In many ways, Allen Millyard's YouTube channel is exactly why the Internet can be an amazing place. There, the legendary UK engineer and motorcycle builder is able to share his extremely chill process videos, from building bikes in his actual shed to doing routine maintenance on a rotating selection of his custom creations.
And it's brilliant. There are occasional visits from backyard wildlife, as well as interludes into the kitchen to see what his wife, Tracy, is baking today. What I'm saying is, if you need an oasis of motorcycle-related calm in your life, you'd be hard-pressed to do better, quite honestly.
That's likely the opposite of actually riding one of Mr. Millyard's absolutely mad creations.
At least, so I assume; I've never ridden one, and it's probably not something that many people ever get to do. But if you're the lucky winner of a 1972 Kawasaki H2 1000 Mach IV Millyard Special that's about to go up for auction in January 2025, you could be one of those lucky, happy few.
For those unfamiliar with Millyard's Kawasaki H2 four-cylinder bikes, he built four of them. This is the fourth of those four that he built. So logically, it's probably going to be the soundest bike in the bunch, just because he will have thoroughly dialed in all his build processes on the first three before he got to this one.
It started life as a standard H2 750 inline triple, but Millyard decided to add an extra cylinder from another H2 to build each of these bikes. Various other supporting mods were of course necessary to bring this bike to life, and you can get a bit more insight into both the build and its maintenance in one of Millyard's many helpful videos on his YT channel.
In terms of helpfulness, there's a great bit in this video where Millyard explains a common carburetor problem that H2s can develop, and it's that the float bowl mating surfaces where it sandwiches the gasket and the cap gets screwed into place can get deformed. Overtightened screws at the corners can pull it out of shape, so the gasket can no longer do its job because the surface develops dips.
So, in the video, Millyard shows a simple technique to first find where the high areas on the float bowl mating surface are, and then carefully sand them down with a bit of wet/dry sandpaper (320 grit) and clean it up well afterward to solve leaks. Simple, straightforward, super useful, and just the chillest, best expert advice. Although it's not the actual bike that's about to go up for sale, since it's another of Millyard's modified H2 1000s, it should hopefully come in useful for the new owner.
The bike in question is a beautiful blue example, and it's reportedly one of only two Millyard H2s that's currently located in the US. This one is set to cross the auction block at the Mecum Las Vegas Motorcycles 2025 auction on Friday, January 31. If you're interested in getting your hands on it, or in seeing it in person, that means you have a couple of weeks to get things in order and make room in your garage.
