Passions of people ranges from mountaineering to gardening. Most of them are ready to do anything for their passion. Here are a group of young people, passionate of their RD 350 motorcycle organised a meet on Brunton Road in Bangalore recently. More than 500 people came to see the show, which had 85 RD 350 motorcycles to participate. Age seemed to be less important before the passion, with the participation of motorbike enthusiasts from 19 years to 74 years.
There were a couple of contests like ‘Best looking bike’ and ‘Best sounding bike.’ The winners were presented imported helmets. Santhosh, the organiser of the programme says, “My passion for the bike inspired me to do this kind of a meet. We have a group of similar minded people and we keep in touch through yahoo group. There is no commercial aspect for the event, it’s our passion that bind us. It all started a couple of years ago. some of us used to meet for coffee regularly and came up with the idea to get the entire Bangalore road riders together. The first meet was eventful with 75 bikes turning up and we had many veterans participating too.”
The organisers also arranged huge posters of RD 350 bikes, photographs and old articles of the bikes. A sale of T- shirts were also arranged. A lunch was organised by Babu Ramaswamy, another man with the same passion.
RD 350 motorcycles were the first kind of a racing bike launched by Yamaha. The admirers of the bike claims that it suits both the track and the road and it is a wonderful companion for adventure traveller. It is compassionately called by the bike lovers as Legend killer, Pocket rocket and like. Eventhough the event was the meeting of like minded people, it seemed inspiring for all those who loves travel and that too to some adventure spots in a bike.
The legend
The RD350 was a motorcycle produced by Yamaha. It was the premier sport lightweight of the early 70's. Well developed for its time, it featured a reliable aircooled, parallel twin, 6 speed (in some markets, such as the UK, the first model was sold in 5-speed form), reed valve equipped intake tract two-stroke engine. It was in production as a purple with white side details RD350 (1973), the RD350A, simple purple tank with "Yamaha" on the tank and the orange with white, 1975 (RD350B).
The B model (in the UK at least) also featured a silver and black colour scheme.
There was a myth that RD stood for "Racing Death" and "Road Death" and that it was the Japanese revenge for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as it claimed the lives of many US riders, but this is pure fiction (according to Japanese representatives). It was thought by some RD stood for "race derived." But a long time Yamaha mechanic recently dispelled this myth on the UK Yamaha RD forum, this is his explanation and he has worked with and raced them since the seventies: "We always understood it to be a series of letters that explain the bikes make up and function two stroke twin." For instance, XS = 4 stroke tourer, XV = 4 stroke V, DT = 2 stroke trail, RD = 2 stroke road
The RD350B was manufactured in India between 1983-1985 by Escorts Motorcycles under the brand name Rajdoot 350.
This motorcycle was detuned from the original 39 crankshaft bhp to 30.5 bhp and then finally 27 bhp in quest of better economy.
This bike has a great cult status in India and is seeing great resurgence with the youth of today.In India the bike was also a frequent winner in Motorcycle Rallies and its closest competitor was Yezdi Road King, another 1971 World Dirt Championship runner which was a remake of Jawa-CZ.
