some dealers & sellers have there heads in the clouds, great bike in its day,no doubt about it, yep not going to sell easy for sure
they advertise them at those stunning prices for six months,year n then they have a mystery fire in a storage shed and claim the insurance,theyll have quite a few "classics" at stupid money,all in the same shed.. imo anyway..heheh.
Hampshire motorcycles, where I was this monrning, have an RD500 for 13995 I think it was, an NS400 for about 7k and an ns 250 for 6k
14k for a RD500 thats a bloody joke but having said that i think a full engine rebuild is about 5k, All two strokes big or small cc are big money now.
I started to build a minter in 2008 bought all the bits new old stock etc green passivate bolts etc etc realised I would then never ride it sold all the nos stuff and built an rgv/ypvs/lc hybrid instead. They will keep going up in value
Padgett's used to have a few brand new LC's still in stock from way back and they wanted about £5,000 for them at the time, by then they were about 15 years old plus. Despite selling over million worldwide I think they will still appreciate in value bit by bit. The above is a serious stretch to my mind though.
Snap Can't beat a good LC, what master cylinder are you using i did try the rgv one but it was not up to much as the lever would come along way back to the bars, just spotted the carbon mudguard very nice,
Sadly I had to sell it, not long after I finished it. fitted a gsxr 400 master cylinder, was a good bike, owned that , a mint 31k ypvs that was featured in roger Taylor's book, 2 or 3 250's and a 350. Love them but refuse to pay £5000 plus for bikes that in the 80's I was buying for about £300. Middle age
Swapped my rgv master for a radial one of a suzuki k9 (i think thats the model) much better braking. Must admit not that its for sale but it would cost 5k min to build one now with full paint and full engine rebuild. You will get another one, one day i bet. Rebuild this and owned for 6 years, sold it about 2 years ago.
Exactly the same as my 31k same colour completely std only done 16,000 sold it in 06 for £1600 regret that
Any old iron? It must be the low interest rates that are cajoling old duffers into thinking they can make these prices stick. The writing was on the wall for 2 strokes way back in the 80's when the dealer made room in the showroom for the likes of the FZR1000 and GSX-R1100. A good 'LC' might do 105 when a GSX-R offered monster power throughout the revband and did 35mpg vs 22mpg for the RG500. Do these smokers come with a pair of rose tinted spectacles? I see the odd Yamaha 350 and they are a joke, changing into 3rd before they are out of the car park.
In their day these things were no joke! My mate had a Kwak 1000 and I could, and did leave him standing up to around 90mph. Honda 400f 's did not even come close. If they were a joke how come everyone I talked to had one at some stage in their life and only talks with fondness for the old scrappers. Steam engines, old planes, very old cars, even musty stinking centuries old furniture has a massive following and I like the LC so much that guess what, yep, me too is looking to buy another one because they are so much fun to own being very different to all the gazillion 4strokes out there. Limits are in the mind of the beholder! Yamaha Unlisted Motorbike RD 250 LC STUNNING EXAMPLE | eBay
I still have my 250LC I used it for everything from commuting to long distance production racing up until just over 5 years ago. As for top speed a genuine 117 mph on a very mildly tuned bike at West Raynham way back in the 1980's doing the 4 hour long distance events, best place was a 21st out of a field of 60, not that bad considering this was the smallest class in the field. It's one of the best bikes I have ever owned, always reliable, never broke down and easy to work on. I can't say that about my 748 sadly. Just finishing a full rebuild on an RGV 250 Suzuki track bike, unused for 5 years and slowly coming back to it's former glory.
I rode a Honda NS400 and thought it was fairly quick. A friend got a slabside 1100 and we could keep up with it, no big deal. Then he let me have a go on it and I was shocked by the power delivery. Vance and Hines pipe with Dynojet kit - low 170's oh my god. I never regarded the race-reps as being exactly that. The RD500 was a steel framed porker leaning heavily on the TZ twins reputation. The RG500 square four motor had been around since about 1977 and Suzuki presented the RGV in 1986. The NS was only 387cc and had 1 vert & 2 horizontal cylinders whereas the NS500 has 2 vertical 1 horizontal cylinder. This screwed up the CofG so much on the Honda. A raw deal and not much to get worked up about even then.
