My friend Leroy called me a couple of months ago and told me he bought a 1972 H2 on ebay and he started it up and went for a ride and made it half a block before the transmission locked up and it quit. I went up to Mandan and picked it up and brought it back to my garage. It wasn't in very nice shape and as I looked at it I noticed the engine number was H2E-12321 and it seemed familiar. I looked at my photos and sure enough it was the bike I bought way back and dug out of the frozen tundra behind a guys farm. I couldn't believe it was the same bike that I sold on ebay in the condition I found it in. I was afraid to restore it because I figured the engine would just be too hard to take apart without damaging things. The guy I sold it to had a bunch of engine work done including replacing all of the cylinder studs and putting new liners in the cylinders. The upper case got broken in at least 5 places as far as I can tell by the aluminum repairs. They did a reasonable job fixing it. Even though they did a half-assed job on all the rest of the bike, such as all hardware store nuts and bolts and screws and all of the plated parts(chrome and cadmium)were coated in a wierd silver stuff that I had to take off with the wire wheel. It was very tedious and sucky. The pipes were from an H2C or D and they were replaced with reproduction pipes. The gas tank is a factory replacement H2C or D tank with the "72 paint job(you can see it is the same one in the before photos). The clutch cover is also a C or D cover that I re-shaped to be correct. I went through the carbs and set things the way they should be. I also re-routed all the cables so they would be in the right places. One of the chain guard mounts was broken off and the rear wheel was a disaster. There was part of a mounting boss on the lowere case broken off so I had a friend put a gob of weld on and I shaped it. The wiring was so bad just stood there and shook my head. I did a bunch of re-wiring including the stator. The sheath was gone from the stator wiring as well as the 2 grommets that should be there. I made a new sheath and tidied up the stator harness including the 2 grommets. I had to replace 2 of the cdi's because each one had a pole broken off. One was just shoved back in and one had a hole drilled in the back and the wire attached with a screw. I completely disassembled it and replated all the hardware and made it look nice again. The transmission had a very bad, bent #3 fork and a beat up output shaft high gear. I replaced the output shaft(becuase it was slightly galled), the output shaft high gear and the output shaft low gear. The transmisson spaced out very well. I replaced all the hardware store hardware with Kawasaki hardware. I also re-wired the aftermarket blinkers so their bodies are grounded and only 1 hot wire comes out like it should be. All of the electrics work now and when I started it up it fired off on the second kick and sounds strong. The tins were painted and there is some other stuff I did to the old girl but I can't list it all because I'm lazy. I can't believe this is the same bike but I am very pleased it is back to life. Leroy is selling this one at the Mecum in January.
