I have owned two Yamaha YPVS350s. The first caused me a lot of trouble. I was pulled over for speeding, doing about 70mph in a 30mph zone and had the book thrown at me. Not just the speeding and dangerous riding bit, but the frame and engine numbers bore no relationship to what was in the logbook (something I had not bothered to check) and were both from stolen motorcycles.
I was taken away to be interrogated by two large cops who were both as nasty as hell. I stuck to my story, which was the truth, that I had bought the bike in good faith from a back street dealer. They eventually tired of trying to make me shit myself and went off to look at the dealer’s den, which turned out to be full of enough stolen motorcycles to fill their quota for the next year. They still booked me for the speeding offences but toned down the speeding to 45mph (if 1'd agreed to plead guilty) and dropped the reckless driving bit.
They didn't give me the Yam back, which was the most distressing part of the affair. One way or another, that fiasco kept me off the road for two years until I bought my second Yamaha, this time privately and after checking that all the numbers matched - I even went down the cop shop with the documents so they could check that everything was OK. I paid a thousand notes for a 27000 mile 1986 RD350F2, complete with neat red and white fairing.
Within minutes I was howling up the road, glorying in the wailing spannies and doing, er, 80mph in a 30mph zone. Visions of imminent arrest hastily saw such excess fundamentally reduced and the front wheel was put firmly back on the ground. The bike was stock save for the expansions chambers, jet kit and an alloy swinging arm with eccentric adjusters.
I usually ride with a group of mates, all on 250 to 350 strokers. We howl across the landscape, generally giving biking a bad name and leaving a large cloud of pollutants in our wake. The RD was particularly bad on oil, needing a pint every 75 miles (I refuse to indulge this litre business). In town, slow riding caused the bike to stutter, the plugs to oil up and the powervalve to seize in position.
The whole lot would suddenly come free and power would soar as wildly as the front wheel. This caused various peds to scurry out of the way and the cagers to give a blast on their horns as we snaked past. Encouraged by this recognition, my mates and I used to form squads of wheelie-ing motorcycles that amused the locals in the town centre no end. We even made the front page of the newspaper, which prompted the police into action. But they soon went away after the letters of protest died down to an acceptable level!
35500 miles coincided with the demise of the piston rings. Removal of engine and subsequent stripping revealed the usual stroker horror story. One rebuilt crankshaft, new pistons and barrels later saw us back on the road. The partial seizure occurred whilst we were bowling along some fantastic A roads at about 90mph. The sudden locking of the back wheel made me drop a load, but the wobble cleared up when I pulled in the clutch lever. I was towed home, a most weird and frightening experience.
2000 miles later the powervalve seals went, an all too common occurrence on these strokers and not too expensive or difficult to fix. Top speed was an indicated 120mph, not really enough to keep up with some of my mates who would charge up to 135mph on the longer straights (or so they claimed). I could have opted to tune the motor but I was already in debt after the first engine rebuild and didn’t want another one just yet.
All of us who were running strokers that had done more than 25000 miles were experiencing similar problems. They just didn’t seem built to last any longer than that. When all the paint started falling off my frame I was convinced that it had rusted from the inside out and that at any moment the whole lot would dissolve under me. I had visions of sitting in space holding the bars and sitting on the saddle, whilst the rest of the bits shot off in all directions!
The brakes were similar crap. Twin front discs controlled by opposed piston calipers they were probably excellent when new, but now suffered from extreme alloy rot which tended to make them bind on at awkward moments. The rear disc was by far the worst, there would suddenly be a decline in power and billowing clouds of smoke off the disc as it seized on. This was easily fixed by removal of the hydraulic fluid and pads. The front required attention every 2500 miles to stop it doing a similar trick. Wet weather braking was hazardous in the extreme for the usual reasons.
Apart from the rot, the chassis was fine. The bike's low mass was combined with a slow steering geometry that meant you had to exert a bit of muscle to get it to lean over, but once it started to go could be controlled with apparent ease. Slight weaves intruded at more than 75mph but this was probably down to the worn suspension.
Several speed wobbles were experienced when bumps were hit at high speed, the ultra light front twitching like the end was nigh. Ride through it, my mates screamed in chorus; so I did. Falling off seems to be a habit amongst the YPVS crowd. I was no exception.
The thing is there's this lovely surge of power when the valve comes in that encourages you to ride in juvenile delinquent mode. On every occasion and on every trip. Town riding was especially dangerous because half the time I was up on the back wheel, which did not have a working brake! The first accident was only a ped who had the audacity to step on to a crossing just as I wanted to speed across it. I hurriedly put the front wheel back on the ground, at an angle which took the front of the bike away from me. I was thrown off the bike into this bulky type who by falling over on his back provided a nice soft landing. The Yam scraped along the gutter then catapulted up on to the pavement, knocking down a few innocent shoppers.
The bike was OK apart from a few bent bits. I was a bit shaken until I found myself suddenly stirred by the hulk who after picking himself up off the floor decided to vent his animal rage on my person. Oh well!
The second accident was a bit more serious as I went straight into the side of a car that had pulled out of nowhere. Broken forks and bent frame were the most expensive bits to rectify, but the cager was quite decent about the whole thing, an ex-motorcyclist, he bunged me 350 notes to sort out the mess. I came out about even after visiting a couple of breakers and getting the frame straightened.
The handling was never quite as good after that, which explains the third accident, at least to what is left of my mind. An 100mph wobble didn’t disappear when I opened the throttle in my normal heroic mode. I quickly realised that if I was going to be pitched off it was much better at a lower speed, so burnt off a layer of rubber with what was left of the front brake and stamped down the box like a maniac. The beast bounced about something terrible, until at 65mph the bars were literally wrenched out of my hands, hammering from side to side so strongly that they battered away at the steering stops. The bike ran off the road into a wire fence which exploded the front tyre with an almighty detonation. I was thrown over the bars to land in a nice soft field, but with the kind of thump that convinced my horrified riding companions that I was dead meat. I was laid out in about a foot of mud but OK apart from lots of bruises. The bike had wrecked its wheel, forks, fairing, tank and down-pipes, plus various expensive minor bits like the clocks.
I did reconstruct the machine using cheapo, worn bits from breakers - it was all I could afford. I never trusted it again, though, that final accident had taken the wind out of my sails. That and a mate on a TZR who had come off on the motorway, wrecked his spine and would have to spend the rest of his days as a vegetable. I sold the YPVS for £700 to a spotty kid with the same kind of wide grin and exuberance that I had previously sported. I'm now looking for a nice safe CG125 to commute to work on.
M. H.