1]

a honda 250 now because kawi parts are to hard and to expensive to get. I had an 86 and 87 tecate but sold them around 1988 after the hit the fan. Im 42 and probably to old to be riding these things but it always puts a smile on my face. poohbee1 i cant remember. thanks for the info

[barnett468]

a honda 250 now because kawi parts are to hard and to expensive to get. I had an 86 and 87 tecate but sold them around 1988 after the hit the fan. Im 42 and probably to old to be riding these things but it always puts a smile on my face. poohbee1 i cant remember. thanks for the info

hello poohbee1

thanks for the info. how did you like the tecate's?

yeah i'm sure kawi parts are much harder to find but as long as you have a good kawi or even honda to start with you shouldn't need parts for a millenium.

You're never too old to ride just too old too fall off.

Very nice looking bike!

[barnett468]

hello

i was tryi

[barnett468]

Hello atc300r


Thanks for your question.

Unfortunately I don't know anything about Tim Helter. I never met him. I left Kawi in 88. The only Team Green riders I ever saw and knew personally were Jimmie, Donnie and Chris. Team Green was about 100 feet away from my area so I wasn't always aware who was over there unless they called me to tell me on occasion.

If you can let me know more specifically what info you are looking for on Jimmies bike I may be able to answer your question better. I don't know a lot.

.
I can't access your photos probably because I'm a "newbie" can you post them?


The first quad Jimmie raced was the Suzuki, see video below.


Loaned Chris my 84 t3 for one race at Corona after his broke. He pulled the holeshot, had a 100 foot lead by the 3rd turn flew so far over the huge doubles he landed on flat ground and threw the chain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPuMOo_fTCg