These are some pics of my restoration of a Kawasaki H1 MachIII 500cc 2 stroke motorcycle. The bike was free, but it took 2 years and about $4000 to complete the project. Of the original bike about all I ended up using was the frame and engine. The rest of the parts I found new or off Ebay where I sometimes had to buy 3 parts to make one good one. The engine was pickled and the electrics still worked if you can believe that. It would have probably run if I put some clean gas in the carbs. I initially was going to make a Frankenbike out of it, but instead decided to restore it to riding condition with the proper vintage upgrades.
The bike has modern base clear paint done by Bob Aguzzi, the tank was painted with stencils like original and has been sealed with epoxy after being cleaned. Pingel reserve petcock, so no worries about filling the cases with gasoline. Wirges pipes, K&N Filters, alloy rear sprocket, bronze swingarm bushings, roller bearing head set, Redwing shocks, new higher rate fork springs, superbike bars etc round out the package. The rest of the bike is as stock as I could make it. The crank was rebuilt (thanks Damon Kirkland) with new rods, bearings and seals, the top end was well within specs so I cleaned it up, honed the cylinders and reused it ,new clutch plates/springs. I would like to still replace some of the parts as I found better ones, but that would probably be left to the next owner. My goal of getting it back on the road is almost complete. The bike is jetted just a tad rich, and the timing slightly retarded to prevent detonation. With todays gasoline you cannot tune these to the max without risking failure. Parts are too hard to come by, and the bike is too valuable to thrash anyway.
The bike actually rides fairly well, and is not the "widowmaker" everyone says it is. It deserves to be in someones collection rather than ridden much. BTW it is presently for sale.
Cheers,
Doug