Raw Charm

Roland Brown rides one of the best and craziest two-strokes.

Simply catching sight of the very clean white-and-red RD250E had brought back a few memories, and starting the engine really transported me back in time. The Yam fired up first kick with that raucous, clattery, off-beat rakka-tack-tack of an exhaust note from its twin pipes, along with a small cloud of two-stroke exhaust smoke that provided the perfect, atmosphere-enhancing (and polluting) accompaniment.
I'd been looking forward to riding the RD250E all morning, and now I was really hooked. It's a long time now since the late Seventies, when there were so many of them on the roads. But even now there's something about Yamaha's coffin-tanked twin that seems to sum up all that was best and craziest about the days when, for teenage speed freaks on a provisional licence, a hot Japanese 250 two-stroke like this was the height of motorcycling performance.
Ten minutes later, its engine warmed and the road ahead clear, the Yamaha revved hard through the gears while I held its throttle wide open, slid back on the seat and crouched down to help make the high-handlebarred RD as aerodynamically efficient as possible. The speedo needle crept towards 90mph, the engine screamed, the scenery rushed by... and it was very easy to understand the phenomenal sales success of Yamaha's aircooled, two-stroke parallel twins.

LEFT TO RIGHT: Single piston calliper was poor in the wet, it is helped by modern pads. 54mm x 54mm two-stroke twin makes 32bhp@8000rpm. Original pipes make evocative sound.

This RD250E was registered in 1980, the year that the RD250LC and its 350cc sibling were unveiled, beginning a new era for Yamaha's two-stroke roadsters. That was also the year the King Kenny Roberts won his third straight 500cc world championship, reinforcing the image of a two-stroke Yam with speed-block paint scheme as just about the fastest, snarliest thing on two wheels. (Ironically, Kork Ballington and Kawasaki had by this time taken over the 250cc class.)
The story of Yamaha's twins had begun a long way before that, of course. This bike's blood-line goes directly back to 1957 and the YD-2, Yamaha's first aircooled two-stroke twin, which was developed from the company's very first motorcycle, the 125cc single-cylinder YA-1 Red Dragonfly of two years earlier. A few years later came the YDS-2, a more powerful and sophisticated 250 twin that was unleashed on export markets worldwide in the early Sixties.

Yamaha's reputation for fast and furious two-strokes was enhanced by the firm's grand prix success, notably in the 250cc class, where Phil Read won three world championships in the Sixties. The world titles kept coming into the Seventies, with Britain's Rodney Gould, Read again, flying Finn Jarno Saarinen, and Germany's Dieter Braun continuing the run between 1970 and '73. In that year Yamaha renamed its new roadster the RD250, the initials standing for Race Developed.

Every picture tells a story, they say...
A long-lost photograph of Yours Truly sitting on a Kawasaki Z900 turned up unexpectedly. It seemed that another picture had been put in the frame, covering up this artistic masterpiece of yoof and machine reflected in a puddle. Taken by my old school pal and keen photographer, Pete, it probably dates from 1979.
The bike is a mid-Seventies Kawasaki Z900, then a slightly faded former king, overshadowed by new-generation superbikes such as the Suzuki GS1000, Honda CBX1000 and Yamaha EXceSs 1100. Fast forward a couple of decades and the Z900 is, of course, a Classic, feted for its quaint 82bhp air-cooled engine and 'interesting' handling. Wouldn't it be fun to borrow an example of the very same motorcycle, travel the very same roads, and take a picture of the very same person in the very same place? Yes, is the answer I'm looking for here, incidentally. So, when a suitable Kawasaki turned up at RWHS (01630 657156, www.classicbikes.co.uk), a loan was arranged, and I was off in search of lost roads and mis-spent youth.
Despite its great age, the chosen Z900 was in fact probably in better condition than the one I'd been riding all those years back (unlike the person riding it). If memory serves, at the time Mrs Thatcher was first on the throne a clean 900 sold for about £1000. In 2004 that equates to £4000 or so, which is about the going rate now, funnily enough. Depreciation-proof motorcycling sounds good, but you do have to consider how much money might have been spent over the last couple of decades to keep it in sparkling condition.

Rapid acceleration is instantly available from 903cc engine; styling set the standard for a generation of Japanese superbikes.

Initial impressions of the big Kawasaki were of how easy and convenient it was to ride, typically for Japanese bikes of the era. Although the engine was considered almost impossibly powerful and wild when it debuted in the Z1 in 1972, the succeeding Z900 was rather tamer, thanks to smaller carbs and more stifled exhausts. Yet, compared with anything made in the last 15 years, the power delivery is almost car-like. Slow, might be another word to describe it, if your frame of reference includes the latest sportsbikes.

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