ENGINE

IGNITION

The DYNA S ignition from an inline four cylinder I adapted for 
my Daytona because DYNA stopped making an ignition for the 
Rd's. The rotor is a RD350/400 DYNA3 duplicate although the 
rotor it came with could have been adapted. It worked flawlessly 
for years. The best thing you can do for an RD is put an 
electronic ignition on it.

Now days Nick Pastore at Vintage Smoke makes a complete bolt on kit!
www.vintagesmoke.com

To make the stock sparkplug caps non-resistor unscrew the brass 
sparkplug terminal & replace the resistor with a piece of steel rod.

CRANKSHAFTS

The difference between RD350 & LC/RZ350 Crankshafts

Heres a common example of why you can't tell the
condition of a used crankshaft without disassembly.
On the outside the rod looks great but on disassembly
moisture has caused pitting between the rod & bearing.

Transmission

 
The first thing you need to do is clean all the oil and dirt off the tranny.
An oily dirty tranny can hide the problems you need to see really well. Set The 
tranny back in the cases and examine the gear teeth. This picture of 2nd gear
is a great example. 2nd gear is often damaged. If the wear has gotten
through the surface hardening the gear will usually start to pit and lose 
small chunks of metal. It's time to replace the gear. Next check the engagement
dogs on all the gears for rounding of the corners of the dogs. That's the #1 
cause of trannies popping out of gear. Pay particular attention to 2nd gear 
(in the picture) and the dogs on 5th and 6th pinion gears (also in the picture).  
Lastly with all the gears off the shafts check for shaft damage as seen below.

This is a great example of why you can't tell the 
condition of a used Trans without disassembly.
On the outside the dogs & teeth look great but the
Gear has damaged the shaft & both must be replaced 
or the trans will be popping out of gear.

RD400 High flow fuel valve

At roadracing HP levels I've encountered fuel starvation
on long straitaways. To fix this I use a YZ250 fuel valve
part # 3JD-24500-01. The valve comes with one outlet
pointing down but has 2 other outlet provisions that are
undrilled. I drill the rearward provision then you can either
press in a fitting or tap it for a threaded fitting giving you 2 outlets

For the Lanspeed bike and the roadracer I used one of these fuel
  valves on each side. With the landspeed bike I only later went to
  a Pingel fuel valve because the fuel category (even though I was still
 running the bike on gas) required a handlebar mounted fuel shutoff.
  To mount a second fuel valve: mark where you want it, drill the center
 hole for the strainer/fuel pickup, then use a sharp punch and a
  hammer to make the holes for the mounting screws, this gives more
  surface area to the mounting holes for the screws to bite into.

A trick that we found to help with fuel starvation problems on a
friends RZ Roadracer when he was stuck with using his single factory
Fuel valve was to run the fuel line from the fuel valve into a “fuel log”,
a piece of larger diameter tubing that acted as a fuel reservoir that then fed
both carbs. I’d rather use a larger fuel valve but it worked in a pinch.

I never used inline fuel filters because I couldn’t find any that flowed to
my liking,I just kept my fuel tank and float bowls clean and used
the fuel valves strainer as my filter.