1969 Yamaha 250cc Street Scrambler - 4-Page Vintage Motorcycle Road Test Article For Sale

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1969 Yamaha 250cc Street Scrambler - 4-Page Vintage Motorcycle Road Test Article
Original, vintage magazine article Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each pageCondition: Good
Yamaha 250ccStreet ScramblerCrammed with improvements learned the hard wayon every race track in the country, the new DS6-Cis smoother, faster, and better handling.At approximately 12-month intervals, weget a new Yamaha 250cc twin-cylinder sports/touring bike to test ride. This has been anannual affair for about seven years, and al-though these tests have brought us few sur-prises, each new model has represented a sig-nificant improvement over earlier versions.Sometimes the most apparent change is aboost in power; at other times, it will be aseries of detail modifications enhancing reli-ability. And at all times, you can trace the bigchanges directly to Yamaha’s racing program.Not their Grand Prix effort, although that issure to have its effect on Yamaha productionmotorcycles in due course. The real source ofimprovements incorporated in the street Ya-mahas is that company’s involvement in ourAMA competition-where the rules requirethat people race what they sell.Back in 1962, when we tested the then-new YDS2 Yamaha (itself a sporty, improvedversion of the YD2), there was already a Ya-maha TD1 “production” racer. The formerwas an entirely satisfactory bike when judgedby the standards of that year, and the TD1won a lot of short races. Longer races were aproblem, because the TDl’s crankshaft (iden-tical to that in the YDS 2) was just a tad spin-dley. It would take the touring engine’spower, but with racing cylinders and expan-sion chambers the pressure was increasedenough to shear-off the long left-side exten-sion that carried the clutch.Soon, there was a new Yamaha productionracer: the TD1-B. This one had a strongercrank, with all of the shaft diameters in-creased, and a stronger transmission as well.All very wonderful for the racing fraternity-and perhaps even more wonderful for thestreet riders, because there was also a newtouring 250: the YDS3. Both models weregiven an extra shot of power, and both provedto be more reliable and faster than before.However, the racing version was somethingless than 100% reliable. That small-diameterclutch, cantilevered out on the end of thecrankshaft and turning at engine speed, wasfragile. By this time, the TD1 engine was be-ing spun 10,500 rpm, and delivering 35 bhpinto the clutch. So some of the clutches justexploded. Again, the touring version was fair-ly reliable-although it must be said that evenon the lower-powered bike the clutch wasgrabby, and likely to warp out of balance.All of which brought about the YamahaTD1-C, which had improved crankshaft and...12656-6907-04

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