Weekend Bikeblogging

These are the original "Rice Rockets", early Japanese high performance bikes that held no pretense of "cruising". These were 2-stroke beasts that offered speed over... just about everything else.

Here's the first one, the Yamaha RD 350:



Here's one in "cafe racer" configuration.




Here's another couple of street burners, the Kawasaki Mach III and IV:

"It's a pity this site doesn't have sound, because there's nothing quite like the shriek of a Kawasaki two-stroke triple being given some stick. If Hannibal Lecter practised dentistry, this is the sort of noise that would be coming from his surgery"!

On a personal note, I rode a 500 once. I cracked the throttle open about halfway and thought I was gonna come off the back of the bike. 2-strokes have an abrupt power delivery, to say the least.





Here's the 750. After riding the 500, I can't imagine riding this beast. Once site I read while researching said this bike still holds the stock 750 cc speed record - 170 mph. I wonder how fast it got there?







Of course, 2-stroke engines were pretty high on emissions, burning a fuel-oil mixture kinda like your weed eater does now. They were doomed once we figured out we were poisoning ourselves with air pollution.

But, all was far from lost, keeping ahead of the game, Kawasaki produced the 900 cc 4-stroke Z-1 in 1973. And the rest, as they say, is history:





Oh, and do you see that funny looking thing on the side of the engine? That's what we used to call a "kickstarter", and was a good way to determine whether you were big enough to ride the bike. If you couldn't kick it, you had no business riding it.