YES I WAS ALSO A YAMAHA TWO STROKE FAN.
My first new motorcycle was a Yamaha 250 cc YDS-5 the bike that later become a RD350. The Bike had 29HP compared to my Triumph T100S 500cc with 30 hp and 50 kg more.
Here are pictures of my YDS-5 Electric and My Triumph T100S in 1967:
The origin of this Yamaha Twin Two Stroke Line was German Adler MB 250 which was a very advanced two stroke model.
Here You can see pictures of the “original” Adler, the first Yamaha Copy YDS-1 and my YDS-5 with electric start and Autolube you can se above. Actually I actually also owned an YDS-1 project some ten years ago in small pieces but I sold it off, almost already restored, because I couldn’t find the oil seals for the crankcase. The first Yamaha Two Stroke Twins had vertically spitted crankcases but a roll bearing based crank shaft and that needed a special oil seal that was split into two parts. The factory Japan that manufactured them once couldn’t deliver them anymore and all our efforts to fix the problem was in vain, the two stroke engine needs some air pressure in the crankcase to work properly. I actually know quite of lots of old YDS:s waiting for a solution….
ADLER STANDARD BIKES:
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AND ADLER ALSO DID SOME SERIOUS RACING, HERE IS THE ADLER RENNSPORT 250 CC:
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AND HERE YOU HAVE THE FIRST YAMAHA YDS-1 ADLER COPY:
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With the YDS-5 I made my first foreign motorcycle trip, I went to Sweden to spend the Christmas with my family in Sweden. It was in the middle of the winter and I was 16 years old. I left Helsinki Finland by boat to Sweden and arrived in Nynashamn close to Stockholm, six a clock in the morning and -10C. My electric start didn’t have the power when cold so I had to push start the bike in the snow. The triplex carburetor/oil injection cable had frozen (probably because I had lubricated it in advance for the trip with the cable oil lubricator included in the Yamaha toolset) so I had to wait and use some gasoline to make the cables working a while before driving. When reaching the Nynashamn city some 60 km from the harbor I was freezing so damned much that I had to stop to warm me up but all gasoline stations and restaurants were still closed so I went to the police station to get some sensation back into my feet and fingers. My riding gears were not so “good” Leather jacket, jeans with some artificial teddy linings that my mother had sewn, rubber boots with newspaper wrapped around the feet to keep you warm, a Stadium open face helmet, and an oval plastic scoop as eye protection. The plastic scoop worked quite well because it builds up a “over pressure” when driving but you cannot turn your head away from the wind direction then it flies off…
But I managed to drive to South Sweden some 700 km. Unfortunally I had to stop for the night one time and that ruined my travel budget. But I fixed it by visiting my aunt on the way south because I knew that she gives me 100 Swedish Krones every Christmas. With that money I could afford to buy gasoline for the last kilometers. My aunt still gives me the same 100 krones every Christmas, no inflation correction there and she is now 98 years old….A Swedish krona is about 5 Baht.
But it was a nice trip, I learned something about motorcycle touring, and maybe I got a little more experienced for future trips.
But I did have a little more Yamaha Two Stroke experience some years later. Once I thought that I will become a Road Racing Champion so I bought a Yamaha TD1-C racing bike from Sweden. The bike I smuggled “quite legally” to Finland and I did some racing mostly at the Keimola Circuit near Helsinki, but I quickly realized that this was not the play of the game for me. I was and am to scare to drive on the limit so my RR carrier ended quite quickly. Anyhow the bike looked like this:
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Then when I turned into becoming a motorcycle dealer and sold a few hundreds of Yamaha two stroke twins RD125,RD250,RD350 and RD400, Most of them I sold on terms of payment and some of them are still unpaid so I could go and recover the bikes. They may be valuable now and they are still in my name as owner…
Here is a picture of my favorite RD400, it should be Kenny Roberts Yellow but that color scheme was never sold in Finland.
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The racing fame of the Yamaha Two Stroke line was of course made by Kenny Roberts, Phil Read,Rodney Gould, Bill Ivy, Kel Carruthers, Kent Andersson, Johny Cecotto, Dieter Braun, Carlos Lavado, Eddie Lawson and Giacomo Agostini and many many others.
