1985 Yamaha RZ500 Located In Montana

This entry has been published on February 25, 2010 and links to eBay may have been updated to point to similar bikes of interest.

A RZ500 in Montana that looks to be in very good condition! Located in Missoula, Montana is a 1985 Yamaha Rz500. This bike looks to be titled and registered. The bike is said to have been restored in 2002 with the current owner then acquiring it in 2004. The seller states this bike has 11,000 miles since rebuild so it may be–probably is–a high mileage bike. The listing is sparse but as always if you’re looking for a RZ500…

Some tasty information about the RZ500:

This hot pipe dream came to life is pretty much a road-going replica of the factory Yamaha OW80 now leading the 500 road racing World Championship. Like the OW, the RZ has an aluminum chassis, a V-four, two-stroke, water-cooled, reed-valve engine, a sideloader gearbox, Power Valve cylinders, magnesium side cases, and, above all, the look of the $1000-a-pound missile which rolled so very carefully to European start grids. Pipes jutting from everywhere, aluminum mufflers, eye-trapping detail in the footpeg plates, alloy foot controls, streamlining in team paintwork.

The RZ500 is light and powerful 413 pounds dry and near 90 bhp. When the technology went in, the weight came out out of every part. Road racing over the last five years has been a hothouse of design competition, producing not only innovation but also attention to detail making earlier work look coarse. Engineers questioned every use of material in this machine. Fasteners are down-sized. Thinwall castings abound. Traditional parts have oozed into new forms just a bit lighter, easier to make accurately, and better in function. The result is a street motorcycle weighing only about 100 pounds more than its parent racer. See this forged aluminum kick-start lever folded shyly away behind the fairing? It weighs nothing in comparison to the steel part on the old RDs. And just as on the real racers, covers have the official “MAGNESIUM” cast into them for the skeptical.

Even if you cannot ride a motorcycle you should still own a RZ500 just to admire it’s beauty first-hand! See this one on Craigslist here.