The Glemseck 101 is the European event for anyone who loves fast, impractical, and highly imaginative machines. Those who partake in it do so with cult-like levels of obsession—returning year after year in a bid to outdo each other and themselves.
Rolf Reick is a regular face at the Glemseck 101. Based in Heidelberg, Germany, the perpetually cheerful industrial designer heads up a design school in the nearby town of Mannheim. But he also has years of experience building custom bikes—like this wild Kawasaki H1 two-stroke—under the banner of Krautmotors.
Rolf has stockpiled a number of rad bits and pieces over the years. So he set himself a goal of building a drag bike for this year’s Glemseck 101 using only recycled parts from his personal stash, turning to external sources only when necessary. (It’s not the first time he’s used this approach.)
One of the parts that Ralf already had on hand was the triple-cylinder two-stroke engine from a Kawasaki H1 Mach III; the original ‘Widowmaker.’ But it was far from stock. It had previously been rebuilt by the Kawasaki specialist Ralf Gille, with a host of upgrades that included extensive head work, a new crankshaft, and a set of Mikuni carbs.
All Ralf needed now was a frame to stick it into. One of the Glemseck 101’s flagship races is the StarrWars sprint, which is limited to rigid-framed bikes only. Rolf had long wanted to build a Kawasaki triple to take on StarrWars, and this was the perfect opportunity.
Without a suitable frame in stock, Rolf took to the internet. He soon found a rigid frame built for a Yamaha XS650 engine, and priced cheap because, as he says, “the steering head pointed in a different direction than the rest of the frame.”
A friend with a frame jig helped Rolf massage the chassis into a usable form. Next, Rolf welded in the engine mounts from a bent Kawasaki H1 frame, then turned new bearing cups so that he could install a set of Kawasaki KH500 forks that he had lying around. The 19” front and 16” rear wheels also came from Rolf’s stock, but the latter needed a new axle and spacers to fit the frame.
The bodywork is a cocktail of items from diverse sources. The tiny fuel tank is a vintage Victoria part, while the rear cowl is something that a parts dealer set aside for Rolf back in the 90s, knowing that it would appeal to his taste. The fairing was pieced together from a Monza-style upper section and the lower half of a Habermann fairing.
Rolf kept rummaging through boxes, producing the bike’s foot pegs, paddock stand spindles, and just about every other part needed to complete the build. The ‘clip-ons’ use a set of hacked-up handlebars on recycled clip-on mounts, and the exhaust is an old Denco system. The only new parts on this build are the battery and chain.
With some deft wiring work, Rolf’s Kawasaki H1 sprinter was almost ready to race. All he needed was a suitable livery—the one thing you can’t skimp on if you’re planning to turn heads at Glemseck.
“My first big bike was pink,” Rolf tells us. “At 18, my favorite color was pink. At that time my bass guitar was pink, my girlfriend knitted me pink things, and I even had a pink helmet with hair down to my belt. Truck drivers whistled at me, and the police were too embarrassed to deal with me.”
“Then came black motorcycles for a while—one in ‘friendly black,’ another in ‘youthful black,’ and yet another in ‘life-affirming black.’ But at some point, I wanted a pink bike again, and this was exactly the right time. The design is based on the racing Kawasakis of the 70s, just with pink instead of green.”
The saying goes that if you’re going to show up at a race in pink, you’d better be fast. But sadly, Rolf’s Kawasaki H1 never made it to Glemseck.
“It was not finished in time,” he confesses. “I screwed around until the night before the race, but it wouldn’t work, so I took my rigid-framed BMW instead. It was painful not to finish in time—it’s the first time it’s happened to me.”
“Anyway, life goes on,” he adds. “Now I have another year to optimize it.”
Krautmotors | Facebook | Instagram | Images by, and with special thanks to, Marc Holstein
