Is a 1972 K2 considered ancient?

merantau

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2013
Location
Lombok Indonesia, Bendigo Australia
Bikes
Kawasaki KLX150, Honda Vario
Since leaving Indonesia for Australia in August 2019, (pre-Corona) and being marooned since, I've reied to keep busy to assuage my longing for the highways and byways of eastern Indonesia.

I know I'm talking selfishly here, bearing in mind the huge loss of life and the devastation that has been wrought on so many in SEA whose lives depend on tourism, but his enforced absence really put a spanner in a grand plan I had to, in 2020, recognise the 50th Anniversary of the first time I set foot on Indonesian soil, by completing a ride from Kuta, Lombok to the Timor Leste border and return. My plan was to rest up for a week, then head west to the northern tip of Sumatra (Pulau Weh) then return to Kuta.

I will make this trip at the earliest opportunity.In the meantime I got busy and restored my K2 750 which had lay abandoned in my shed for 31 yrs.

I spent 18 months doing an extensive re-build. It's now 836cc and I love it even more. It was always a cafè racer - but now it's a better looking cafè racer
 

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Since leaving Indonesia for Australia in August 2019, (pre-Corona) and being marooned since, I've reied to keep busy to assuage my longing for the highways and byways of eastern Indonesia.

I know I'm talking selfishly here, bearing in mind the huge loss of life and the devastation that has been wrought on so many in SEA whose lives depend on tourism, but his enforced absence really put a spanner in a grand plan I had to, in 2020, recognise the 50th Anniversary of the first time I set foot on Indonesian soil, by completing a ride from Kuta, Lombok to the Timor Leste border and return. My plan was to rest up for a week, then head west to the northern tip of Sumatra (Pulau Weh) then return to Kuta.

I will make this trip at the earliest opportunity.In the meantime I got busy and restored my K2 750 which had lay abandoned in my shed for 31 yrs.

I spent 18 months doing an extensive re-build. It's now 836cc and I love it even more. It was always a cafè racer - but now it's a better looking cafè racer
 

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I used to love my 750/4 - mine was a bitza if I recall. I think the frame and engine didn't match... but it didn't matter to me. Might've been a K1 in a K0 frame or vice versa... or something. We are talking about 44 years ago.

Here's my niece, back then, on my 750/4

SCAN_20160924_190609218glenda.jpg


Twin disks on it... and for a while, a Vetter style fairing, for riding in winter.

0IanAug77Honda.jpg


I got rid of that after getting blown off the road by a cross wind. The biggest negative with that bike... the plastic swing arm bushes. It used to weave its way around the 140 kph sweepers. I used to do 500 - 600+ km on it every weekend - riding Friday night / Sunday night to visit the woman who became the mother of my children.
 
I put in phosphur bronze bushes early on and fitted a steering damper. They're some serious driving lights on your bike. Mine's got a headlight from a water bottle Suzuki with a quartz halogen globe. But there's so many kangaroos around now that I'm not riding at night.
It's great to be riding again and I long for the day when we'll be able to return to Indonesia. At the moment they still have hotel quarantine in place and it's wet season anyway. Hopefully by the middle of the year both will be over. I just don't want to spend two weeks in some dodgy hotel and be charged an arm an a leg for the experience!
 

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