Chris wrote to me back in October of 2005 showing me his newly acquired 1973 RD350 (see here for post and "before" pictures). Well, over a year has passed, and he's made quite a lot of progress on his machine. Let's see what he's done:
Newtronics ignition (I would recommend installing this, worth the money)
New Wiseco pistons (lucky that the stock bore just needed honing after finding that one of the lead counterweights let loose off of the crank and went whizzing through the rest of the motor)
Used crank from another R5 motor I purchased as scrap from local motorcycle shop (50 bucks! score)
Polished all the aluminum I could on the motor before re-installing
New stock seat cover (Ebay not cheap)
All new black paint job
New stock hand grips
Rebuilt carbs (found the piece you posted quite informative)
As the cold weather approaches, the next task to tackle is chrome spokes on some aluminum rims
I almost sold it on Ebay but, was able to feel out how much I could get for it. I couldn't bring myself to part with. Anyways, keep the website up. It seems that there is resurgence in popularity in these bikes.
I agree, there has been a resurgence in these bikes. They're cheap, simple, fun and good-looking. Good to see such interest in getting these guys back on the road, and in such good style as Chris' ride. Just take a look at this engine:
For those interested in the carb article that Chris mentioned, see my Mikuni tuning post here.
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.