is whistling normal?

My recently acquired 1979 KZ1000 mk2 has a noticable whistling exhaust note... At least I'm assuming it's the exhaust. Is this normal?

ericvm wrote:

My recently acquired 1979 KZ1000 mk2 has a noticable whistling exhaust note... At least I'm assuming it's the exhaust. Is this normal?

Don't know if it's normal, but I've noticed the same thing on my newly acquired '83 KZ1100 shaft drive. At first I thought it was in the shaft/diff, but it is relative to engine RPM, not road speed. I still haven't isolated it but I'm going to look into the air intake next.

now that you mention air intake, I wonder if it could be the "silencer", the plastic thing that routes air into the actual airbox with the filter. hmm.

Very probable it's the intake. Some of these bikes had a whistle for the very reason you mentioned.