Insane custom R5 chop

Came across this insanely beautiful and meticulously hand-crafted R5 chop on Motorhugger. Interestingly, there's a small inset pic of my very own R5 in the writeup as an example of what "regular" R5s look like. Thanks! I'm grateful to have my bike shown alongside work like this!

Beautiful Cafe RDs at Vanguard Cycles

While doing some research on exhausts, I stumbled across Vanguard Cycles. They have some nice RDs that they've given the cafe treatment. See here for more images of the bikes.

R5 on House Industries "Show and Tell"

Creative powerhouse House Industries was recently visited by a friend with a pretty sweet 1971 R5B, and the guys broke out the cameras to snap pics (and capture some video) for a post about it on their blog Show and Tell. Check out this quote from Rich Roat:

If the elements of the fuel-delivery system could talk to each other, the conversation might go something like this: “Carbs, this is the throttle.” “Yeah, howyoudoin’?” “Good. Listen, the dude just gave me a twist.” “Really?” “Yep.” “Okay, we’re gonna dump some of this gas/oil mixture into the cylinders.” “Yeah? Then what?” “Well, then some of it will blow up, then it’ll suck in a bunch of air then braaAAAAAAAAAAAAAHPOPPOP POp Pop..pop….pop…….pop.” “Jeeezus, what happened?”

The bike is a real nice example. See more at the post entitled "Two Smoker".

Live Free Ride Alive

The "Live Free Ride Alive" project is a collection of stories from riders, their families and friends about motorcycling as a celebration of freedom. And it's also a sobering look at what happens when that freedom is gone.

You can see the film here, see some shared stories from riders, or peruse some arresting facts and figures here. The whole site is incredibly well done. It may be Pennsylvania-centric, but the material is valuable to riders everywhere.

Please take a look at livefreeridealive.com. Just a reminder to everyone, now that the season is upon us, to ride smart and stay safe.

Vintage Photos from the Autosport Bulletin Board

Great vintage photos sprinkled throughout this huge thread on the Autosport Bulletin Board. Via A Time To Get.

Interesting Yamahas

There have been a few interesting Yamahas featured on BikeEXIF the past few weeks:


Project Goldhead

This custom RD350 cafe racer is the work of Twinline Motorcycles. It's called "Project Goldhead" due to the rare (and ultra-slick) gold DG cylinder heads. Very sharp.

A good quote from this writeup:

In the early 70s, the Yamaha RD350 set the motorcycling world on fire. It was light, rapid and unforgiving: in the right hands, it could comfortably see off a 750. In the wrong hands, it was a one-way ticket to the hospital.

Howard Lees' RD350B

Another highly modified custom Yamaha, this time a street racer built up by Howard Lees. Just about everything's been worked, all the way down to the frame. A great period looker with a very interesting history.

R5 Site Featured on BikeEXIF

Cole Sugg's 1972 R5 (recently featured on this site) has been profiled on the excellent bike blog BikeEXIF. Here's the writeup:

There seems to be a growing appreciation of super-quick two-strokes from the 1970s. Yamaha's more recent SR400 has long been the weapon of choice for most Japanese custom shops, but in the west we’re seeing more and more vintage oil-burning Yammys such as the RD400 and R5 coming out of hibernation. The 1970-72 R5 was the direct descendant of the factory TR production racers, and offered incendiary performance. Cole Suggs' restored 1972 R5C is a good-looking example: the engine has been rebuilt and bored out, a new DG exhaust and seat fitted, and the rear fender bobbed. Lawrence O'Toole's R5 tribute site has all the details. Lawrence says the R5 was "Dirty, loud, crazy quick and relatively affordable when new (and more so now!). It was, and still is, a giant-killer." We’re sold.

See the article in it's entirety here.

I Love Cafe Racers!

Came across this great blog covering cafe racers of all sorts. Very interesting to browse through. Enjoy!

http://caferacers.wordpress.com/

Yahoo! Yamaha R5 Group Bike of the Month

Unless they're fooling with me (it is the first of April after all), my bike has been crowned Bike of the Month for April 2008 on the newly renovated Yahoo! Yamaha R5 Group.

