The Yamaha RD350 was a David among Goliaths

the Yamaha rd350 has its roots like so many great motorcycles from history not in a board room or you know some sort of committee but right on the track the year was 1972 the race the iconic Daytona 200 and it would not only be the first year for a two-stroke to take down all the four strokes but also for such a small bike at 350 cc's to be the big supposedly faster bikes a true David and Goliath Story by the 1970s Two Strokes had taken over the smaller classes of Grand Prix racing but in the big bike classes the four strokes were still on top with the likes of Envy Augusta and Giacomo agostini continuing to win the late 60s marked a turning point for the motorcycle industry as a whole the iconic CB750 had set a new standard for big sporting machines and the British industry was really put on their back foot forced to make bigger competitive machines both on and off the track Honda and then Kawasaki's ability to make powerful reliable big four-stroke machines really change the game but Underneath It All was the impressive advancements in two-stroke technology it was like the war between the various peoples of Westeros in Game of Thrones those Wars really were just a distraction from the real problem which was the White Walkers and the race to make bigger four strokes is similar to the wars between those different people groups in Game of Thrones but the oncoming two-stroke dominance that was the real battle that needed to be fought at this point in time the Daytona 200 was dominated by the biggest motorcycles in the world from you know the CB750 to the big British twins but in 72 after ditching his lacking BSA Don MD jumped aboard yamaha's 350 twin two-stroke and he soared to Victory beating out motorcycles with more than twice the capacity the 1973 season was the same just under a different Rider with yamaha's 350cc two-stroke race bike winning again but then in 74 Yamaha would take two of their 350cc two-stroke engines smash them together and win the Daytona 200 for the next 11 years straight in fact a four-stroke wouldn't win Daytona again until 1985 when a rule change basically made it possible Two Strokes were never beat you know what I mean two strokes once they took over it wasn't like four-stroke technology finally came in and was able to take them down now they were just kind of outlawed but it's here that the brilliant technology behind what we know of as the rd350 would be born and perhaps one of the greatest street bikes of all time now it's helpful to understand a few things when looking close at the year 1973. the world was changing fast America's first energy crisis meant that Vehicles needed to be bigger and bigger to maintain any semblance of performance and this was true in the motorcycling world as well with bikes like the iconic Kawasaki Z1 a massive hulking powerful but really somewhat heavy and some would say cumbersome Superbike motorcycles were getting faster as a whole unlike most American cars but what it meant to have a sporting motorbike was changing on top of that the national speed limit was Now set at 55 miles per hour and yeah a lot of the fun of the 60s especially with automobiles was kind of dwindling but those two years of dominance from this little two-stroke from Yamaha showed the world that a different kind of sport bike could actually be better and maybe having more CC's wasn't actually the best route in terms of production the Yamaha R5 is really the predecessor to the Rd line with its new horizontally split crankcase but also yamaha's experimentation with Reed valves from their off-road bikes would also prove vital for building the Rd more on that in a bit the R5 was a classy middleware weight or really lightweight Japanese two-stroke but it was never quite the hit that the Rd would be in part because of its slightly lower power output but it's really so much more than that the rd350 would rep a brilliant six-speed gearbox instead of the previous R5's five speed and this is key to riding the bike it needs all six of those gears and it does in fact raise the overall level of skill needed to eke out the power but it's not such that you have this like really short first gear that gets you nowhere first gear was actually pretty long and those gears really were needed to get all of that performance it is a close ratio gearbox on a small platform but testers rarely found this problematic because it was just such a good gearbox and this extra gear gave you options cycle Road notes that at 70 miles an hour you could cruise at 5500 RPM in sixth gear or you could drop down into Fifth and sit at 6400 RPM or if you you're daring you could still remain below the red line and drop all the way down into fourth gear if you needed to access even more of that power this bike also had an incredibly effective front disc brake unheard of for a bike this small you know a six-speed gearbox was unheard of a front disc brake was even more unheard of this was the fastest breaking motorcycle you could buy in 1973 bigger bikes with massive dual front disc brakes still could not compete the rd350 breaked like no other motorcycle on the market at this time essentially the braking on this bike was the closest thing you could get to what we experienced with modern braking Honda pioneered disc braking technology in the late 60s but by this time Yamaha was really the company that had perfected it nobody was making as effective of disc brakes as Yamaha and the rd350 was the absolute Pinnacle of a fast breaking motorcycle the rd350 had a perfect implementation of their read valve technology as well we've talked about two-stroke technology in our video on Suzuki's Shameless thievery of Walter Cotton's development there we talked about how the most important thing is really stuffing as much of