Greetings all. A while back I saw a Craig’s List add for a bunch of Yamaha RD parts. It looked like a lot of stuff, so I went to go look at it. Well, it was a lot of stuff, about 5-6 bikes worth, almost all in bins and boxes and most of it in pretty wretched condition. 2 bikes were kinda-sorta all put together – though pretty obviously assembled from parts. One of the frames had a clean title, so I offered half the asking price and loaded it all up in two trips. Then about a year later while out for a Sunday ride on one of my own RD’s, I met a guy that asked me if I had one for sale. I told him no, but that I would be happy to build him one! (figured I had plenty of parts!). Well we struck a deal and the pictures that follow document some of the outcome. I decided to call this thread “the stock bike” because while this project did sort of spiral out of control from its original plan, it did hold true to the initial concept, which was to not create an obvious custom. I think it turned out more like a Café’ bike than anything else, but it is pretty mild. Lower bars but not clip-ons, pegs back and up a bit but not rear sets, but it did get a solo seat and cowl. The main theme was handling though, so I decided to put it here. Now a Yamaha RD350 is a pretty recognizable machine, so it’s pretty obvious to many people when one isn’t stock (on the other hand, when was the last time you saw a totally stock one!) so the notion was to build a bike that “looked” more or less like a factory produced machine – one that could have been “a stock bike”. This turns out to be rather more difficult than it at first sounds. It is one thing to fabricate custom parts, but when factories make thousands of parts, they do so using processes that are likely to be very different that the process an individual would use to build a part to function the same way. So while there is indeed the odd (and obvious) “built from scratch” part, most things were made using factory made parts and “adjusting” them to suit. Likewise, the bike was to be practical and reliable – like a stock bike. Hey, but actually this was NOT a stock bike, so there would be changes to make it go a bit faster, and handle a LOT better!
This bike will be shipped off to Australia in a few weeks, but I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out and plan to build another one very much like it for myself (project #867, so don’t hold your breath for a write up!). So opinions on this, and suggestions for “Stock Bike II” will be greatly appreciated!
Started with this beauty. Rd350 frame with minor butchering but mendable – more importantly complete with title. Mostly RD400 bits, some R-5 bits, and quite a few unknown bits. Man, that 400 engine was hard to get out of that frame despite being nearly identical to a 350 - now I know why the 400's have a removable front engine mount on the right side! Don't know how the previous owner got it in there!
This bike will be shipped off to Australia in a few weeks, but I’m fairly pleased with how it turned out and plan to build another one very much like it for myself (project #867, so don’t hold your breath for a write up!). So opinions on this, and suggestions for “Stock Bike II” will be greatly appreciated!
Started with this beauty. Rd350 frame with minor butchering but mendable – more importantly complete with title. Mostly RD400 bits, some R-5 bits, and quite a few unknown bits. Man, that 400 engine was hard to get out of that frame despite being nearly identical to a 350 - now I know why the 400's have a removable front engine mount on the right side! Don't know how the previous owner got it in there!