Power To The People

In Its 'Naked' Guise the Final Incarnation of the Venerable Powervalve Was Actually (if Not Politically) Correct and Lusted After as a Result. Andy Bolas Comes Over All 'Citizen Smith' for the N2!

- Andy Bolas

Oh my word! This road test really does take me back not just to the start of my riding career but to the years just before that ignited my interest in motorcycles full-stop.

We all have those moments, don’t we? The time that defines what we become: motorcyclists. Mine was when I first saw these 350 Powervalves both faired and un-faired when my father used to take my mum to work of an evening (she worked nights, as a nurse), on the way back we would stop off at the local bike shops and peer through the windows at the selection of machines for sale. I always liked the look of the un-faired Yamaha RD350LC YPVS: it was naked, it was raw and that lovely engine was all exposed.

Fast forward a couple of years and I’ve passed my test. I’m riding around on a Mk.3 Gamma which had a nasty habit of eating itself on a rather regular basis. After looking at a couple of bikes I ended up with a 1991 F2 which had done just 2000 miles, it was a beautiful (if sometimes painful) experience. Why? Well, this bike got me my first driving conviction, my first trip to hospital in an ambulance, my first track day and many more things! Oh, J682 RBF where are you now?

It took a few more years for me to bag a ride on an N model though, it was about 1998-1999 and my friend (and owner of Chase Superbike Centre) Keith Brindle had one and kindly let me have a go: to say I loved it was an understatement so I guess it was inevitable that I would end up with one in my collection.

So, as the N versions are rather rarer than the fully faired Fs, it took a while for me to get hold of one but Kev Schofield (known universally as LC Kev) eventually managed to come up with the goods in 2009: it was a 1987 model from Germany with 60km on the clocks and restricted to 27bhp.