the air fuel mixture as possible into the cylinder well one of the biggest problems is that the air gas mixture can sometimes leak back into the carbs so Reed valves really fixes this problem improving cylinder filling and thus increasing power and efficiency and with the rd350 Yamaha saw three more horsepower partially with that simple change over the R5 but also due to a change in bore over the previous model now three horsepower might not seem like a lot on paper but when it comes to such a small lightweight bike it really is quite a bit that read valve technology also meant a better power and torque curve and that really meant for ultimately a significantly better road going motorcycle so it was more power but it's all about where the power was made and how linear it was and if you've ridden Two Strokes you know they kind of just have power everywhere and that was really true of the rd350 speaking of weight the Rd maintained a ridiculous 340 pounds wet a truly unbelievable power to weight ratio and incredible overall specs for such a small bike even by today's standard just a few years prior the Triumph 500 like the one that I own basically had about the same horsepower but more weight and of course so much less Tech you know that was a four-speed gearbox and that was the bike that ruled middleweights for so long but here was a smaller lighter bike making the same power with way more Tech and sophistication the rd350 had a claimed 100 plus mile per hour top speed though most testers from the period would hit you know just shy of 100 miles per hour but you know who's really counting the Rd had a separate oil tank like the R5 so no need to mix gas and oil like a tradition National two-stroke you know you just don't want to run out of oil from that oil tank but the oil injection system known as Auto Lube was cable controlled feeding the intake ports of both cylinders directly from the oil tank and it really was a great system and on top of all of that the rd350 was relatively inexpensive only slightly more expensive than the RD250 which was also the best road going 250 from its time as well the overall design and look is really key as well Yamaha was sort of finding itself in this Regard in the early 70s Honda had set the standard for Japanese motorcycle Style with bikes like the 1968 and 69 cb450 and then of course the CB750 but the Japanese bike still hadn't nailed the look that the British bikes had so they started to just load their bikes up with chrome which did really work to some extent but the 73 rd350 was simpler it was cleaner had nice flowing lines and less excess in terms of just like gaudy decals and you know plastic the paint was beautiful and the overall design felt much more like a proper bigger sort of more premium motorcycle than most of the other 350s but the Japanese manufacturers hadn't learned The Art of Doing less you know stripping back some of the Chrome would potentially actually make this bike look better in many ways the rd350 was a sort of in-between motorcycle faster and better in almost every regard than other bikes in its class but because of that and because of yamaha's racing version you know beating all of the bigger bikes Riders couldn't help but put this in a class with Superbikes from the time 250s and 350s at this time were basically learner bikes you know they were kind of starter bikes but not the rd350 it was in a world of its own and it won the little bike battle so handedly compared to something like a cb350 from the same year this bike made more power at way lower RPM you didn't have to rev this bike out like all the competitors four-stroke options and it still made more power I will say the only thing is that the cb350 did have electric start so if this bike had electric start which it probably should have then it really would have been you know that much further above its class but because of the power and the ride ability most Riders put this bike up a category it wasn't competing so much with little bikes it was competing with the likes of Honda and Kawasaki and Suzuki's absolute fastest offerings it was sort of a sleeper sport bike kind of like a Miata is sort of a sleeper sport car the real sport enthusiasts know that the Miata is one of the greatest sports cars of all time now it wasn't that this Spike could beat those big bikes in a straight line or on a race track but overall it presented in many ways a better sporting package because it breaks better and it handled better and it was quick but the battle among smaller bikes wasn't so much centered around performance it was really about bringing the big Bike Tech and overall premium feel and usability to those little bikes this is really where the rd350 shines it's the kind of bike you can just jump on and take it to work every single day it's got power and it's got the braking to hang with just about anything on the road it's really a nice bike to look at and though it is a small bike it gives sort of a bigger motorcycle Vibe it's just whether or not you like the ring ding ding of a two-stroke because this two-stroke has that classic sound like no other road going two-stroke from its day [Music] you know [Music] this is the quintessential two-stroke road bike but this bike is so much more than the sum of its parts it's the impact that this bike had on Riders from its day and look no further than the comments section of any video and probably this video as well stories of you know rd350s pulling massive wheelies in third gear and Riders taking on much bigger faster bikes in road races the rd350 was truly The Sweet Spot for two-stroke Tech on a street-going motorcycle we talked about how the H1 was too much for its own good and as cool as that bike was this was and is the two-stroke bike to own and ride it's the little things that can