Well, I’ve always wanted one of these so when a friend (the guy who owns the RZ500 and the Hejira) told me he knew someone selling one I pounced on it. This bike is a Canadian model that has a race history so the engine has lots of upgrades. It runs really well. I was originally going to just clean it up and ride it through the summer but plans change for the strangest reasons. In this case, the front tire was losing air so I needed to take it off the rim to replace the valve stem. While I had the tire off, I decide to clean up the rim which had a lot of corrosion inside and out. After cleaning that off, it looked just terrible and I decided to go ahead and paint it since I had just painted some Marchenisi forged rims for a client. I like the gold color and it is really period specific to the mid 80’s so I went ahead and sprayed it with the gold and 3 coats of clear. Even with all the wear and tear, it looks really good. Some of the gouges on the lips were really deep and I just had to blend the edges smooth and live with it. Maybe in the future I’ll find some nice originals and replace these. At any rate, the wheel has now started an entire restoration project that I never intended!
1985 Yamaha RZ350
RZ350 engine
Front wheel after epoxy primer
front wheel painted gold
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