We generally try to post relatively stock, good-condition bikes here on CSBFS but, every once in a while, we like to throw you guys a curve ball, and this highly-modified Yamaha RZ500 certainly qualifies as that. At a glance, there’s little left of the original, two-stroke GP-replica bike but the changes should make the bike…
The two-stroke race-replicas like this Yamaha RZ500 represent a brief, very exciting time in motorcycling. The 1980s were a difficult time for bikes as well as cars: technology was leaping forward while emissions legislation stifled performance at the same time it attempted to save the planet. Eventually, manufacturers would find ways to work within or…
Many of the weird and wonderful bikes we like to feature on this site appear in time-capsule condition, as if Doc Brown put them in a trailer behind his time-traveling DeLorean and towed them from the distant year 1985 into… The future! Others are patched-up wrecks described as having “patina” with “90% tread left on…
Like any market, collector car and bike values can be difficult to predict, which is why they call it “speculating.” Sure, that Anniversary Edition Corvette looks pretty sharp in a giant, plastic wedge kind of way, but will it ever be valuable enough to really justify squirreling away one instead of driving it? The same…
Yamaha’s RZ500 was known in some markets as the RD500LC, but by any name, it was one of the weirdest and wildest sports machines ever built. The twin-crank, liquid-cooled two-stroke V4 featured a set of torque-boosting YPVS powervalves and standard Autolube oil-injection so riders could worry less about premix and more about handling what was…
It seems like it’s been raining two-strokes recently, and this RZ500 should make Yamaha fans happy. Bikes seem to come in waves as their values wax and wane. Forgotten bikes suddenly find a collector’s market, and all those folks who’ve had them from new suddenly unload them, or get too old to ride them in…
Well, last week’s seemingly ham-fisted resto-mod Gamma went over like a lead balloon, so let’s see how this one flies: a very bright and shiny Yamaha RZ500 fitted with some FZR bits! Built from 1984 to 1986, the RZ500 was also known as the RD500LC in some markets. It was Yamaha’s entry into the Moto…
I have to admit that when I started reading RSBFS I knew nothing about the RZ500. I knew they were were always a reader favorite on RSBFS, but the origin of their popularity/exact reason why they were so desirable never seemed to be explained. When this RZ500 popped up, I decided to do some research…