When they first arrived in the early 1980s the Yamaha RD250/350LC series was a revelation as it was such a breakthrough in design for a road-going machine.
The LC family offered so much more than good looks, too, as the technological advantages over its air-cooled predecessors were outstanding. For those who don’t know, the RD LC was based directly on Yamaha’s TZ road racers. It boasts a liquid-cooled piston-ported two-stroke twin-cylinder engine and Yamaha’s monoshock suspension system which took the TZ and YZR road racers to repeated world titles.
The liquid-cooled engine has lightweight pistons and connecting rods originally with silver-plated bearing retainers in the big-end. The rigid crankshaft assembly is strengthened to cope with the engine’s relative power output. It is equipped with a frontal radiator and the liquid-cooling allows the highlytuned engine to run at the optimum operating temperature without loss of reliability or the need for constant
