I won the eBay auction for a 1972 Yamaha 350 R5-C motorcycle located in Trevose, PA, not far from where I work in Hatboro, PA. Here is the original auction description:
The item you are bidding on is a 1972 Yamaha R5-350 motorcycle. It has a two cylinder two cycle engine and it has 3,000 original miles on it. The motorcycle is all original with original tires. The bike has been in storage for 25 years, ran prior to being parked and is being sold as is. It has a small dent on the gas tank and is missing the gear shifter, otherwise it is in very good condition. The color is orange and black. Any questions, please feel free to e-mail me. Local pick-up only unless prior arrangements have been made.
I was the only bidder, and won the item for the opening $550 US bid. The bike came with the original owner’s manual and complete original toolkit. Everything was in amazingly great shape. Everything worked, no exterior rust, no dry rot, no cut wires, all the rubber was soft. Tires will need replacing though. Brakes worked fine, no rust in the tank and there’s compression... the engine sounded like it wanted to turn over! The pictures made the bike look pretty good, but it looks even better in person! A few hours with some chrome polish and wax and she’ll look like she just came off the showroom floor.
I’ve made arrangements to pick it up and trailer it to a shop near work on Wednesday, April 14th. There it will be looked over and I’ll get an estimate on what it needs to become road-worthy once again.
This is a site dedicated to the 1970-72 Yamaha 350 R5 two-strokes. These bikes are surprisingly fast for their size and age, lifting the front wheel in the first two gears and keeping up with modern bikes twice their size. It's also extremely flickable and great fun around the city or carving up canyon roads. It was the direct descendant of the Yamaha factory TR production racers. Dirty, loud, crazy quick and relatively affordable when new (and more so now!), it was, and still is, a giant-killer.
I picked up an R5C for my first motorcycle a few years ago, and was frustrated with the lack of information on these bikes available on the web. The original purpose of this site was to document the process of bringing the R5 back to life. But as I spent time gathering as much relevant and entertaining information as possible into one place for my own reference, I thought it would be helpful to share it with people who are also interested in these bikes, as well as other Yamahas, vintage bikes, and cool motorcycles in general.