Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/125849
test I H·1E • • sions swer e others e things ut handling) meaning to Ie now STEIN, Sty ling is Orient al modern; colors red on p urp le. very fast pretty di ffi cult. The situation is worse if you are ca rry ing a passenger; the ex tra weigh t seems to work up the suspension even more . I t works best on smooth an d not-too-fast co m ers. Beller shocks would have helped our bike a lot. There wasn't much else wrong with it except for the leaky gas tank, whi c h is p lainly unacceptab le. Ground clearance was acceptable , but w e would have liked more. Low speed steering was light and easy to live with . The engine is basically the same as it started out in 1969 . T he magneto COl has replaced the battery powered COl of the early models and the 19 72 m o d e l ' s breaker point triggered arra ngemen t. The nicest thi ng abou t CO l with a m agn etic pick-up is that you don't have to time the bike unless vibration makes the sensor-triggers slip. In over 30,000 mi les of ownership (which included a great deal of racing), I never had to time my '71. That was a primary reason I bought it. I hated fooling with servicing a bike when I cou ld be ridi ng it, so I got one that only needed the c arb s synched, and the That may be the reason that throttle response seems to have been improved along with acceleration. Last year a handful grabbed at low RPM would only produce a lot of gurgling and not much action. This year we only got a lillie gurgling from the same stimulus and more forward progress. You can also get wheelies, Like last 'y ear , tho ugh, you still get a lo t of smoke. One staffer got his jollies by watching the cars disappear momentarily in his mirror when he grabbed a fistful of throttle. T hat's an act worth cleaning up . We got a low of 29 MPG w ith a high of 46 MI'G on regular gas (Boy, is that stuff ever gelling regular these days!). Average fuel consumption was 38-40 MPG. The tank wo u ld get you about 120 miles before reserve came up. The industry definitely needs bigger gas tanks in these dry times. The five speed transmission has neutral at the bottom, That is a pattern that people who aren't used to it find troublesome at first, until they need ne u tral in a hurry . Yo u never have to fish to make the green ligh t co me on, The disc, the t riple cyl inders , the softly sprung sho cks, t he racyloo king pipes, everything that made the Mach III, still are. chain, clutch, and brakes adjusted, (all of which could be done in about ten minutes), and the baffles cleaned every 7,000 m iles. It was great. T he chain was still going strong at 30,000 miles, inciden tall y. The new pipes in tro d uced in ' 73 are higher to improve ground clearance and curb clearance when you back up to curbs to park. They are also a whole ' different type. Instead of plain baffles like they had in '71, more recent H-I's have gotten fibe rglass packed jobs which are much quieter - when you buy them. Unfortun ately, the '73 H-ID that we tested last year was mu ch noisier by the time it had rolled up 3500 miles simply because it had blown all the fiberglass away. The fact that the pipes were more restrictive in terms of power output is also unfortunate. The '74 pipes h ave a new part n um ber and may have been improved all around ; 1300 _ __ __ _ ___ _ test miles was n't enough to tell. with it. ] Grips are ju st fine with gloves (Yo u do wear gloves, do n ' t you?), and the seat position was comfortable for a 500 mile jaunt to the nearest o pen gas station or just a few miles over to Cycle Guide for a job interview. Our test bike caused our in-house chopper freak to comment that he never tho ught he'd see an attractive Kawasaki triple, but that he liked this o ne a lot. That is a compliment. Our 1974 Mach III went abo ut 600 miles on a quart of oil and only o nce needed a chain adjustment in the 1368 miles that we rode it . That was at about 1000 miles. The plugs in it when it went ba ck we re the same ones that it had arrived with. The spokes were still tight, but the back tire showed a little wear. (There were some whee lies .. . ) Our bike had ex cellent brakes, showed good reliability (n o th ing fell off), got acceptable mileage, was quicker than we expected (and quicker than any other bike inits class), had a high comfort level, and handled adequately ex cept in very fast twisty stuff where the shocks acted up. We can't explain why the H-l E handles Handl ing, lo ng a bug aboo o f the quick Mach II I, was inexplica bly but de finitely better. The wobbles went away. just shift all the way down. On the other hand, if you are in first and unwillingly try for one more downshift going into a co m er , you might have problems. Most people who get used to it prefer this pattern over the mo re conventional placement of neutral between first and second. The clutch held up its part of power transfe r without co m pla in t. Kawasaki discs are pretty nice to work with. They don't require as much pressure -as some others do, but t hey aren't so sensitive th at the front wheel locks up when y o u least need it to. Com fort level was pretty high. The seat is co mfo rtable fo r one or two . Vibration is present, but it was never ex cessiv e . The engine is rubber mounted and vibration has descended to a level mu ch lower than my '71. (T he fact t hat my '71 had a .04 0 oversize piston in th e right cylind er and standard sizes in the other two may have something to do better t han the H-ID ; ours just di d . What we'd like to see on the H- l F next year is a bigger gas tank and better shocks. Cycle m agazin e has labeled the Mac h Ill's competitor, the Suzuki 5 00cc Titan , "the best buy in mo to rcycling." However, the Mach III is faster, easier to service , mo re: powerful, gets sim ilar mileage, has a disc brake, ma y or ma y not handle better. is smoother, has a mo re sophisticated engine, and is generally m ore mo dem . As basic tra nsportation it is about eq ual to the Suzuki, and as a sports mach ine, it offers more. Saying the mo torcycle is the best is pretty hard to su bstantiate. Certainly , because it cuts a different figure, the Kawasaki 500cc Mach III H-IE will be th.e buy for m an y people, even though it costs more. h may be that you get w hat you pay for (as John Arbuckle used to say). • 25