A few posts ago I presented Martin's beautifully restored R5 road racer (see Martin's Gorgeous R5 April 13, 2007). I asked Martin to elaborate a little more on the bike, to tell me the specs, the restoration, the original history, etc... Well, he responded - check out the before and after above!
Here is a little of its' known history:
I purchased the bike in 2006 and it was in the condition shown [in top photo]. It was in running condition although all of the fibreglass was crazed.
The bike was originally sold by Granby Yamaha in 1970 and set up with the full sports fairing from new... The bike has only had 2 previous owners the first for 2 years and the 2nd from 1972 to 1980 when I an told he unfortunately died of cancer, the bike was then looked after by a friend who started it regularly and rode very occasionally.
On the day I collected the bike it started with no problems and I took it into my van to my local dealers where it passed its MOT test . So I arrived home with a fully working motorcycle after it had been mostly out of use for 20 years!
The 2nd time out the oil pipe came loose and it seized on one side. After some fantastic help from Governors Bridge Motorcycles in Atherstone UK (01827 712906) who had a brand new pair of 1st oversize Dykes type pistons in stock I decided to completely restore the bike.
The forks where slightly pitted so I sent them for rechroming and machining to Philpot's in Luton who did a great and speedy job, the barrels where rebored by Paul Jones at PJ Motorcycle engineers in Wolverhampton UK. I have used Paul for years and he is without doubt the UK's best 2-stroke specialist.
Finally I repaired all of the tank, seat & fairing myself. The fibreglass was completely rubbed back through the gel coat, then had several lays of finish re-applied to deal with the crazing. Mark Burgess at Jawell paints in Wolverhampton who I use regularly helped with advice, and the final finish was 1 coat etch primer, 1 coat high built acrylic primer, 2 coats of 2 pack white gloss which was hand matched by Mark to a sample of the original fibreglass colour, and the stripe is in 2 pack Rosso Corsa. The paint scheme has been based on Phils Read's 1969 factory bike.
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.