Category Archives: motoring

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.

building a bike in my mind

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Vintage motorcycling is a disease. We are addicts and even unemployment can’t staunch our cravings and impulsive endeavors. We spend hours pouring over Ebay and on motorcycle forums for parts and ideas of how to better our creations.

I enjoy the street-tracker look and I can appreciate some choppers and bobbers, but my first love was and continues to be the café racer. It’s gained popularity over the past few years and for a good reason; function and form tied together in one perfect motorcycle.

One of the things that is so great about bike building is it is not just a mechanical job, but it is a true artistic undertaking. No one café bike is like the other.

I was going to go on a 24hour round trip mad dash to pick up a 1974 Yamaha RD350 and see a cluster of old friends along the way, but it worked out better (read: more economically) to have the bike shipped to me.

I am looking forward to getting my new-to-me bike in the garage. In my imagination, I’ve already fit the bike with four or five different seat configurations, clip-ons, chambered pipes and a few other modifications. It’s a new project, something to contemplate in the garage on sleepless nights and tinker with during the long, hot days. Hopefully soon, it will cease to be just another RD, and will become a work of art…that I will take on the race track.

small world

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Today I made a new friend, who happened to know an old friend who I haven’t communicated with in many years. Six degrees of separation….

I was looking to buy a motorcycle that a guy posted on a forum. The bike is on the other side of the U.S. Through conversations emailed and ‘texted’, we discovered we had a mutual friend – a fellow I lost touch with many years ago.

I’m still giggling about this. I find syncronicities like this to be wonderful. Another friend of mine doesn’t find it all that amusing, just logical: it’s a vintage bike, and a specific one at that. It’s a small community of fanatics. We are likely to cross-paths on occasion.

My pop used to say that when you lose your wonderment, or surprise at how things work, you have become a cynic.

So, my friend is a cynic and I am happy to burble along in wonderment at how things happen.

This kind of synchronicity is one of the reasons I love the motorcycle community (vintage especially). There is a certain type of person drawn to riding, and a very specific type who is into vintage bikes, and an even more specific type who is into vintage two-stroke motorcycles. They are a bunch of weirdos. Who else but a freak would love smelly, smoky, noisy, finicky bikes with spindly frames and way too much power to weight ratio? We tend to recognize each other.

These motorcycles strum some chord inside me. The classic ring-a-ding-ding of a tuned two-stroke is music to my ears. It speaks loudly of demented speed on the light frames and narrow tires. There is a devilish grin that takes hold of me when I ride one of these bikes. I think anyone who rides RD’s, or TZ’s or those mad Kawasaki triples knows the wild-eyed crazy that takes over the brain once foot connects with kick-starter.

So, “to all my friends”, as Mickey Rourke’s character in Barfly would say while hoisting a whiskey into the air. May the wind be at your back, and your roads be twisty.