WooHoo! Happy 50th Birthday to my Yamaha RD250!

This post celebrates a milestone for my Yamaha. It is 50 years old this month. Actually, to be fully accurate, it was first registered on 6th May 1975 in Geneva, Switzerland, 50 years ago. It had obviously been made in Japan a few months earlier before it was shipped over to one of the Northern European ports (in the Netherlands I believe), where it then made its way south to Geneva.

Also on May 6, 1975, the number one song in the UK was “Send In The Clowns” by Judy Collins. I actually though this song was really rubbish, and still do, and I was a bit gutted at the time that a song like this could overshadow a great song like 10cc’s ‘Life is a Minestrone’, which was number 7 in the same week. Over in the United States, the number one song that week was “Loving You” by Minnie Riperton, which I thought was OK, and still do. 

Main UK news that day in May ’75, was all about the first ever nationwide referendum, in which the people of the United Kingdom voted to remain in the European Economic Community. Who would have guessed that 41 years later, the UK people voted to leave Europe!

On this day as well, I was 13 years old and loved the all conquering Japanese two strokes, just like this Yamaha. In the UK at the time, the Suzuki GT250 was the best-selling 250cc motorcycle, and like all 250cc bikes at the time, was a popular choice in the learner-legal segment, where a 17 year could just jump on one of these fast bikes whilst still on learner L-plates. A lot of these learner-road-rider-racers never made their 18th birthdays, and the law was eventually changed in 1983, which reduced the maximum engine capacity for learner riders to 125cc.

The bike’s full title is; Yamaha RD250B. The ‘B’ is important here as this model was the first of the 250cc Yamaha’s to have a front disc brake, so it stopped really well! Yamaha first started making a 250cc 2 stroke in 1973 and went on to make faster and more developed versions right up until 1987. I believe that Yamaha made just over 11,000 of the RD250B, so there’s still probably quite a few scattered around the world.

I’ve written a few posts featuring this bike and the links are at the bottom of this post, but it’s worth a quick summary of my life with it. I bought it in Switzerland in 2012, where I was working at the time, and saw two bikes for sale in a local advert. One was an early 1980s KTM enduro bike and the other was this Yamaha. I went to see them and both bikes were in a small garage full of bags of cement and other junk. I thought that the KTM was the gem out of the two and that the Yamaha was a basket case to just move on. I bought them both and was absolutley wrong about them. Even fully restored, the KTM was a right pain and went to live with someone else quite quickly, whilst the Yamaha turned out to be the gem. 

My first taste of Yamaha restoration was in getting rid of the rust from the inside of the original petrol tank using electrolysis, which was an interesting experiment to do, and with (surprisingly) successful results. Long story short, I got the bike back on the road, and apart from one breakdown, which needed a tractor rescue, it has run beautifully. In the 13 years I’ve owned it, it has been maintained and only needed surgery once. It was about 18 months ago where something went wrong in the gearbox and it needed some time with a ‘grown-up mechanic’ to fix it. More recently, I was about to write this post recognising its fabulous 50th year, and it wouldn’t run on one of its two cylinders. Doh! 

After several days of trying to find the source of the problem and getting help and advice from people on the “Aircooled RD Owners” Facebook group, I got the issue fixed. It was a broken condenser as it turned out, but in trying to find the fault and chase it around the bike, it also had new coils, plug caps, plugs and points. I classed these parts as 50th birthday presents. Anyway, it’s fixed and going as well as ever, which is still pretty quick for a 250cc bike, even if it is 50 years old.

A lot has happened both in the world and in my life in the last 50 years, and this Yamaha has travelled from Japan to mainland Europe and now to the UK in that time as well. I don’t know much about its life before me, but just as the 10cc song goes, I’m sure its life has been a bit of a minestrone. Here’s to the next 50 years!

Here are some other posts featuring this bike:

https://diaryofamotorcyclingnobody.com/carnaby-industrial-estate-racetrack-special-airfield/

https://diaryofamotorcyclingnobody.com/how-to-knit-something-a-bit-yamaha-special/

https://diaryofamotorcyclingnobody.com/it-might-get-loud/

https://diaryofamotorcyclingnobody.com/moto-relationships/

All photos by the Author