KDXRIDER.NET

As you all may remember, I semi-successfully resurrected a 1983 KDX 250 . Yes, it still has a couple little issues (playing with jetting, and the shock needs a rebuild), but it was a fun project that didn't cost me a lot of money. Plus, it felt really good to bring a bike back from the dead when 9 out of 10 surveyed sane people would have scrapped it. During the project, I considered putting both the '83 250 and my '87 200 up for sale at the same time and then keeping whichever didn't sell. Who needs two vintage bikes, any way? However, now that the 250 is 95% done, I have two air-cooled Kawis that are ready to ride at a moment's notice. Two vintage bikes is a nice thing. There's not much money wrapped up in them, they are fun and comfortable to ride, and they're great conversation pieces out on the trail. But two is enough.

Fast forward to last weekend. A bunch of my club's members attend the Nesco vintage ride and swap meet every year. They all have vintage bikes of some some sort (none really pristine--mostly just ridable survivors), so they ride Saturday, then troll the swap meet on Sunday. I wanted to check the event out and see what came out of the Pines. I purposely rode my street bike to the event so that I wouldn't do anything stupid, like buy another project.

I parked the bike near some club members and made it two tables into the swap meet before dropping $10 on a Kawasaki C-series KDX service manual. Sweet. I moved one more table in and saw this.



Oh, boy.

The seller said that it belongs to his buddy, who rode it up until a few years ago. He had been meaning to reassemble it, but was just never going to get around to it. It's mostly intact, with a tub of the removed parts included. It also had a nice seat up until that morning, when it blew out of the trailer and got run over. It was surprisingly clean, appeared to have been stored out of the elements, and the bin of parts really did include everything (except a front number plate) All in all, it's about a 1000% better starting point than my '83 was.

I lingered for a few minutes and then wandered the rest of the swap meet. Lots of cool stuff to see.























As the meet was wrapping up, I wandered back to look at it again. The guy selling it knew the hook was set. (I was wearing my Kawasaki hat, after all). He said the seller wanted $400, but was negotiable because of the seat incident. I offered $350 and it was immediately accepted. (should have offered $250!!) One of my fellow club members loaded it into his truck and dropped it at my house. Let the project begin!

First things first. Time for a detailed survey.





We have an intact air box with a good usable air filter. This is a plus. The intake boot on the box is not cracked, but the manifold on the cylinder is a little dry. Not too bad, however.



Hard to tell in the pic, but the piston is pretty scuffed. Good feeling compression, though.



Neato aluminum peg on the shifter side.



Dirty shock with oil on the shaft. Will need a rebuild. Beefy shock, though.



Linkage has no vertical play (woot!



Functional rear brake. Lots of slop in the pedal, so we'll have to see what's up with that.



The right peg is droopy, so we'll have to either get a better peg or build up some metal to get it sitting level again.



The non-original bars are bent, but the triples, fork tubes, and caps are all pristine.



The tires are toasty. Loving my new neon sign, too!



I positioned the included plastics and pipe to get a feel for the bike.



Non-original silencer.









Here's trouble. The shifter is welded to the shift shaft. The bike shifts okay when rolling it around, so hopefully I can get away with this for a while. At least until the cases need splitting.



The wires from the stator are a little crispy from contact with the pipe.



And here's the most pressing immediate problem with the bike, and probably the reason it was disassembled. The mount bracket for the pipe has broken off multiple times, and there's a hole. The bike was obviously run with this hole for a while, as evidenced by the burn mark on the front fender. Also, the hole where the pipe mounts to the frame is all ovalled out. I'll need to do a little welding to get the pipe mounting sorted out.

I tested the spark, and got a good blue zap. More good news.

So what do we have here? It's my first open classer, and it's a bike that kawasaki sold for only two years ('80-'81). There is not very much info on the web about these bikes. It was Kawi's very first Uni Trak setup. I'm reading mixed reviews on its performance--some say that it has a decreasing rate built into the linkage, which results in not great action. Others have said it works well. The motor is supposedly not particularly strong, and the frame is supposedly prone to cracking. I read a horror story from an ex-pro racer who received two of these bikes in '80 and had nothing but trouble from parts breaking. I'm hoping that a slow recreational rider won't result in broken parts. There are some parts available, like used shift shafts and reproduction plastics, but not too much.

I plan to repair the pipe situation, disassemble and lube the linkage, rebuild the shock, slap on some tires and see what it's like to ride. This will be a winter project, like the '83 was, so stay tuned for infrequent updates!

Wow nice find..
BTW Nice garage.. love the green bikes everywhere :D

Yes, the garage is starting to look a lot like a Kawi dealer from the '80s.

Ya goin alittle Kawi green crazy? But then u can never have to many. I've always wondered what the power of the 420 would be like.


Sent from the back woods of vt via patchy Internet
Live free and ride hard

YES!

Ya goin alittle Kawi green crazy? But then u can never have to many. I've always wondered what the power of the 420 would be like.


Sent from the back woods of vt via patchy Internet
Live free and ride hard

Man,some sweet stuff there!!! The full Ohlins RM500 is pretty rad. Nice pristine H-Bomb as well!!!

My wife said there was a 420 there! I guess we know who bought it! I didnt get to check much out, I was stuck at the trailer trying to sell stuff. Looking forward to your rebuild thread!

zz3gmc wrote:My wife said there was a 420 there! I guess we know who bought it! I didnt get to check much out, I was stuck at the trailer trying to sell stuff. Looking forward to your rebuild thread!

your wife knows vintage bikes?

score

Im a lucky man!
Someone said there was a KDX420 there also. Some guy was asking me if we had any KDX420 parts also.

What did you have on the trailer? I may have talked to you. I had the bright green Kawasaki ball cap on.

Freaking. Awesome. Can't wait to see this one coming together!

I had my 80 PE400 next to my trailer and I was parked next to my buddy with the 91 KX250 for sale. There was a clean 80 or 81 KX250 near me also. I was talking to Joe Dintino and Jungle Dave. Were you with them? Seems like Kawasaki was well represented this year! I hope to have my red 84 200 and my wifes 75 KX250 there next year.

AWESOME!! Good luck on the rebuild!

Some of those pics, oh man! Really makes me want to get back to working on my old F11!

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I saw your PE! Not for sale, you love it too much! It looked really nice.

Jungle Dave was nice enough to drop the bike off for me. Joe Dintino is a friend from the club, too. I don't think I actually talked to you, but it seems like us meeting is inevitable. :)

My wife wrote that on the seat because everyone kept asking how much I wanted for it! There is going to be a track day there on dec 7th. Im trying to get my other PE400 back together for it. Its for vintage bikes only. Bring out your 200 and 250!

Sounds fun! I'll try to get there.

Not too much happening with the 420 build. I've tried burning all the spooge out of the pipe with our gas grill and chiminea, but couldn't get it hot enough. I also tried a propane torch blowing through the stinger, but again not hot enough. I can't build a bonfire in our neighborhood, so I'm waiting until my club's enduro. We always have a big bonfire. Once the pipe is thoroughly degreased, I'll patch the holes and redo the mounting.

I also snagged a nice seat on fleeBay. It's for an '80, so the KX on the side is white instead of green. (Don't tell the concours judges!!)

Honestly, there's not a lot the bike needs to be ridable. Once the pipe situation is fixed, I'll piece it together and get it started. With video, of course! After that, I'm thinking a tear down to paint the frame and motor, new shock head seal, new plastics, new tank graphics, fork boots (or seal savers), tires, grease up all the bearings, and I'll have a pretty sweet vintage open classer! I also found an OEM NOS silencer on the Bay. That would look nice...