YAMAHA RD350LC
Scoop’s guide to buying the legendary LC.
If you’re looking at the gorgeous 350LC here and asking yourself why I would want one of those then there’s only two genuine reasons: either you pathologically hate two-strokes or you’ve picked up the wrong magazine at the newsagents! Many of us have a soft spot for the 350 Elsie and here’s why. When pretty much every other mainstream manufacturer had walked away from the 350 capacity class, Yamaha kept at it and for sound financial reasons. The larger LC’S development costs were shared by its smaller 250cc brother and Yamaha knew that the quarter litre machine was going to fly out of dealers’ showrooms. When the LC twins arrived the duo effectively obsoleted everything else that had gone before it. Until this point in motorcycle evolution no one in modern times had been bold enough to launch smaller capacity, liquid-cooled, stroker twins, commercially. The closest anyone had come previously was the water-cooled Scotts but that had been half a century ago. Yet here in metal, plastic and rubber come 1980, was a machine that looked like someone had vaguely sanitised a pure track machine… which was exactly the reaction Yamaha had been hoping for. As early as 1973 when customers were buying air-cooled RD250S and 350s the privateer racers were spending their hard-earned on liquid-cooled TZ350S. The move to water-cooling added a substantial level of enhanced reliability as two-stroke race machines became more powerful.
One or two brave souls dropped TZ engines into road going RDS or massaged various parts to fit but it wouldn’t be until 1979 that the prelaunch versions of the LC were seen by the public at the Paris show. Was this really a TZ for the road? In reality the answer was a quiet rebuff; there was no way Yamaha was going to do that. However, if by inference the journalists and general public wanted to make that connection then no-one at Yamaha HQ was going to disabuse them of that association. The truth was that Yamaha had always known that the RD400 was going to be a stopgap measure even if it had lasted longer than the company expected. Effectively a stroked RD350 the design pushed what was there to the limit with their gearboxes being the 400’s Achilles Heel. A root and branch redesign of a blueprint that went back to 1970 was needed. By utilising liquid-cooling it was possible to run different porting arrangements, substantially reduce thermal differences around the engine and, hopefully, better control of key facets such as flame path and flame propagation. In reality all of this had already been well established years earlier with both multiple cylindered race machinery and single pot motocross tackle. A new frame, some funky new cast alloy wheels and styling job like little else clinched the deal. The LC twins were specially styled for the European market where Yamaha envisaged the bulk of the sales would lie. Potential owners were putting down deposits before the bikes were even in the UK. Limited stocks in 1980 saw dealers and customers struggling to get a 350 LC and those lucky enough to get their paws on one were often cruelly disappointed. Poor carburation and leaking exhausts plagued the first machines. Revised carbs and a new engine mounting system addressed most of the problems. Come 1981 Yamaha had pretty much sorted out the issues with revised components being retro-fitted to 1980 machines. And yet by 1983 the Elsie was old hat as everyone waited for the new Powervalve model to arrive but the appeal of the LC350 failed to wane. Yamaha had delivered a liquid-cooled, mono-shock suspended giant killer that took up the mantle of the old air-cooled 350s and 400s and then enhanced the family name tenfold. A whole subculture grew up around the 350LC, Simpson lids, trainers, bomber jackets, boost bottles, outrageous tuning jobs, ear splitting expansion chambers and countless other ingredients became integral parts of ‘the LC scene’, as was hunting down and embarrassing larger-capacity prey... Even though Big Elsie was just 100ccs larger than many of the machines the kids of the day had recently passed their tests on it was their first ‘big’ bike. It was accessible, reliable and rebuildable, fast enough for most, looked like a million dollars and sounded like a race bike. How many more reasons do you want to justify owning one!