YAMAHA RD350B
Wiring on Scoop’s scoot!
How does the saying go? The more you look the more you see? Well that’s very much the case with the Yamaha RD350. It would be supremely naïve to expect a used 43-year-old motorcycle not to have a few issues and of course this one has them. When I wheeled the bike out to display it to long term co-conspirator Ferret – The Messiah of Wire – he actually complimented me (yes really!) on my loom and harness overhaul we recently featured. And then, irresistibly, like the King of Cabling he is, he felt a strange and magnetic attraction to look further. One of the things I’d not spotted was the cable block coming out of the loom on the right hand side below the side panel. When evicted from its black shroud it was screamingly obvious that someone had been tampering. The blob of epoxy putty was the giveaway holding what should be a sliding connection together. Apparently, and I quote, “Americans love to fiddle with these,” so the three generator leads received new terminals and a fresh connector block from the Van of Infinite Possibilities. If you’ve ever tinkered with American market Japanese bikes you’ll have noticed pretty much all of them come with sealed beam headlamps. The story goes they became a mandatory fitting circa 1940 in a bid to standardise bulb wattages and thereby stop American car and truck drivers from mucking about with their headlamps. It also means when one filament goes you end up forking out for a new reflector/glass/bulb unit. At some point in the RD’S life someone has sensibly junked the Japanese built OEM sealed unit and fitted a more adaptable unit which takes replaceable bulbs. The annoying thing is that although it’s all
Stanley br , ho er sa osch BA20D type and secured to the back of the reflector by decaying rubber straps rather than the three lugged RP15 type that takes demountable American pre-focus (is everyone keeping up so far?). It also provided a beam of light whose intensity varied from pretty grim all the way down to copulating glow worm level. The miscreant cause of this was the perpetual bane of old bike aka a dodgy earth wire. Once the offending wire had been located and reattached via a soldered connection we actually had a headlamp capable of attracting moths. So with the electrics now hopefully sorted it was back to the larger lumps. The carbs had been the subject of Rob Pemberton’s (Spa Motorcycles) tender ministrations and were once again reinstalled on the Yambits inlet boot which was capable of two things its OEM forerunner wasn’t; being flexible and being the correct length. What I hadn’t bargained on was the total and utter ball ache it would be getting the air boot in place. It sits on a lip some 5-6mm in depth hanging out of the airbox. With a grooved register to both it and the mounting spigot you’d have thought it’d be a walk in the park but it proved to be anything but. Some considerable time later but the same day I gave up trying to install it in situ and took the airbox out, which only involved the removal of the oil tank, battery box and oil filler pipe. With the wretched thing in place I was reminded of the legendary workshop manual phrase, ‘replacement is the reversal of removal’. My best guess is that Yamaha built the entire bike around the bloody airbox. However, perhaps I’m now
slightly biased against this invention of Satan but I’ve good reason to be as my hands got several nice nicks and slices out of them. With the slides synchronised all that should be required now will be some minor tweaking and possibly a jet change if the plugs dictate it. One area that has given me cause for concern has been the Autolube oil injection pipes which seem to have remained soft in some places yet hardened in others. As Project RD350 supporter Yambits has a transparent oil line pipework kit available it was a total no brainer. Old bikes need all the TLC we can give them and if I can see oil in the pipes I’ll rest that much easier. Alternatively if I see air bubbles in the pipe I’ll know there’s an issue and deal with it accordingly. The two new oil lines were fitted in five minutes but removing the old ones and liberating the injection nozzles took three times as long… which kind of suggests the old black pipes were well past their sell by dates. Curiously the OEM pipe from tank to pump has remained totally flexible. So all that’s left to do is check the timing, put some oil in the cleaned out tank, bleed the pump, prime the oil lines and we should be good to go. Watch this space as they say. cmm
Our thanks this month to Yambits for their parts, sage advice and patience!