Few machines sub 500 cubic centimetres get such universal approval as Yamaha’s RD350LC, and rightly so.
For many the Elsie is the very pinnacle of Yamaha’s parallel-twin development, or at least in its purist form. With nothing more complicated than a set of pressure-controlled reed-valves and a water jacket the bike is the apogee of the tuning fork’s refining of the genre. Yes, okay, the subsequent Powervalve/YPVS was a faster machine but it had to go up to a significant level of complication in order to achieve an extra dozen ponies. And, from an aesthetic perspective, the LC arguably knocks even the 31K/YPVS for dead in the eyes of many enthusiasts.
The bike’s ancestry goes all the way back