Designed as a natural evolution of Yamaha’s RD two-stroke sportbikes, the TZR250 helped set the tone for the entire class, and the bike featured a lightweight aluminum beam frame, full bodywork, and liquid-cooling for the twin-cylinder powerplant that produced a claimed 50hp with the help of Yamahas YPVS power-valve. Until the introduction of the 3XV…
Here’s a great looking, unrestored, Japanese market RZV500. The biggest difference between the RZ500 and RZV500 is the aluminum frame and even smaller production numbers compared to the ROW models. Mileage is a mere 7,400 and with 5 days remaining on the auction, the current bid is a little over $10k, reserve not met. dc…
If you’re looking to import a rare and unusual vehicle that was never intended for the US market into the country like today’s Yamaha TZR250, there are a few ways to go about it. Some of these desirable machines can be found in Canada, and others can be found already here in the US, imported at…
Introduced in 1986, the Yamaha TZR250 was the follow up to their RD family of sportbikes. Yamaha’s first go at a quarter-liter TZR had middling success: it wasn’t especially competitive next to more focused rivals from Kawasaki and Suzuki on track, but it was a far better roadbike. The TZR followed the standard two-fiddy two-stroke formula of…
Unlike the roadgoing, but still-sporty TZR series, Yamaha’s TZ bikes were track-only motorcycles with performance far exceeding what road riders might expect from their diminutive displacements and dimensions: technically, the Yamaha TZ125 isn’t even pint-sized as this post title implies, since Google reliably informs me that a pint is actually 473cc, and even a cup…
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…
The road-going two-stroke fours from Suzuki and Yamaha normally tend to look a little awkward to my eye. The wheels and tires look too skinny, the brakes too small, the fairing bulbous and a little ungraceful. That all goes out the window with this 1988 Suzuki RG500Γ race bike, which seems better balanced all-around, and…
The TZR250 was Yamaha’s entry into the hotly-contested quarter-liter class wars that raged throughout the 80s and 90s. Early TZR250s were powered by a fairly conventional liquid-cooled parallel twin, and the last generation used a 90° v-twin like rivals from Suzuki and Honda. But in between, Yamaha experimented with an interesting solution to give the…