But there is one star above them all for Yamaha, the best Road Racer the World ever had seen the Finn Jarno Saarinen. It is in a few months 40 years since he died at Monza”s Curva Grande. He only won one world title in 250 cc with a Yamaha but he outperformed everybody on his Yamahas already as a privateer and most of his competitors admit it. Here You can se a picture at the winning line from Daytona 1973 where he sits on his Yamaha next to his team manager Kel Carruthers who finished second. They were both driving 350 cc Yamahas in the 750 class. Jarno had never been to US before but despite of that he won the race on a undersized 350cc two stroke bike without former experience from the track. The rest of the gang were riding Honda Fours, Kawasaki two strokeTriples,750 BSA and Triumph 4 stroke triples and some outdated Harleys.
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And here is Jarno in Action in the Daytona race:
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And here is one of the thousands of writings about Jarno, This one from BikePlanet.com
Remembering Jarno
Friday, August 12, 2011
Jarno Saarinen in 1972. After decades of being in Kel Carruthers' garage, his Daytona winning bike now sits in the Barber Museum.
image : thanks. yamaha
Klaas Tjassen's biography "Jarno Saarinen: the Flying Finn" slipped off the bookshelf here at Soup last week and after paging through it we were left struck by so many things about the man who may well be the fastest Finn ever. The subject of the book is Jarno Saarinen, who is the only Finn to win a world championship.
Saarinen won the 250cc world title in 1972 and finished second to all-time god Giacomo Agostini that season in the 350cc class for Yamaha. Saarinen started the 1973 season with three consecutive victories aboard a Yamaha in 250cc, with his smallest margin of victory at 13 seconds. He also won two of the first three 500cc races, with only a broken chain in Germany ending that perfect mark.
He was on top of the world, seemingly headed toward a title double in just his fourth season. And then he was gone.
Saarinen was killed in a crash May 20, 1973 during the 250cc race at Monza. Renzo Pasolini fell right in front of Saarinen, who couldn't avoid hitting him. That triggered a multi-bike pileup.
Many racers today stay in the sport as long as their bodies and willing team managers will allow, and then they stick around the sport for years after their riding careers end in some capacity. It's all they know.
But Saarinen was a different breed of cat, in so many ways. He finished fourth in the 1970 250cc World Championship as a rookie despite missing the last three races - to return to his engineering studies. That's unthinkable in this day.
That perfectionist engineering brain helped Saarinen tune his bike before his days as a factory rider. And even after joining the works Yamaha team, Saarinen kept meticulous records of every aspect of his bike and the circuits, such as weather, track surface conditions, gearing and other tuning parameters. The guy was dialed into his relationship with his machine.
But racing didn't consume Saarinen like so many today. His girlfriend at the time, Solii Karme, wrote in a foreword to the biography "Jarno Saarinen: The Flying Finn" that he often told her: "Racing is only a hobby for me. Later on I will have a regular job."
So it's understandable that Karme concluded her foreword to the autobiography with this chilling warning: "I want to say to all of the young riders who admire Jarno, choose any sport but motorcycle racing. Stay alive and enjoy your sporting life."
And much like Sir Jackie Stewart in Formula One, Saarinen was keenly aware of his mortality on a motorcycle and worked to champion safety at a time when "shut up and put up" was the only mantra that mattered in racing. Saarinen was no fan of the insane risks of the Isle of Man TT, never competing there, and he criticized the track surface and the Armco barriers lining the circuit at Monza shortly before his death.
He also told Karme that he was going to quit after the 1973 season, at age 27, if he won one championship and maybe continue for one more year if he won two titles. The man knew the odds of a serious accident rose the longer he raced, and Karme recalled how he told her, "I want to live to become an old man and enjoy life after my racing career."
So it's understandable that Karme concluded her foreword to the autobiography with this chilling warning: "I want to say to all of the young riders who admire Jarno, choose any sport but motorcycle racing. Stay alive and enjoy your sporting life."
Saarinen's legacy always is worth remembering. His comet streak across the racing sky was too brief, but his riding style bred on ice and dirt racing influenced many to come, including one Kenny Roberts.
But Yes the RD350 was a fantastic machine, it was killed by some stupid legalization making two strokers impossible to sell. But it was for sure more powerful than my 650 Kawasaki”s.
HIKO