I got a message from a member of a friends' scooter club, Neal Friedant, and thought I'd pass this on:
One of the local scooter people forwarded your website and I found your email and wanted to ask you if anyone you know may be interested in buying my project 1970 R5, purple and white. I have it in my warehouse at Frankford & York. It runs and is complete, but needs crank seals on left hand side of the motor. I have a clear title and the bike has 20 on it, asking $400.00/OBO. By the way I saw your bike on 3rd street yesterday. It is sweet. Thanks if you know anyone that is interested.
If anyone is interested, let me know, and I'll put you in touch. Thanks, Neal, for the kind words.
Got the bike out on Sunday for a trip to the supermarket - a few items needed for a late breakfast. She ran spectacularly. Probably because she's feeling it might be time for hibernation...
I entered the Yammy (alongside Russ') in the Hot Rod Hoedown... first time I've entered anything in any sort of car show! Great stuff there, including a handful of tasty kustom bikes in the show and a whole slew of them parked just outside. A few of 'em are shown below. Good stuff.
After that we rode out to the Lansdale Bike Show... and by gosh I have never seen ANYTHING that enormous EVER. There were easily 60,000-70,000 people there. And just as many bikes! Not too much interesting stuff, mostly cruisers and such, but there were a few gems here and there and some really well-done examples, even for Harleys. Mike from Hiway had a booth set up. Stopped by to say hello.
Since then I've been riding sporadically, as the Yammy has been quite temperamental. She'll go a whole day, 130 miles or so, without a hitch, and the next day she won't make it around the corner. Plug fouling seems to be the culprit, and I haven't been able to figure out what's wrong. Got her going a little yesterday, that was fun. I'll keep her going as long as I can, until it gets too chilly. Then she'll come inside, where I can admire her all winter.
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.