The day Scott finished this two-stroke Yamaha cafe racer he managed to back over a nun. Yes you did read that right. A proper nun. Having thankfully resurrected the Lord’s angel of mercy he decided to name the bike after his holy victim, so the RD was christened, Christine.
Scott’s been a chef by trade for over twenty years, an engineer in the military and – as he describes – a ‘tinkerer’ for many more. He currently lives in New Orleans running a resort hotel, but in his free time he builds bikes and rides fast.
The RD was Scott’s first build and belonged to a friend who’d kept it stored away in bits in boxes in the corner of his garage. He gave it to Scott for next to nothing – and the rest of the story you can see from these photos, as Scott didn’t trouble us with technical spec, and with a raw two stroke like this, it’s all right there in full colour. What matters more is how he feels about the fruits of his labour.
“Having been obsessed with cafes ever since seeing a vintage Ducati in a restaurant parking lot near home I always said I would have something like that one day, and I damn sure did. It is going to be hard with future builds because I will compare all of them to this one. I love riding this bike.”
Just looking at those expansion chambers brings up virtual sounds and smells that a certain generation just can’t resist, and the cafe styling and clipons work surprisingly well on an RD. Love it. Cheers for sharing Scott.
from THE BIKE SHED
