Back to Reality
Disenchanted with using a trail bike on the road, I progressed to a new Yamaha RD250 in 1975, the only two stroke road bike I’ve ever owned and the only new bike I have ever bought. Again it was bought from Uncle Brian’s for the princely sum of $999 on the road. What a relief this bike was after the Elsinore! Despite being strangled by the very first of the emission laws that had just started to bite, it was a thrilling ride.
My brother’s RD250 was a 1974 bike and was significantly quicker than mine, a fact that annoyed considerably. It seemed that, mechanically, the bikes were identical and Yamaha said that nothing had been changed in between models, but that didn’t translate when the throttle was opened.
Years later I was to find that Yamaha HAD, in fact, changed something. Despite having the identical part numbers, the 1975’s air box was baffled in such a way to restrict airflow to the carburettors, compared to the 1974. So it WASN’T just subjective when it felt like the bike was “strangled”.
