Category Archives: masochism

She’s ALIVE! ALIIIIIIIVE!

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Started this morning putting the RD back together with the express purpose of starting it up. Since there aren’t any brakes, can’t ride it … but since the carbs are fixed and the key finally arrived(!), I wanted to hear my bike.

My friend Jon came over and brought a fan. Yay. At 9:30am it was already in the low 100°’.
We got the rear wheel back on and I cleaned the chain. Yeah, I prolly shoulda taken it off and soaked it, but since it was dirty and not kinky, I said “screw it.”

It was easier to get the stock pipes back on without the stock footpegs (and I want some rear sets anyway) so those went away. I thought my view from lying on the floor was pretty cool, so I took a pic:

Got front wheel back on (also sans brakes), tank installed with fresh pre-mix and battery back in. She’s ready to start up! Kicked right over!


…

It dies pretty quick once choke is turned off, so I gotta get the carbs dialed in. But first, pipes, then I’ll mess with the tuning.

Next:
Brakes
Fork seals
Grips
Get some different instruments
Fit my spiky seat on
…

1974 RD350 project

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Got this in last night – from Oakland, CA:

It came with an untiltled RD400 rolling chassis (not sure what year yet)

I had enough energy to take off the seat and see how my old spiky seat will look  🙂

and had a friend join me

and some other friends came by to drink beer…er, help 🙂

If you want to see more pics, go here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111743709094295017215/RDArrival#

Initial thinks:
+ I’m gonna get rid of that gawd-awful rear fender/tail light/turn signal combo.
+ I’m considering getting a headlight bucket that has the speedo integrated in it and getting rid of the huge instrument cluster. We’ll see. I might go with a simple tach/speedo set up too.
+ clip ons
+ gotta figure out how to attach the spiky seat. My last R5 it was just zip tied. This time I’d like to figure out how to affix the hinges to the fiberglass ? ….
+ hmmm. mag wheels.
+ rear sets (cuz I can’t just use the passenger pegs)
+ gotta get some pipes on this thing. must ring-a-ding-ding.
+ put some inline quick release for crossover tube and gas lines. I like the copper tubing some ppl use (seen some great photos on this forum recently). Might look into that.
+ leaky fork seals
+ pitted forks (at least the right one. forgot to check out the left)
+ oil leak underneath coming from ? (of course “oil leak” and “two stroke” are practically redundant….)

It also came with two boxes of parts! I’ll go through those today and see what all I got.
I need more shelving.