Kork Ballington and his KR500

[Rcktfsh]

Great youtube vid of Kork Ballington and his KR500

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojeq3iu4HrY

[nsrpaul]

nice find, cheers

[cs363]

Nice piece of engineering for it's vintage. Those KR's really captured my imagination when I was younger, still remember Gregg Hansford racing the KR750 in Aussie.
Good find Rcktfsh :niceone:

[ellipsis]

Just recently picked up an early KR250 Tandem, I hadn,t quite fallen in love with it enough to get it into post-classic race mode, in fact I have nearly done a deal with someone who wants to do the same with it....but now after checking that out and other KR250 stuff on Youtube...Im falling in LOVE...

[cs363]

Just recently picked up an early KR250 Tandem, I hadn,t quite fallen in love with it enough to get it into post-classic race mode, in fact I have nearly done a deal with someone who wants to do the same with it....but now after checking that out and other KR250 stuff on Youtube...Im falling in LOVE...

Had one of those when they were new - awesome bikes, though it pays to be fairly compact body size wise :lol:
If you have a good mechanic get them to spend some time setting up the cranks, from memory they have a damper system that requires shimming to get the best performance out of the wee beast. At the time I worked for a Kawasaki dealer and our workshop foreman spent quite a bit of time setting mine up and it was quite the rocket ship for a wee 250.

[Rcktfsh]

Kork looking pretty happy these days, cruising round the neighbourhood on his KR, was certainly around the GP circuit as a rider for a long time going back to Kim Newcombe days who was a good friend. Heres a clip of him riding it at the 81 Mallory Park race of the year. Lotsa kiwis there as well, Croz, Avant and fairly sure Hiscock & Ireland would have been racing but not mentioned by the commentators. Ken Fletcher spannering for Sheene & Mike Sinclair & possibly Phil Payne for Mammola.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMRFnIiMhhc&feature=related

[roadracingoldfart]

calmly waits till Pete (crasherfromwayback) finds this thread and relives his skinny leather fitting days again lol .

[malcy25]

Everyone needs to ride a big capacity multi cylinder stroker at some point in their lives....regularly more docile than you can believe, yet vicious and nasty at other times, but oh so good!