make or break a good sport bike you know we look at spec sheets and we think oh you know this sport bike or this leader bike must be faster because look it's got eight more horsepower but on the road whenever you're comparing bikes and trying to decide which would be better or which would be a better sport bike horsepower is one of the most unimportant parts of all of that especially today when all of the sport bikes and almost every motorcycle has more power than you could ever need on the street braking though is a really good example in the end speed on the road and on the racetrack is often more about how fast your bike can stop versus how fast it can go extra horsepower and top speed especially at this time means little if you have to start braking seconds ahead of a bike like this this is why yamaha's 350cc two-stroke race bike upon which the Rd is based was beating the biggest sport bikes in the world at places like Daytona and in local races it was lighter it handled better and it stopped so much faster and it stopped so much faster on the road this may not always mean that you win the race to the next light but it did mean a good Rider could win in the twisties versus anything on the road and more importantly it's just more fun overall more power at low RPMs Sublime handling and all of that on such a lightweight setup that's what makes a great sport bike for the street when we think about what makes a motorcycle fun even today as with many different eras of motorcycle history many of us think it's about power more power equals more fun but experienced Riders know that this could not be further from the truth horsepower specs may help sell bikes but it's the experience of the riders that really matters the cycle road test from 73 really gets at the heart of why the rd350 is so good they say the rd350 has a Racing Connection deeper than advertising copy what that means is that the bike really is a street motorcycle born out of the labors of the racing Department from the engine to the braking to the suspension this bike stands out because it was closer to that racing 350 than most other bikes are another reviewer from the period talks about how disappointing it is to see a manufacturer win on Sunday so speak and then you know you head to the dealership try out the supposed Street version of said motorcycle and realize that not only does the bike suck but no Rider no matter how talented could ever make that bike into something that would be competitive as a race machine manufacturers like to make us think that their bikes are more connected to that race bike on the track than they actually are but more often than not the racing Tech and the street Tech are completely separate but with the rd350 it's not that the little air-cooled production version could hit 160 miles per hour like the liquid cooled race version It's not that it produced 60 brake horsepower or weighed under 300 pounds wet pretty crazy it's not about specs it's about the spirit behind the motorcycle and that's where the Rd shines it's a lightweight fast handles on Rails and brakes excellently I feel like the rd350 in many ways top manufacturers a lesson and it's something that manufacturers know today which which is that more horsepower doesn't mean anything if the weight is also increasing sport bikes today weigh so little you know they're able to make so much power with such light motorcycles but at that time you know in the 70s that was not the case everything that was faster weighed more the CB750 weighed way more than the British Twins and then of course the Kawasaki Z1 weighed even more so more CC's and more power but more weight really didn't make for a faster motorcycle necessarily but the rd350 taught the world that if you just make the bike lighter and you keep the horsepower decent you can make just as fast or faster of a motorcycle the title of this video is that the rd350 was a David among goliaths as a kid I knew that story pretty well and what's funny about it is that it's not really about the little guy somehow overcoming all of the obstacles to beat the big guy who should definitely win I think that's how we usually use this term in this story it turns out that most of that story points to the advantages that David actually has and the shortcomings that Goliath has with his heavy armor and cumbersome giant sword you know David has no armor and he's got a long distance weapon and it's a fast weapon that actually gives him an advantage and the story really does point that out as though Goliath was kind of arrogant with all of his gaudy ridiculous armor but it actually didn't help him at all versus someone light and quick like David and that's how I viewed this motorcycle as well the tz350 won the Daytona 200 because it should have won it may have produced less power but it was so much lighter and could outbreak the competition by so much that that made it a better sport bike in that moment the production rd350 is no different it was a redefining of what a sport bike is and what sporty riding on the street could be maybe bigger louder more powerful isn't always better you know Riders were learning that lesson in the 1970s but I wonder if today's Riders need to learn it as well but you know it's okay though they can have their 200 horsepower liter bikes I'll just stick with the little bikes [Music]

Channel: bart

Views: 334,963

Keywords: bart, motorcycle, motorcycles, vintage, retro, classic, modern classic, triumph, triumph bonneville, top, best, bike, motorbike, Yamaha rd350, rd350, the yamaha rd350 was a david among goliaths, cb750, honda, yamaha, suzuki, 2 stroke, 4 stroke, rd, greatest, history, motorcycle history, kawasaki, cb350, h1, iconic, engine, engines, motorcycle story

Id: yHuA4gtEFPk

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2022