Main Street Miler

MAIN STREET MILER

The two-stroke giant-killer returns, Kenny Roberts-style

HERE IS A SPARE PURITY to the dirt-track bike, a machine stripped to its essentials, the elegant expression of two-wheeled performance. . .BWHAAAAA!!! Elegant expression just got smoked by a 65-horse power, 10,000-rpm Yamaha RD350 Twin in a ready-to-ride street-legal package that weighs just 275 pounds. I see we now have your attention. A product of the fertile and enthusiastic minds at Motocarrera (www.motocarrera.com), a two-stroke specialty shop in North Hollywood, California, the "Del Mar Special" is so named because of its vintage flat-tracker vibe, and the fact that the first version was shown at the Del Mar Concours in 2001, where it won a special award for being the most outstanding uncategorized machine.

And the initial nudge to actually put something together? “We were inspired by a bike Rick Hocking ran on the WERA dirt-track circuit a few years ago,” says Doug Johnson, Motocarrera head man. “He just annihilated everybody. We thought, ‘We need to build this for the public!’” That 's inspired thinking. The inspired wrenching was undertaken by Motocarrera tech maestro Steve Fuentes, cranking the first one out in about two weeks of seriously long hours. The trained eye that falls upon Motocarrera’s latest customer bike will expect that this is an R5 engine-precursor to the RD350-but that’s just a trick of the engine covers. The older style was used for that factory-racer look, as TZs of the day used such. The rest of

the mill-cylinders, crankcase and six-speed transmission-is all RD, which isn’t a bad place to start making horsepower. Stock 64.0 x 54.0mm cylinders are treated to a 1.5mm overbore for 364cc. Full-flame-thrower port and polish work is also available, boosting output from the standard 50 horsepower to a wailing 65, but bring your wallet... The old 28mm Mikuni round-slides are naturally tossed in favor of 32mm flat-slides by the same maker. Custom rightexit chambers with stacked silencers underline the dirttrack theme. The little necessary lighting equipment is a Baja Designs headlight/numberplate and an LED taillight pilfed from a 2002 YZF-R1, for a modem family touch. The frame comes from a pre-’73 R5 (same geometry as the roadracers of the era,

only stronger for pothole resistance), so it’s streetlegal without tumsignals. A standard RD fork gets Progressive-brand springs, while a pair of Works Performance Tracker shocks attach to what may be the coolest single piece on the bike, a Motocarrera aluminum swingarm. Rims are, of course, 19-inch alloys shod with Continental dirttrack tires. Classic Yamaha-inspired paint is laid on an XR-750 tailsection and custom XRstyle tank. Price for all this? A cool $12,000. “The old Twins are such a good-sounding bike,” says Johnson. “You hear one coming off a corner at a mile dirt-track, it’ll make the hair stand up on your neck.” Thanks to Motocarrera, now you can ride one on the street and hear for yourself. -Mark Hoyer