One of the problems my bike suffers from (and I'm sure many bikes of similar age) is rotting or missing rubber parts. Nothing major, mind you, but simple little things like the battery and airbox straps, bodywork bushings, and lever rubber - things that don't need to be there for the bike to function, but sure would help finish things up. Details.
Well, HVC is now carrying a whole bunch of hard-to-find spares. Here's a list of the things I'll be picking up in the near future:
Right Side Cover Dampers (HVC20041) - mine are disintegrating
I was pleasantly suprised when I visited Glass From The Past today and found a fresh new site. There's a bunch of new products, as well as a few galleries of customer bikes and nifty old adverts. Drop by and admire those slick cafe seats!
I watched The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift last night. I know, I know... but what can I say, I'm a motorhead, and anything like this interests me. Despite the bad acting, the movie was actually pretty good, better than the other two - that's for sure. Anyways, I digress.
For a movie supposedly set in Japan, you would think there would be some motorcycles around somewhere. There were a few scooters... and a few bicycles... but as far as I could tell, only one motorcycle. And it was a chopper with NOS bottles for fuel tanks. A chopper! In Japan! The only motorcycle! Wha?
I guess I was hoping to see a little more sportbike-sportscar crossover in this film... o well.
Instructables has a great step-by-step how-to on lacing wheels. Although the wheels in the example are from a Royal Enfield Bullet, the info within is still an excellent read. I've seen the motorcycle builds on TV and this process has always confused me. Check it out.
Just came across this handy manual on the Mikuni USA carburetor owner's and tuning manuals page. This downloadable and printable manual helped me understand the inner workings of my VM carbs. Below is the direct link to the relevant PDF:
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.