Kawasaki GA5 - Disc Valve Favourite

As Japanese manufacturers were slowly feeling their way into export markets, definite trends began to appear.

kawasaki k100

For sure there were aspirational bikes with high price tags to lure the cash rich enthusiasts, but there were also swathes of stylish but utilitarian small capacity machines that sold equally well domestically as well as in prime export markets such as America.

One such bike was the GA5-A, a 100cc two stroke, single cylinder machine developed from the 90cc GA2A. Kawasaki were not alone - and arguably Honda created and cornered the market in these low capacity / low-cost machines - but Kawasaki created with the GA5 the fundamentals of an engine configuration that would last many years and many iterations.

Positioning the carburettor on the side of the engine it drew the air and fuel mixture into the combustion chamber via a rotary disc valve (a simple fibre disc mounted to the crank and spinning at engine speed). The Akashi factory had used disc valves previously on the 250 Samurai twin and its bigger brother, the A7 Avenger to good effect so the technology was familiar.

From low-capacity commuters through middleweights and from street bikes to trail machines, Kawasaki manufactured literally hundreds of thousands of machines based on this basic engine configuration from G models to K and KE plus many others. Simple to make, easy to maintain and easy to ride, these and their counterparts from Yamaha, suzuki and Honda brought the inescapable convenience and freedom of two wheels to a new and as-yet untapped audience.

So, if you have an old Kawasaki disc valve machine languishing in your shed, pull of the covers and search through the thousands of genuine OE parts on the CMSNL website. Let's get that slipped disc back in place and allow you to enjoy the same thrills as when you first took up biking.