Yes it twas me.
I had been to visit someone I know who has a few old RD's
His workshop which is a four car garage - Three of them are solid bike storage up to the roof
I took this in another big garage. The boxes are all full of RD spares to go on ebay.
Yes the chap buys old aircooled RD's and LC's and makes a living from dealing in parts.
He sells complete bikes as well. This is an original 2 owners (brothers) RD350LC. Its only done a few thousand miles....
He owns a bit of land as well - this is going to be his lawn mower.
People that strip classic bikes to sell on ebay tend to be bad people in the classic circles.
Well this chap will restore good ones.
This is a very rare pre-production RD400C that he restored and now lives in his living room.
Yamaha frame numbers always start from 101 and go upwards. Yamaha made test bikes with numbers below 100 - after testing these bikes were retuned to Yamaha and destroyed. This one has a frame number 25 and came from Germany. Back in the 70's a dealer mechanic got the sack and on leaving he "borrowed" this bike..
The next few years it was used as a field bike. My mate paid 1 Euro for it as a wreck off ebay. He only found out wot it was when he got it home and investigated its history. Current value is over 10 grand - a man in Dubai has offered cash for it
