1974 RD350 Back To OG

A

Apexxn

Castaic, CA
A DTT member had a few bikes he wanted to get rid of so I went over and took them off his hands. This being one of them. Biggest problem with this one is it has a 400 engine in it. Luckily the bike came with some old paperwork and I was able to snail mail a few owners back and he still had the original 350 engine. With that in mind and looking over the bike I decided to bring it back to stock. It's pretty rough in some spots and nice in others so it shouldn't be too bad.




















 
Two tanks? Looks like you need some fork ears huh? I got a pair that need paint with all the spacers/dampers .Lemme know if I can help ya out there.
 
white orbs I'll pm you.

xb33bsa, cool vintage aftermarket shocks right..... I gotta hold on to those. I repainted them black which I think they were when they were new. If you know who made them I'd like to know.
 
A prior owner fitted some rearsets which aren't going to work for me.






He drilled out the passenger peg brackets so I welded up and re-drilled.



 
works performance :) they can be mounted the other way up for less unsprung weight
you can pretty much tell if they need servicing by pulling off the springs and stroking them....
they run 250psi of nitrogen and should return nicely and without a lot of squishy noises, if so they need rebuilt/service
let me know if you need them rebuilt/serviced i can do it reaonably priced labor-wise
 
1sttimer said:
That color is nice. Bike's going to be rad. Cool find!
Click to expand...

I was trying to match the original color as close as I could. The original color is a candy three part paint so it took some trial and error to get it right.

On the right is 41 year old original paint bucket. Left is a two day old repaint.

 
Paint looks great! I just had the same ordeal. That is one tough color to match and get the candy and metalflake just right. I got the color without too much difficulty, but had a really hard time with the flake. I have a number of '74 parts from different bikes - there is a range of factory values (not to mention sun fade), but they all (of the ones I have) have a pretty eye popping metallic in the sun. I ended up with an orange pearl base, a super sparkly fine pure silver flake just dusted on from about 2 feet away, a thin layer of gold candy and then the maroon (burgundy - whatever). Man, I hate candy, but it came out fine - matches out in the bright sun. Yea - my second attempt. Got the color right on before, but that pop just wasn't there. Hope you found a simpler solution! Nice job!
 
I took that original bucket, scuffed and cleared it. That really brought out what it might have been way back when. I used the bottom of the bucket which is well protected from the sun. But with or without sun they all change color after that many decades.

I got the color with just the one candy, but finding the right candy was the thing. But like you said the flake was the harder part. Even though I had a metallic mid coat I added some metallic flake to the clear and played around with it. In the end who knows, like you I've seen different shades on the same year and that's how it was back then with some of these colors.
 
when i was a senior in high school i had the red one a 74 :-* this was in 75
put a lot of miles on that bike more on the rear than on both wheels
 
This has been on hold as getting the original engine took some time. I kept calling the guy who had and it he was pretty busy and couldn't meet me. Then he stopped taking my calls and I was thinking uh oh I went the restoration route based on that matching number engine. Finally just a couple days ago he called me up and said come over and get it. Nice guy did me a solid on the price for the engine and the correct headlight bucket and the correct foot peg assembly.

 
Nice to see you bringing this back to original. I love the custom stuff, that is why I joined the site... but a showroom condition classic is a thing of beauty!

Sent from my LG-LS980 using Tapatalk
 
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