After owning a series of bikes ranging from a FS1E to an air cooled RD250, most of which never ran properly, and to cap it all six months spent driving an All-Agro, it was time to get a decent bike. I had always wanted a 350LC, having heard the tales about them but was very cautious when it came to buying one, having also heard about them being frequently crashed, plus the engine’s reputation for blowing up. As a result of this, I looked for a standard bike with low mileage, it took a long time but I eventually tracked one down which appeared OK and after much negotiating got the price down to £650 after offering to take it through the MOT myself (he assured me it would pass).
Riding it home confirmed the rumours I had heard — I screamed past traffic, arriving home with watering eyes and a huge grin. Because I am at college, my only source of income is from the dole, I did the bare essentials to get the bike through the MOT - brake calipers stripped as they had seized and it sailed through.
Thereafter the economising began in earnest. The chain and sprockets were in desperate need of replacement but I kept it going by taking some links out of the chain. When I had to replace the engine sprocket, the chain fell off first time out because the sprocket worked off its shaft as I hadn't done up the retaining nut tight enough. Eventually a complete new set was fitted which much improved the ride and gearchange.
The performance of the bike was in a very different league from my old RD250, and although the initial novelty soon wore off, the acceleration can still be quite surprising. The drawback with a sharp powerband is that it’s hard to just cruise along when the power comes screaming in at 5500rpm and the bike urges you to thrash it.
This can be a pain in the wet with a pillion, when the extra mass on the back can cause unexpected wheelies in first and second gears. Weight distribution doesn’t favour the front end, anyway, because the front wheel feels like it is barely touching the ground when accelerating. A fork brace and better oil and springs are said to improve the front end but as I have trouble keeping it filled up with oil and petrol, I haven’t been able to pay out for such inessentials. Similarly, a stiffer shock at the back end hasn’t been fitted, but as the footrests can be scraped and it doesn’t weave particularly badly it will do for me.
Tyres seem to have the biggest effect on the handling and stability with a worn back tyre causing a mild weave at high speeds and also making the bike twitch when crossing cats eyes in the wet or dry. This can be quite a frequent occurrence, as back tyres have a depressingly short life of about 3000 miles. Due to the trip meter being broken I can’t accurately measure petrol consumption but I am sure it never drops much below 40mpg. But it also needs regular infusions of two stroke oil to stop the irritating oil light from blinking on.
Engine wise it has been very good, despite being regularly thrashed to the indicated top speed of just over 110mph. The engine hasn’t been touched by me or, as far as I know, the previous owner. The water-cooled barrels are supposed to help reliability, but they also suppress rattles which doesn’t help the typical two stroke owner’s paranoia (where you become sure each little rattle is getting louder and the engine is just about to blow up).
For this reason, when I found I had a small amount of money to spend on the bike I didn’t spend it on having the engine tuned - a foolproof way of making the engine blow up instead I opted for fitting a fairing. Or rather I tried to fit a fairing. Despite the company’s insistence that it would fit it just wouldn’t go on, although the clip-ons and rearsets that I fitted to go with the fairing did improve the comfort at high speed and threw some extra weight over the front wheel, although it was a little more hassle to hustle around town.
Only a few weeks earlier I had thought that the engine had finally given up resisting my thrashing when it began to insist that I had to run it up and down the road several times to bump start the bike.
Luckily, the reluctant purchase of a new set of spark plugs cured this and an irritating misfire on the overrun, so nothing terminal was wrong.
Another slightly less worrying event happened on my way home one night, when the exhaust noise suddenly changed from quiet to offensively loud. Thinking that the baffles might have worked loose, I stopped to inspect, but the noise came from the other end of the exhausts where an exhaust stud had stripped its thread and disappeared, leaving a chewed up and useless gasket. I had the thread helicoiled and put a new stud in. I was told that this was a common fault due to vibration, and at times the whole pipe can snap off. However, in my case, I think it was probably due to the footrest mounting plate, that is also the mounting point for the exhaust, being broken, leading to the studs taking all the stress.
Apart from these problems, there have been no major difficulties with the bike. Cosmetically, there’s hardly any chrome to rust, plenty of maintenance free plastic and GRP. Both the exhaust and swinging arm rust, irregardless of how much you clean them.
The swinging arm bearings are not known to last very great distances, and, similarly, the monoshock linkages suffer from the elements and can be out of action with as little as twelve grand on the clock, but I haven’t had any problems yet.
Maintenance is a very low level affair. I hardly ever bother to clean the bike because it always seems to rain straight after it’s been done and five minutes of riding leaves the bike in the same mess again.
Engine maintenance is all two stroke simplicity, no valves or camchains to piss around with, just the occasional timing check and the very rare addition of coolant to the radiator. Engines are tough and last well as long as you don‘t try to tune them up when they need frequent re~ builds or don’t try running on expansion chambers which combine anti-social noise with burnt out pistons and ruined power bands.
The main attraction of the LC must be its performance and value for money, it‘s very hard to buy another bike for the same money that will go quite so rapidly. The cost of tyres and fuel can be offset somewhat by the low insurance rates and low maintenance costs. I suppose for about the same money I could have bought a sensible bike like a Suzuki GS550, but if I wanted to be sensible I could have stuck to my Allegro and kept dry. The LC is quite simply lotsa fun.
D.Redsell