1st ever build... wish me luck (rd350)

cannonshirah

New Member
I am the new and proud owner of a 1975 Yamaha RD350 with 5000 miles on it. I am new to the forums and this is my first street legal motorcycle. I started racing motocross when I was six years old and I am about to turn 20, so I am pretty familiar with two wheels. This will be my first restoration/build so I decided I would create a thread to keep all of my pictures in one place as well as a place for to ask some questions/advice. Hopefully I can keep some of you interested in the project and you can possibly answer some questions I will have in the future.

I purchased the bike for $2500 and it runs perfectly. For a few extra bucks, I was able to snag a set of "DG pipes" that turned out to be something different :-\. The bike does have some motor work done to and has a set of mikuni carbs. My end goal for this project is a clean but original resto-mod that can be converted back to its stock form easily. For the time being, I believe I am going to get the bike cleaned up and operating flawlessly before I start changing stuff around.
 

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Welcome. Nice bike.

Those pipes are a set of Swarbricks which have been "modified". Mufflers look like Swarbrick and the header section is uniquely Swarbrick but the mid sections look like they were replaced for some reason. They also look like they are TZ type headers and will need adapters to fit onto an RD barrel.
 
teazer said:
Welcome. Nice bike.

Those pipes are a set of Swarbricks which have been "modified". Mufflers look like Swarbrick and the header section is uniquely Swarbrick but the mid sections look like they were replaced for some reason. They also look like they are TZ type headers and will need adapters to fit onto an RD barrel.

I appreciate the response, well I was terribly misinformed about the pipes. I am glad that you caught that before I started cleaning up the second one haha. Do you think it is worth buying a set of adapters or should I just bite the bullet and buy a new set? I have no idea what the Swarbricks are worth.
 
Today, I spent the morning trying to diagnose what was causing the rear left turn signal to not flash. I already changed the relay flasher, the bulb, and the ground with no luck at all. I had a friend recommend trying waterproof grease in the socket and it did the trick. I'm kicking myself over right now because it was an easy fix I would not have thought of. The bike is now 100% functional and ready for the street. 8)
 
I'm in to watch this one. Nice get and great bike. Welcome to DTT and thanks for sharing it here

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
 
I would polish the living daylights out of the bike and ride it all summer and sit and admie it when it's too cold to ride. If you send me some higher resolution pictures of the pipes, I'll try to work out how well or badly they were modified.

They wre race pipes and I suspect that someone changed them to try to make them more suitable for the street. That would probably render them unusabe for either situation without a lot of work to replace cones which is a PIA for any of us that don't make pipes for a living.
 
Went to Three Palms in Conroe Texas this weekend to ride some dirt sickles in the Texas heat. Here are some shots from this weekend. I was riding my little brothers built Husqvarna 125.
 

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Beautiful RD. As Teazer said, get it right and ride the guts out of it.

One suggestion though. Replace all the seals and gaskets (kits are cheap) and replace the oil feed lines. They get dry and hard and can clog up from the old oil sitting in them. Not a bad idea to flush out and clean the oil tank as well.

Bad crank seals and oil starvation are the quickest ways to kill an RD motor.
 
VonYinzer said:
Beautiful RD. As Teazer said, get it right and ride the guts out of it.

One suggestion though. Replace all the seals and gaskets (kits are cheap) and replace the oil feed lines. They get dry and hard and can clog up from the old oil sitting in them. Not a bad idea to flush out and clean the oil tank as well.

Bad crank seals and oil starvation are the quickest ways to kill an RD motor.

^+1
 
ive got a question... an important one at that.


what the heck is this thing in the background?
index.php
 
It's a shuttle pod. Proves that 2 stroke owners are from another planet.

It looks almost like a bubble car but I'd also be interested to hear what it really is.
 
Just went to Portugal and Amsterdam for my honeymoon.

In Amsterdam it is allowed to ride scooters without helmet on the bicycle paths in the city...
Some people drive these odd narrow mini cars that seem to have either 50cc engines or electrical motors.

In Austria,people that were caugt Drinking and Driving are allowed to drive these "moped" cars :D , because their regular license gets retrieved.
 
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