Three Cylinder Dragbikes
 

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AN obvious place to start is with the Kawasaki H1/H2 three cylinder two strokes. I'm beginning to wonder if virtually the whole production run ended up on the dragstrip!

HERE are a couple of examples from Bill Baxter in the USA. The green bike is a real beauty with an interesting history;
THE bike was built in the early 90's by Paul Gast and Jim Petersen with the intent of running NHRA Prostock.
At that time the fastest bikes were running around 7.90 to 8.0 and you could qualify with an 8.10. NHRA had allowed H2s to run with a single stage of nitrous toward the end of Dave Schultz's H2 Prostock era and it was understood that they would be allowed to race under those rules; however, another rule on the age of the engine disallowed the bike, so it sat in Paul's shop for several years.

JIM sold the bike to Roy Swarz who ran it in Prostar and IDBA, holding the IDBA record for a gasoline powered H2 for many years with a run of 8.81 @ 149 at the IDBA Memphis World Finals in 1998. The bike was later fitted with nitrous oxide and competed in the 8.20 class in Prostar and SEMDRA. Roy went on to other hobbies about three years ago and quietly placed the bike up for sale.

  

OUR team needed a better chassis and the price was right to buy the entire bike so we picked it up in January 2003. Our plans are to fit it with a new Reed Cage motor from Lauren's Race Engines and attempt to break Dave Schultz's all-time H2 record of 8.59. His MPH record was broken in 2001 by Joe Bird on one of our bikes. Dave's old record was 152 and Joe ran 154.98. But the real record is ET, so we purchased the bike with the intent of breaking that record. Testing will begin on the bike in February with the first opportunity to break the record at the Prostar race in St. Louis the last day of May(2003).

 

Gast H2 triple

Kawasaki H2 drag bike