Garrett Lowery restored a 1976 Kawasaki KD-100M dirt bike. The restoration process involved many steps including breaking down the bike, inspecting and salvaging parts, researching replacement parts needed, purchasing new parts, and rebuilding the bike. Lowery learned a lot about the history of Kawasaki motorcycles and the mechanics of restoring an antique dirt bike through this project.

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Garrett Lowery
Mrs. Bennett
British/lit comp
October 7, 2011
Restoring An Antique Dirt Bike
Have you ever restored an antique dirt bike / restoring anything in general is not easy and
some things are harder than others. In my case I have chosen one of the harder ones, for my
project I will be restoring a 1976 kd 100 m dirt bike. In order to do this there are many different,
long and tedious steps that are not easy at all. My steps for the whole process consist of breaking
down., second is inspecting, third is salvaging, fourth is to make a list of my parts, fifth is
managing all of my costs, sixth is researching all parts needed, then I will have to by my parts
and last but not least the grand finally which is the buildup and my final product.
How restoring an antique dirt bike works. First of it helps a lot to know the details and
history on your project. This goes for the year, model, size, maker and the use. The year my bike
was made was 1976. This makes things much harder and by that I mean because it is so old that
they don’t not make parts for it anymore you have to scavenging and search to find what you
need. The maker is a Kawasaki , Now Kawasaki is not a new company they were started in the
late 1940s but they “ first began manufacturing motorcycle engines in 1953.”(www.kawasaki-
cp.khi.co.jp/aboutcp/index_e.html ). There first motorcycle engine released“KB-1”. They were
made by Meihatsu Kogyo, domestic sales company, founded in Japan. In 1968US sales company
changed its name to Kawasaki Motors Corp., U.S.A. (KMC).The model of my bike is a kd-m.
the size is a 100 but it actually comes with a 99 cc motor . this dirt bike size was intended to be

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made for kids being that it only stands about 2 feet tall and weighs right around 135 pounds. The
paint job on this bike is special because they only did these bikes in this color for one year so this
bike is a little bit more valuable then others like it.
Now to explain what I will be doing and all my steps included .my first step to start after
gathering all of my research and information is to. Start breaking down the entire thing. This
steps consists of many different steps as well as all of my other steps do. Now first of to start
breaking down my my bike. It is nessecery to look over the entire bike and to list down anything
that you can notice right of the back that is missing or is completely trashed. This isn to save
some time so you don’t have to look at everything later when it is off the bike. Now after that is
done it is time to start breaking down .first off you have to start off with the out side layer
basically everything u can see. Most of the parts are the seat the tank the handle bars and plastics.
After I got it stripped down to the frame and motor and electronics it was time for me to start on
that. To do that I took the left and right side of the motor off .I took my wheels and tires off and
my carburetoroff. After I got most of everything taken of the frame its was down to nothing.
Mostly just a bare frame.
Which leads me in to my next step which is inspecting, inspecting is when you look over
your whole frame every square inch of it and all my parts even then bad ones .Also at this time
you are inspecting and judging to see what is good and what is bad and what can be salvaged or
refurbished. After I did all of this it looked to be for the age that my bike was in pretty good
shape. besides a few major parts like the gas tank was rusted through and had a lot of holes and
this didn’t mean that I had to get a new one yet until I know that I couldn’t fix it. Also after
taking the side covers (cases) off I could tell that my motor had not been cleaned since 1976 and
that doesn’t exactly mean that is was clean. Also while in there I could see my carburetor also

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needed some attention. It looked to be like the floats were froze and the carburetor itself was
clogged. Some other parts it needed were a gas line, a sparkplug , a back fender and a back
fender m front and back tire and a new petcock which was broke this piece allows gas from the
tank to go into the gas line. To explain more of the things I need I’ll go into more detail first off
is the gas line. A gas line is the line that runs from the petcock to the motor. Next is the spark
plug. A spark plug creates sparks that ignite the gas inside the motor. The next piece is the back
fender. A back fender is a piece that keeps the mud from coming off the bike and onto you. And
the other things just needed to be cleaned thoroughly.
My next step is salvaging. Salvaging is when you take the parts and separate them
between the good and the bad. In this step I will have to determine what is good and what can be
repaired or have to be thrown away. For instance, when I was looking over the bike I found a
bunch of holes in the gas tank. This was not a hard thing to fix; all I needed was putty and a
sander . But some of the holes were too big so I had to weld them shut. Also, my petcock was not
letting gas through it so I tried to clean it out but it is broken so now I have to get a new one.
Now that I had broke down and inspected my parts and salvaged what was good. This
game me a pretty good idea on all the parts that I needed to purchase because unfortunately I
cannot fix everything because after sitting for about 15 years stuff gets rusted and just way to bad
to even try and fix. All of this brings me to my third to last step which was researching for all the
parts I needed and the cheapest prices because I had a budget of 250 dollars. My most helpful
website for parts had to be (www.ebay.com). All parts I ended up buying was a gas line which
was about seven dollars, my putty to fix my tank which I purchased at AutoZone I got for three
dollars, my exhaust was thirty one dollars plus shipping from eBay and my muffler cover
another thirty, and my tires in total were about one hundred and twenty five dollars. With

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havingto get all these parts I got pretty lucky on finding all of them because for the most part
they popped right up after typing them in.
Now I finally got all my parts in the mail and from the store and had fixed what could be
repaired and touched up the gas tank with some paint after welding it. It was time to start the
finishing steps which was laying out and separating all the parts into the categories that they
would fall in which is the cosmetics the motor and the electronics. For the cosmetics category
this included my freshly repaired tank my, seat, my handle bars and fenders and my front and
back wheels and tires. While in the motor are was the carburetor, gas lines and the left and right
side covers. In my electronics I had my starter starter my new wires and my headlight that I will
be adding to it. For the buildup I start in the opposite order I start with the motor and put it all
back together then I connect all my wires and such also my starter and then my cosmetics with
my my handle bars first then my seat then my tank. Then I installed my wheels and tires. Which
completed my dirt bike.
In the end my final product was just how I imagined it. It is going to take a whole lot
longer than I expected. I’m glad I did my senior project on this because not only did I learn a lot
in mechanics, but I also learned a lot of history on Kawasaki and dirt bikes there self. Going into
this project I did not know hardly anything about what I was getting myself into but with all my
laid out steps I have learned how to restore something antique and in my case a 1976 Kawasaki
kd-m 100 a bike that was far before my time and it was very interesting to learn how different
they are from today’s bikes and how far we as man have come.

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Works Cited
“history.” http://www.motorshopdemammoet.com/kawasaki_history.htm.N.p., 2010. Web. 7 Oct. 2011.
<http://www.motorshopdemammoet.com/kawasaki_history.htm>.
“hitory of bikes.” deutschlandkawaski. kawaskiinc , 2011. Web. 7 Oct. 2011. <http:///kawasaki-
deutschland.de/pdf/history/motorHistory.pdf>.
“kawasaki history .” www.theworldofmotorcycles.com. KHI, Inc, 2011. Web. 7 Oct. 2011.
<http://www.theworldofmotorcycles.com/vintage_motorcycle_kawasaki.html>.
“kawaskai bikes .” kaway history. N.p., 2011. Web. 7 Oct. 2011. <http://www.kawaski-cp.khi.jp/
aboutcp/index_e.html>.
motorcycles. Verticalscope Inc., 2011. Web. 7 Oct. 2011. <http://www.motorcycle.com/index.html>.