KR-1S.co.uk Forum

The official Kawasaki Catalogues (brochures) for the KR250S (KR250A2) show only two colors
schemes : black/red and dark blue/white . However the official part books (the brown and the purple books)
show another color scheme (lime green + white ) with the references for those body parts .
In 6 or 7 years of looking at yahoo japan , i never saw any body parts for a lime green kr250S .

The only picture i ever saw of such a beast is on the kr250.org site ( 3rd bike from right) :
http://kr250.org/images/KR_20thbirthday2_big.jpg
I am not sure if it is the real mac coy or a custom paint job ?

The color scheme is very similar(but not identical) to the australian KR250A2 :http://kr250.org/images/KR_nsw_crate.jpg
The australian KR250A2 did not have an exhaust valve (KVSS) .

If anybody has some info on the green kr250s i would be glad to hear it .

was it planned by Kawasaki , but never released ?

Also if anybody has some infos on the australian/NZ KR250a2 (1985) especially a part list with the parts specific to Australia/NZ .

Another small mystery is that the workshop manual (in english ) for Australia states the power at 48 HP (A1 and A2 )
the japanese workshop manual says 45 Hp .

Were the domestic KR250 engines differents (carbs exhausts ?)

An australian part list would solve the mystery .


as is have some spare body parts (almost everything but the tank ) , I am toying with the idea of making a "Luftwaffe 46" kind of thing : a white/green KR250S .

(just a wild idea for the moment ) (that is why i am looking for a fuel tank )

My KR250 is an A1 lime green with a KVSS engine .

B

The Japanese market 45 hp claim may simply be a ruse and nothing more to "conform" with local laws. I don't think the Japanese authorities were looking too closely at what was actually sold in Japan at that time. The difference is insignificant anyway. It would have been quite different with the KR-1S and KR-1R of course, hence the different ignitions for Japan and the rest of the world.
As the KR250A wasn't sold in Europe I ordered a shop manual and parts microfiche from a Kawasaki dealer in the late 1980s. The microfiche is somewhere in a box (the key word being somewhere) since I moved several years ago so I can't answer whether the part numbers are different (I do have most of the Japanese parts catalogues).

Looking again at both workshop manual (Australian and japanese )
I noticed another oddity : stopping distance is different !
Australia/NZ/SA: 14m from 50 km/h
Japan : 12.5m from 50 km/h

(maybe the standard "rider weight" is different ? )

In any case carbs specs are exactly the same .
Admission specs are also the same .
(which gives some credit to your "ruse" hypothesis)

Still an Australian microfiche would be nice to consult , for the body parts reference of the green A2 and the color codes

I agree with Gerrit - I don't think there were any performance differences between the various worldwide market models. It's possible that some importers actually tested performance and weighed the bikes etc rather than just accepting the official manufacturer figures, but I don't know. Maybe the importer just added 3 bhp on for tax/legal reasons, or just to make people buy one instead of a Gamma !

I've never seen a green/white S model either, other than that Japanese line-up pic on my site. I don't know the details of that bike, maybe it's a repaint, maybe it's a set of Aussie green/white/blue bodywork with a KVSS decal added. Tono-san's excellent Tandem-Twin website is no longer online unfortunately, so I can't look on there.

I've got 4 different parts books, but I'm missing 2 and don't have an Australian one.

The Brown and purple part book show a lime green + polar white kr250s on the cover page and first page .
(ok , it is black and white picture )

But the caption states clearly that there are 3 color schemes :
j3 = ebony /firecracker red
M9 = lime green 7F / Polar white F1
S3) luminous polaris blue / pearl alpine white

also parts are listed for the lime green one inside the book ...


The differences with the the Australian lime green are : KR20S logo instead of KR250
KVSS logo , White KAWASAKI on the tank instead of Black

Another piece of data i have is this Kawasaki 86 general catalogue ,
It shows that at least at some point the kr250s and kr250 were sold in parallel .

Maybe some marketing guy decided not to release the green kr250s at the last moment ,
to make it more different from the KR250 ?

who knows ....