For the unaware, this Yahoo! group is populated with folks who are most knowledgeable in all things vintage Yamaha. Without their help many of the problems with and parts missing from my R5 would never have been sorted. I thank them very much!

Be sure to check them out, and to sign up if you haven't already!

http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/yamaha-r5-group

Motorcycle Classifieds Site Mash

This cool website combines classified and auction listings from various sites around the internet and displays them chronologically with photos, location and price. In order to actually see anything, select a motorcycle from the text cloud or pull-down. Want something added? Email the administrator.

BTW there's one for cars too...

AMD World Championships

I'm not much for Harleys and the whole billet-chrome-crazed chopper scene, but I must say there's been some interesting stuff happening in the custom world lately, as things get less OCC and more creative. Check out the AMD World Championships of Custom Bike Building, especially the latest Euro Finalists. Some good stuff here, like the hot-rod Rock 'N Bike from Art of Racer in France. Not a vintage asian two-stroke, but sweet nonetheless.

Carpy

I had written a long time ago about Steve Carpenter and his awesome Honda cafe conversions... well, he's back with an updated site, chock full of video and imagery of all manner of interesting bikes. Check it out.

BTW, I've updated my links to correct his link.

Alex Fry's RD Site

Alex wrote in last week to let me know about his RD blog called DOUBLEULTRA. Great looking site with some interesting stuff. Looks like he already has a winner of an RD, with some big plans for it.

Alex also wanted to give a shout out for his local shop Deus Ex Machina. Even more great stuff and a great site. Check 'em out.

1972 YR5 Renovation Project

Paul Watts wrote in to let me know about Stephan Morris' just-started teardown and restoration of his R5 in the UK. The level of detail in this article is excellent, going step-by-step and photographing everything.

I for one am going to be paying very close attention to this restoration as it progresses, so that I might pick up a thing or two - for the rest of you I'm sure this information will be invaluable as well. Thanks for sharing, Paul!

Enjoy!

Challenged!

I was challenged on Motortopia by a 1976 AMF Harley. We tied. It doesn't even run. Sheesh.

Motortopia

Motortopia has launched - a cool, MySpace-like site for cars, bike, planes and boats. The site is really well-designed, and lets you upload photo albums, make friends and challenge other owners in style, performance and overall coolness. Check it out... there aren't a lot of bikes on there yet, so get posting!

My R5 can be found here:
http://www.motortopia.com/lotoole3/bikes

Kneeslider strikes again!

Last week, the Kneeslider posted an article about the beauty of Ron Wood's dirt track motorcycles. There was mention in the article that no one was building these for the street. I posted in the comments that, with a little help from Moto Carrera, you can turn a Yamaha R5/RD350/400/RZ350 into a "street tracker", combining the sleekness of a dirt track racer with the practicality of a street-legal road bike.

So they then went a did a little write up about it. Thanks for the shout-out guys!

Do we really need that much coverage of cars turning left?

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE sign this petition to increase the broadcast of non-NASCAR related programming on SPEED. There's so much more to motorsports than just 300+ miles of sponsor-stickered cars turning left. And a hundred shows about the process and drama of 300+ miles of sponsor-stickered cars turning left. And a hundred shows with people talking and analyzing the process and drama of 300+ miles of sponsor-stickered cars turning left.

I want to see more Superbike; More Dakar and WRC, instead of news clips; more F1, Champ Car, and other open wheel racing; coverage of marque-specific racing (Cooper Challenge, Spec Miatas, etc); more GrandAm, LeMans series stuff, BTC, DTM, V8 Supercar and other road racing; more shows like Victory By Design and Two Wheel Tuesday...

20364 signatures so far...

Moment of Zen

I know it's not a Yamaha, but just listen to this Honda RC174 replica...

World's Fastest Indian T-shirt!

Paul Crowe from The Kneeslider just wrote to inform me that I'd won one of the shirts from their World's Fastest Indian-t-shirt giveaway... pretty swank! The shirt also has "I'm fast" emblazoned on the back. Excellent!

Thanks Paul! Keep up the good work over at The Kneeslider!