I haven’t had a Kawasaki KH100 before and never paid much attention to them. But I just stumbled across this example being sold by a gent in California who used it as a display piece in his dealership. It only has 17 miles on it!
A lot of the road going 2 strokes of this vintage pull the fuel and oil directly into the crank. This creates a nice long lasting bottom end, but sacrifices performance. I suppose there isn’t much use comparing the 2 stroke technology of yesteryear to that of today because they are so sharply divorced, so I’ll spare you that for now. But what interests me about this particular model is the orientation of the carburetor. Where is it?! Do you see it?
The carburetor is actually on the right side of the engine mounted transversely beneath the right side engine cover. It’s completely protected from the elements. This gives a very clean look to the motor, but of course a rather odd orientation to the air filter and intake.
Here is a KH100 race bike which has the right side cover removed so you can see what is going on:
The air is pulled down through the top of the case, along an empty space along the top of the cases, then spills into the area behind the right side cover where it can be scavenged by the carb. A pretty interesting setup if you ask me! This allows the fuel (and oil) to be pulled in right by the crank bearings for better oiling.
Some of these bikes came with the biggest god-awful chain guards ever conceived. Huge monstrocities that wrap the entire chain and sprockets from front to back. Thankfully many owners were smart enough to trash them immediately and run something smaller, or none at all. Personally I think these simple little two strokes look great trimmed down and cleaned up. If anyone has one of these rotting away in their garage or behind the house I’ll gladly take it off your hands. They would make for a great little project.
I’ll leave you with a fantastic example from maker unknown.
