Tough center café racers are generally built for display and pass—there aren’t many built for daily commuting and lengthy-distance journeying. But this air-cooled Yamaha RD350 B, purchased new in 1975 by the past due British racer Howard Lees, didn’t live in standard trim for long. As an engineering below-graduate youngster, Lees speedy tore it aside in a quest for the ideal yet inexpensive road-going motorbike.
History doesn’t relate why this RD’s frame changed into replaced by means of an earlier, very similar object from a 250 DS7. (a first-rate shunt might be one reason.) but the Koni rear suspension and two-inch longer Dresda container-segment swing arm with tapered roller bearings are apparent enhancements from trendy.
Lees brought wheels, forks, brakes and engine covers from an RD400 a yr or later, along with a sample TZ250/350 race fairing—modified to simply accept twin persistence-fashion Cibié headlamps. Then got here a Lees-designed and fabricated tank, seat, front mudguard, oil/battery container and rear-sets.
To preserve pace with the superbikes of the day, and stimulated by US tuning residence Denco, Lees tuned the RD350 B motor with the aid of modifying the crankcases, ports, pistons and heads. He substituted the usual 28mm Mikunis for 34mm Amal Mk IIs, handing over their mixture via massive, six-petal DT250 reed valves.
A Lucas CDI ignition with a pair of big coils supplied sparks; a beefed-up RD grasp, Lees-designed enlargement pipes (at the start minus the alloy give up cans) and extensively taller final gearing completed the mechanical spec. Horsepower isn’t recognised, but around 50bhp seems reasonable. What is known is that this RD350B ought to cruise all day at one hundred mph, and—unburdened by way of luggage—hit a max of one hundred twenty five mph (two hundred kph). Impressively, a more mild eighty five mph cruising speed might yield around 55mpg.
As became continually intended, the RD350 B transported south Londoner Lees a long way and extensive, from the Isle of man TT to the Dutch TT at Assen, and from Circuit Paul Ricard to the Italian Riviera to the Munich beer competition—the latter ride as soon as involving a detour round Switzerland thru Austria, as Swiss border guards declared the the unsilenced pipes to be too noisy for their u . S . A ..
The motorcycle turned into the subject of a function entitled Renegade Racer within the July 1979 difficulty of the United Kingdom’s motorbike mag. Inevitably it every so often felt the heat of membership-stage opposition at brands Hatch and elsewhere during the very early Eighties. Sadly a seizure and crash inside the south of France, coupled with Lees’ burgeoning racing objectives—and his premature dying elderly 34 in late ’ninety two—supposed that the broken RD languished in various sheds.
Inside the mid-noughties it became eventually repaired and put lower back on the road; greater lately, new proprietor Ian Martin won the POST classic 500cc air-cooled class on it on the CRMC Easter 2010 assembly at South Wales’ Pembrey circuit. No longer too shabby a end result for a domestic-built, unrestored, 35 12 months-antique two-stroke ‘tourer’.
Take a look at the Howard Lees website for extra information of the crew’s race bikes.
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