1986 Yamaha RD500 LC

It may once have languished in the shadow of the Suzuki RG500, but today the RD500LC stands tall, says Andy Bolas.

- Andy Bolas

My first recollection of Yamaha’s RD500 takes me back to around 1987: my parents had taken me away to Cornwall o n holiday and one night we were on the seafront at St Ives and there it was…

Parked up next to a couple of other bikes outside Woolies, looking resplendent in its silky white and red paint scheme was a Yamaha RD500LC. I think what really attracted my 12-year-old eyes to it were the four tail pipes and the amount of smoke it coughed out when the owner saddled up, started her up and whizzed away on it. That evening sowed the seed subconsciously for the bikes that would form a big part of my later life and form the mainstays of my current motorcycle collection.

It took me another decade until around 1996-97 to realise my ambition of owning Yamaha’s big LC and then I didn’t keep hold of the bike for long due to a few issues that my local Yamaha dealer said were going to be rather expensive to resolve. So instead I swapped the 500 for a 350 F2 which I still have in my care to this day! 

That’s not where the story ends though because the bike we are about to do a ‘Quick Spin’ on is the very bike I had back then. Yeah, you can imagine what happened: I would pop into Jacksons in Burton upon Trent and check out the used bikes during the late 1990s. I’d bought a new Fazer from them in 1998 and soon got chatting to shop owner John Jackson. I found myself reunited with the big 500 in January 1999 and I’ve kept her ever since.