Rick, the Kawasaki clubs and RB's - some history
Early days
Rick’s policy of never binning anything extends to half
an engine from his very first machine - a 50cc Phillips Gadabout Delux III. He
pestered his parents into buying him the moped as a 10th birthday present. It
cost 15 shillings (75p to you youngsters), so you an imagine the condition it
was in. Still, it made a great field bike. The remains he has tucked away in
some dark corner are the legacy of his attempts to strip it down and rebuild the
two-stroke engine after a year or two of action on an old colliery site where he
and his schoolmates cut their riding teeth.
More off-road fun followed on a 125cc Vespa and 250cc
Greeves Griffin before he graduated to a moped licence at the age of 16 and a
Garelli Tiger Cross. It was a bike that ate FSIEs and AP50s for breakfast but
also possessed a voracious appetite for its own pistons, rings and big-end
bearings. Agrati were the importers. In 1975 Kawasakis entered and took over his life
with the SIB he bought the following year (see update). A tiny rear sprocket had been fitted
so it would clock an indicated 105mph in top, though it needed to be bowling
down the side of a very steep mountain to do so. ‘The performance was
impressive and it never let me down.’ he said. ‘I loved it so much I even
used to use it to ride to the shops on the other side of the road from our
house.’
At 19 he upgraded to his brother’s S3 which he
describes as absolutely faultless. The same can’t be said of his first 750. A
great bike when it was going, but that wasn’t very often. Rick was well on his
was to completing his training as a motor mechanic by that time but neither he
nor any of the professional experts he turned to could find a cure. Dozens of
expensive remedies were tried without success before Rick stumbled upon a fellow enthusiast racing a 750-3 grass-track
outfit. He pinpointed the fault to the alternator. End of problem.
Rick decided to celebrate by getting a picture of himself
pulling the world’s biggest wheelie. Well, it seemed a good idea at the time.
He says all H2 owners are show-offs and lists one of his pleasures as riding
down a high street looking at his reflection in the shop windows. A girlfriend
was recruited to take the wheelie snap. It all went horribly wrong when the
throttle stuck open. Rick escaped injury but the bike came close to destroying
itself. Which brings us to another exhibit in the museum’s rogues’ gallery.
Twisted handlebars and shattered clocks stuck at 82mph bear testimony to that day’s events.
The clubs
Spares for these machines were no easier to find then
than they are now. That, coupled with his disgust at the failure of the
so-called experts to diagnose what had been wrong with the bike in the first
place, led to his decision to form a club as a kind of self-help group.
An appeal on the letters page of MCN produced four or five replies. From
that nucleus grew an H2 Owners Club. It wasn¹t long before riders of the early
500cc machines asked to join too so it became the H1 and H2 Owners Club.
A ‘What about us?’ call followed from the KH500
brigade. Then fans of the smaller capacity KH and S1, S2 and S3 triples began
pleading their case. The evolution process resulted in the club becoming the
Kawasaki Triples Owners Club in 1982. They staged their first rally the
following year in Rick’s home city of Nottingham. Sixty-one bikes turned up. A
big drag bike meeting was taking place at Santa Pod that weekend so they shot
along and accepted an invite to stage a mass ride down the track. ‘It was a
fantastic sight.’ said Rick. ‘You couldn’t see the strip for blue
smoke.’
The 1996 classic motorcycle show
at Stafford was the next turning point. By then the club boasted 485 members in
a dozen countries but Rick believed they had exhausted the format. He
distributed leaflets at the show outlining his plans for the club to begin
catering for all Kawasakis over 15 years of age. Being a triples fanatic
didn’t blind him to the virtues
of Mr. K’s alternatives.
An enthusiastic response saw the club¹s relaunch the
following year as the Classic Kawasaki Club (CKC). The vast majority of the 1050
enthusiasts who have been recruited are Brits but there are card-carrying
members in 26 countries, including one in Iceland and another in India. Now, if
you think H2 parts are hard to find in London you should try shopping for them
in Reykavik or Delhi!
RB's
Rick’s involvement with the
club, his passion for the bikes and ownership of so many has resulted in him
becoming Britain¹s foremost expert on the three-cylinder machines with a
network of world-wide contacts. He is paid expenses for his club work but has
never drawn a salary. The whole thing has just been a huge time-consuming hobby.
That¹s the way it remains with the CKC but a few years ago year he took the plunge and
went into business as well with the launch of RB’s Classic Kawasakis to
specialise in the sale of triples and other parts.
Rick's bike
collection had been scattered all over Nottingham, and what he couldn’t get in
his own garage, spare bedroom and loft had been billeted with friends and
relatives. Having
found suitable premises for his business, Rick has finally managed to get all
his bikes together in the same place, and
the collection now sits proudly in the museum alongside the RB's workshop and office on the
outskirts of Nottingham.
In fact, until the museum was opened not even Rick had ever seen the
whole collection together!
Footnote
Rick owns 83 motorcycles in all and although he has had
other makes models they have all been sacrificed along the way to give room to another interesting
Kawasaki.
Some of Rick's bikes
The Internet has made
the Whole world a whole lot smaller, once Rick was Britain's leading authority
on Kawasaki Triples, but with his constant travelling in search of triple
information he is now renowned as One of (if not THE) Worlds leading
authorities on the old smokers! with an ever increasing
workload, Rick reluctantly found himself having less and less time to devote to
the running of the "Classic Kawasaki Club" as no one was willing to take
on the responsibility of running the club it seemed inevitable that the club
would fade away. However, late in 2004 a small group of both new and original
"Triples Club" members banded together and vowed that the old "Kawasaki Triples
Club" would be re-born for 2005, the current status of the "Triples Club" can be
checked out at :
www.kawasakitriplesclub.co.uk
And re-born it was! Now
in 2016 the Club is larger and more popular than ever!
Rick has his
own popular message board at :
www.kawasakitriplesuk.com
It's not too unusual
to visit RB's and see a few H2's!
