Chaos Racing - RD Racer #1

Specifications

Born in 1985

Marvic wheels with Michelin Hi-Sport 140 rear 110 front

Rain tyres on standard wheels

Öhlins rear shock

STM steering damper

Jolly Moto expansion chambers

RGV full race fairing, crappy painted in blue/yellow

32 mm Dell'Orto carburators with K&N filters

"Chippa"-ported engine (well known Swedish tuner 15 years ago...)

Wiseco pistons

Steel-braided brake lines front and rear

Pictures

As you can see the bike is in pieces right now...

History

According to Christer "Ago" Johansson this bike was one of the fastest in the late 80's. A girl nicknamed "Kakan" was the first owner. She usually made bad starts but had so much more speed than the others that she mostly won anyway. After her other fast riders raced it with great success. The owner before me crashed badly at Mantorp and broke his leg. He got the bike together, repainted it and decided to sell it. And now it belongs to me...

On the track

After some electrical problems I got it running and the first session on the track was not too funny. I started with boiling the cooler while warming up...The engine was running like a dog at all revs and I also managed to lay it down after maybe 30 minutes. The front tire lost traction and the bike and me ended up against a fence, no bad injuries fortunately. Later at home I saw that the YPVS valves were mounted upside down and also pulled backwards...

The first impression though was that the brakes were incredible! Those steel braided brake lines do wonders, best investment possible if you ask me!

The next time I rode it the engine wasn't any better despite the YPVS change. I tried different main jets and needle positions and such but nothing helped. At full throttle it just died. Then I managed to make a downshift instead of an upshift (damn!) and the engine revved up to 13,000 rpm and then it really died!

I didn't open the engine until a few months later and saw that the piston ring on one of the cylinders had made quite a mess. Both cylinders were badly scratched too so I guess that the main problem was bad compression.

The cylinders can be bored to 66 mm but my RD obsessed friend Rickard told me that it is not a very good idea. The lower part of the cylinder lining hasn't got much material on it when the intake edges have been trimmed. This in combination with big overbore can make it break easily. A better idea is to buy used standard bore cylinders and port them. We also noticed that one of the rods had too much sideways clearance. So I was facing a new top end and a crank rebuild. Yuck!

Another friend of mine wanted to buy an old TZ250 with an RD350 engine. He needed the frame and since I needed a new engine we took a look at it. Lots of extra parts, even 36 mm Lectron carbs! But the owner was working in Saudi Arabia and was coming home "soon"...

While we waited for him to arrive Rickard told me that he'd been talking to a guy who was selling a race ready RD350. That seemed like a good buy so I called him up and later had a look at it. And this leads us to the story about what was going to be my second race bike!

Send me an E-mail if you are interested in the TZ-framed RD bike by the way, I think it still wants to be sold!