My disc pictures are up on a Kawasaki Triples website in the States and this guy just posted up on the thread there. I feel totally honoured. Tuner Dave worked on the first Kawa triples racers over there back in the '70s. Awesome story and a little bit of history about drilled discs!
H2rTunerdave
Nice work, good design.
Being the FIRST person to ever cross drill a Kawasaki brake disk, and also, I am sure, any motorcycle brake disk, NOT DEBATABLE, FULL FACT, AND I DO NOT CARE WHOM THINKS DIFFERENTLY, THEY ARE DEAD WRONG, I WAS THERE, DID IT, THEY WEREN'T, DIDN'T (Team Kawasaki Road Race, December, 1972, 72 one half inch holes), I have heard every reason for doing so in the known universe, EVERY brilliant, to totally moronic reason..
The original design of 3 rows of 1/2 inch holes, came from Dave Hussey. He was a Bertea Corporation design blueprint engineer by day, did all the blueprints for Morris Mag Wheels in the evenings, right next door to the race shop. Dave took a 1965 Porsche Can-Am car drilled disk and revised it to work with our disks.
He walked into the race shop one evening when Steve and I were working very late, picked up a disk, said "These things are way heavy". We asked if he had a cure. An hour later, he brought the disk, and a drilling pattern back for the holes, and I drilled them late at night, 4 sets for Yvon's bikes, so nobody but Steve, Dave and I would know what we were up to.
We used straight off stock street bike H2 disks on H2R's back then for the front, MG 8 inch cast iron disks for the rears..
The main reason was just what Hussey said, too heavy, had adverse effects on both braking, and un-sprung weight for the front suspension to handle.
We kept it secret, even to other team members, until Daytona, 1973. We sprung it on the world then, worked a lot better than undrillled disks. The rest is history.
Below is an archive photo of Yvonne Duhamel on a 1972 H2R