Kawi2strokes.com Forum

John, if there is a case seal breach, literally, the propane vapors can be drawn nto the engine, transferred up the transfers, ignited during blow down of the transfers, back down, and into the trans case.

In 1973, we had two issues with fire in the engine/trans, Talladega, rod broke, crank kept spinning, cases holed into the gearbox, tans oil lit up, making t"The Talladega Rod-Breaka", and, at Imola, same weeks as The Easter match Races, broke rod, poked hole in cases, fire on the bike. Yvon side saddles the bike into the pits, ON FIRE, Steve and italian fireman have altercation, fireman is aiming the fire retardent at the flames, above the bike, Steve grabs the hose, and puts the bike fire out.

A week later, we were in England, Easter match Races, same bike, new, un-melted running gear, won the series on "The Imola Fire-Bomb".

The propane inside the oil areas of engines has been tried on auto engines, and, with some very interesting outcomes, oil pans blown completely off the engines, FIRE!, interesting stuff, but a great test idea, all the same. Now, this sort of stuff isn't funny, but, years later, when nobody was injured, it is instantly full tilt hilarious.

A cylinder leak down/vacuum test would identify any suspect crank seals or otherwise.

_________________
"... don't drink the foam." Sonny B.

Quite true.

In the past I bought several H1 500'S and one of them had really bad crank seals.It had 20 K + on it.The compression was still even and 150 PSI on all cylinders.I backed off the oil pump adjustment and cleaned the plugs every so often runnning a slightly hotter plug and ran it for about a year like that before rebuilding it.It ran fine pulled strong idled smoothly and fired up first or second kick.I really didn't notice a whole lot of power loss because the compression was still good.It did get a little too smokey and I finally rebuilt it.I also got another bike one time that had the similar symtoms as you are having IE: Smokey and different color readings on the plugs and hard starting and poor idle.After checking it out I discovered that the slides on the carbs were way out of whack.Several pulling up way to high and one hardly pulling up at all.The ones pulling up too high, wet the plugs and smoked, and the one that hardly moved was pretty dry.Several plugs were black and one dry.Carb adjustment and doing a sync on the slides ,checking the timing,fresh plugs and the bike ran like a top !! And when I first got it I thought I was going to have to rebuild ? You may very well have a problem with crank seals ? Or some other probelm ? Just a suggestion.Go throught the process of elimination do a compression test ? Check the timing and carb adjusments ? Perhaps you have already done that ?

Oil have started to leak from the banjo bolt on the oil thank so now that needs to be fixed too.

Trying sort out the leaking carbs on my 72 H1 meanwhile as an education before turning to the 71.

Starting to get sick of these endless issues.

Sigh, not much progress made since I'm better at riding motorcycles than working on them.

The 72 H1B carbs overhauled, too bad I didn't mark up the throttle and choke cable routings. So now I'm stuck again since I can't figure out how to route the cables correctly to each carb without making a crossed and twisted mess.

go and look at the resources site, there are some pictures of some of routing .

Looked at them but don't think they're terribly helpful (doesn't even show the carburetors...).

Schematics would be though. Wish Kawasaki had marked the cables with L, M, R or something to take out some guesswork.

If I can't figure out the routing then I'm not able to give the 71 H1 the work it badly needs either, meaning either selling it or driving it until it oils itself to death or seizing.

The main cable runs down the right hand side of the spine tube, with the splitter box sitting behind the coil brackets.
The long cable is the oil pump, therefore the longest of the short cables goes to the left carb, middle length to the center ,and short to the right carb

I figured it was 2 longer cables and one shorter one (going to the middle carb). Why 3 wires of different lengths, makes no sense at all? And adding to this is the choke plunger cables, and the oil cable somehow fitting under the middle carb (?), plus one electrical cable. Very complicated.