A year and a half ago, I shot off an email to some guy that I bought some eBay parts from 20 years back to see if he would build my motor. I remember him, because we both lived in the same town, so I did a local pickup and met the seller, Paul. I remember that he always had RD400 parts that he was selling and he told me that he likes to work on those bikes. Somewhere along the lines, I found out that he does full restoration work on them. So I found his old email address and sent him a note, hoping that he might answer. Lo and behold, he actually replied. It took a few weeks, but he did get back to me! We went back and forth about what I had and what I wanted, then I got busy, so that kind of died out.
Well, just a few weeks ago, I drummed up this old email and hit him up again. Surprisingly, he answered again! He gave me a very reasonable quote and was confident he could build my engine to my configurations. So I started buying up all the engine parts. But one area about the engine that concerned me was the cylinders. The right cylinder seemed to be pretty much the stock bore measurement, but the left one measured out to 66.00mm! We talked about it, that the wall may not be able to take another bore. Me, eager to buy the pistons, asked if maybe we could meet, where he could do a physical assessment and give me his opinion. He agreed. So FINALLY after all these years, I finally got to meet Paul again today!
Paul has extensive experience building 2-stroke motors. He was once trained as a mechanic working for the local Yamaha dealership, so he really knows his shit. Over the years, he's built countless RZ's, RD's and earlier models. When I showed up this morning, he was in his garage where there was a pristine RZ350 and an FZ1- this guy bleeds Yamaha!
He pulled out his micrometers and took several measurements of both bores. He believes that the right cylinder still had its standard bore, while the left one was bored out to 66mm, just as I had measured. The left cylinder wall was getting thin (and there was a gouge that needed to get removed), but he thinks it should be okay to use. Earlier we had talked about just getting another set of jugs, but they're getting so hard to find and the prices are getting pretty lofty. We both had eyed a set that was currently on eBay- advertised as being pulled from a motor that only had less than 400 miles on it, standard bore, matching pair. But I figured that by the time the auction was over, it would be in the range of $400. But still, that was a sweet set of cylinders. Nonetheless, I had that set of cylinders on my watch list.
I set an alarm on my cell phone to remind me to watch the end of the auction. With still an hour left to go, the cylinder set was only up to $122 (an additional $30 for shipping from the East Coast). As we neared the 10-minute mark, I decided to put in a bit to flush out the highest bidder, or to just feel how high he might go. I bid $200 and the price only jumped to $135! What??! Just for safe measure, with 10 seconds left to go, I put in another bid at $250, then the auction ended. And I won! The final price was only $204 and change. Unbelievable!! I totally lucked out on this one!
Okay, now I don't have to worry about thin walls, plus with so much meat on the sleeves, I can buy Yamaha OEM pistons and rings! Now, I need to meet up with Paul again, so he can verify what size pistons I need to buy. But that's not big deal. I'm so happy!!1
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