1971 Kawasaki Avenger

Avenger stands by as I work corner at Gateway International I had wanted an Avenger in high school. As I burbled along on my 16 horsepower Allstate 250 that seemed more suited to an East German bakery apprentice, the stylish Kawasaki A7, with a claimed 40 horsepower, was the stuff of almost-attainable dreams. Such desires waned considerably as I worked my way through a succession of more powerful or more modern and supposedly superior machines, but enough of the original spark remained that when, in 1984, I found an Avenger, I gladly paid the $175 price to fulfill this dream of my youth.

The bike I found was not a particularly good example, but it ran. By the mid '80s you could go all year without seeing one of these machines, so I wasn't too picky. This bike had to be one of the last motorcycles on the road with Goodyear tires. It had some mild electrical problems, but otherwise ran OK. It seemed tiny at first, and was the smallest bike I had ridden in a dozen years. But I was soon impressed by the power and nimbleness of the little machine, which made it an entirely competent machine around town. It was even up to the occasional blast down the interstate. The thing I liked most about it was that you could ride it at 90% without feeling that you were close to meeting your ancestors. In my enthusiasm for this new toy I soon located a parts bike at a bike salvage yard. I transplanted the clutch from the parts bike to address the slipping of the original unit, but after I hastily bolted on the complete unit I found that the plates were seized. Confident that I could free up the clutch with a brisk ride, I bumped it into gear and headed for the highway. After a few miles it still refused to budge, so I thought that dumping on the power at low speed would surely be enough to settle the matter in my favor. I pulled onto a side street, shifted carefully down into first and slowed to walking speed. I then whacked open the throttle only to be startled by the biggest wheelie I ever survived. Abandoning that idea, I cowered home, changed shorts, and disassembled the clutch.

#1 daughter strikes a pose on the Avenger The Avenger ran well, but did suffer a few problems. The seals behind the rotary valves had to be replaced to reduce smoking. I somehow managed to cross-thread the large screw-on exhaust pipe clamp, fortunately damaging the clamp, not the cylinder. I mysteriously holed a piston, and an ignition coil died. The linkage for the dual leading shoe front brake rusted beyond the point of adjustability, so I merely ran the cable itself between the two levers. I lost a little mechanical leverage, but at least both shoes were again working in unison. A previous owner had for some reason used what appeared to be silicon seal in the tank or petcock, which caused periodic rough running until on one sub-zero Missouri night the muck congealed and it died outright. I had to push it about a mile to get home. I was probably the only one in town sweating.

Eventually the Avenger just wouldn't start one day. The cause eluded me, although I tried and tried to get it running again. After a couple of days of fiddling around, I gave up and parked it in favor of my other machines. I figured I'd get back to it one day, but after a few years of languishing in my basement with only the most perfunctory attempts at repair, it was sold for cheap with the rest of my inventory when I moved to Seattle. I still miss it.