Yamaha RD and R5 Series Motorcycles

1970 R5

This bike was yet another freebie. A co-worker’s ex had it in her back yard. By buddy (Bruce) told me that it was some failed ambitious “girl power” project that never got off the ground. It needed to go. This was bike was never anything more than a parts bike. I thought about using the carbs, but they didn’t fit any of the RD's. The bore size was right, but the oil lines were plumbed into the intake boot, not the carb body. It sat in my garage with pieces of it’s totally destroyed seat raining down on the concrete floor. I finally traded it for an air compressor. Bitchen!

1974 RD250

This one was a whole $80.00. I went to an estate sale in St. Paul, MN in the early ‘90s and this bike was sitting on the lawn of the house across the street. It was blocked up on the lawn and the family’s kids were using it as playground equipment. It was in pretty good shape cosmetically and both my buddy Morgen and I left our cards should the fellow be interested in selling it. He wasn’t at the time. Two years later, the guy gives me a call and wants $75.00 for it. I rushed over with 4 $20.00 dollar bills and told him to keep the difference. It had no title and so I would have to wrest one from the State of Minnesota. This is not a hard job, but a fairly complicated and tedious one. The guy had said he rode it the year he bought it, but had trouble with the ignition on one of the cylinders and never bothered getting the title changed or even getting tabs. He didn’t ride it at all for the next 5 or so years and then sold it to me. I took it home and it sat in my garage for about a year while I doodled with other projects. I replaced the battery and points/condenser one afternoon and it started and ran on one cylinder. I’d had that problem before, so I got a box of plugs and started making changes to the ignition settings until the other cylinder lit. Then I stripped out a plug hole.

I was surprised to find that RD heads were $25.00 at the boneyard and so I picked one up as well as a bunch of rear brake light switches. Changing the head was easy and after cleaning the oil pump and getting some fresh two stroke in there, I was riding it around the block. I just love the way two strokes smoke like hell after they’ve been sitting for a while. The smoke cleared when the engine got warm and I was in business.

I got a title by taking some pictures of the bike, sending them in with an affidavit and doing a title history search. If the bike had been worth something (read: If the bike was a Harley) I probably would have had to bond it with a policy or cash or something. Since I had a pretty clear engine and frame number, they didn’t bother and I got what I needed.

Don’t be fooled, folks, this was one fast little bike. I’m not small and this thing would do 85 (indicated) with me on it. This was enough to make traffic run backward at a pretty steady clip, and this is pretty impressive for just a 250. I ran the bike for a year and a half and then had a rather spactacular meltdown on I-94 just coming out of the Lowry Hill Tunnel. Well, it wasn’t that spactacular. It just stopped running on one cylinder. I thought it was just a fouled plug, but after getting it home and pulling the head, I found a 10mm hole in the right pistion. The left piston had a flat spot melted in it where it was going to do the same thing. Shit. I loved that little bike. I really was going to set the timing on the bike later that day. Too late. Word to the wise, don’t even mess with breaker points on these bikes. Go electronic. You will NEVER regret it. This bike ended up with a guy named Chris Spargo. He races RD’s and is pretty knowledgeable about these things. He was quite impressed how I got the drum brake to work as good as it did. The truth is that I messed with it until the thing would stop hard. I should get a hold of him to see what’s happened to this little spitfire. He’s probably tossed a 350 engine in it and uses it to hunt sportbikes.

1974 RD350

An orange ’74 that was the spitting image of the first motorcycle I ever rode on. It was my uncle Paul’s bike and we got up to 80 or so on the Crosstown Highway near Southdale. Paul, I owe you a huge debt of gratitude for showing me the way. I think that moment was one of the 10 defining moments of my life. Anyway, the little orange blob came my way for $200.00 from a guy who lived just outside of Milwaukee. I think he was sure something was wrong with it or perhaps he just wanted it gone. The irony of going to Milwaukee to pick up a 2stroke Japanese motorcycle didn't escape me. I drove down there with the cash and loaded it in my pickup and drove home. It ran almost immediately and I drove it for quite some time. Eventually the fork seals blew and that contaminated the brake pads, but that didn’t matter too much to my longtime friend and roommate at the time Illya. He used it for basic transportation for a few months until it seized on him on the freeway when he was being tailgated by a semi. It was a light seize, but I never did get it back on the road again.

I sold it to Chris Spargo and I think I just saw it recently sitting outside the front of the Loring Café. I’m not sure what it’s doing there, but it was good to see it again.

1975 RD350

I also had a purple ’75 that was something of a wreck. I bought it from a guy I had known for a while (Randy) for the princely sum of $150.00. I rode it home after we figured out that one of the carb sliders had stuck and sent me on a wild ride. This was a streetbike that had been used as a dual purpose bike. The semi-knobbies on it testified to that fact. I had this bike for a long time, a runner the whole time. However, it just was too munged up for me to have it as a full blown project bike. So it sat in my garage, giving a part here and there to my other various bikes. This one also went to Chris Spargo. I hope it did him some good.

1977 RD400

I bought this ’77 from Marty at Trackstar when they were still on Cedar. I got it for $100.00. I think a customer abandoned it. After putting new rings in it, it still didn’t run right. Chris Spargo diagnosed a bad crank seal and I had to agree. We cut a deal, so that he would fix it in return for the two 350’s above, but I needed cash before it was done and so Chris bought this nice bike off me for $400.00. I think it was a fair price and I don’t regret it too much. Much.

Here are some tech tips for RD bikes.