By Dean Adams
I recently finished a ground up, cranks up, restoration on my Yamaha RZ500. It took a small army and a not small pile of cash to accomplish. I had to sell my TZ250 in order to finish it, something I have not felt right about since the day Mike Barnes loaded it in a trailer to take it to its new home.
The RZ500 is a cool motorcycle. You can’t ride one anywhere these days without it drawing a crowd. We may very well live to see a world where no internal combustion powered-motorcycles are produced and it goes without saying that in that particular hellscape a two-stroke, four-cylinder streetbike will stand tall.
I have several other motorcycles in line to complete on my bench and frankly I think that after an NR750 and a RZ500 I’d like to work on a bike that I literally don’t have to call Kevin Cameron half a dozen times in order to figure out just one system on the machine. Probably something air-cooled.
Additionally my eldest son owns an RZ500 and I’m about RZ500’d out, thanks.
The RZ500 I am selling has a low VIN number (543). It should be considered a cranks-up project. It ran when parked but will certainly need the engine removed and rebuilt. Since the engine is out the frame it will need to be re-painted, and you’ll need to just keep going, like I did. The good news is aside from crankshafts and con-rods, I believe I have everything needed to rebuild the engine, or close to it. I bought new parts out of Japan, the UK and Canada for a long, long time before I ever turned a wrench on any RZ500. I have multiples of spare parts in many cases. Example: four sets of head gaskets, two or three sets of crankshaft seals, three different complete sets of crank bearings (Japan, Canada and Yambits). Etc.
The bike is titled as an RZ500 in Minnesota, in my name.
No, I’m not dumping the motorcycle. It’s in a safe little corner and maybe in a few years my enthusiasm for the RZ500 will return and I’ll be up for the challenge of another ground up restoration on an RZ500. Until then it’s for sale.
If you’re truly interested in an RZ500 project, drop Soup an email: superbikeplanet@gmail.com
Please don’t tell me to contact the vanity auction site in California to try and sell this motorcycle.
