RZ 500 performance

[everiman]

I just found an RZ500 that has been sitting in a back yard for 2 years or more. Other than cracked plastic it is in amazingly complete and unbutchered condition. It seems that it was fairly well looked after until 2 or 3 owners ago, then it was passed on to one guy to pay off a debt, and he gave it to his son who rode it around the block and parked it until I got it. Digging in, it was apparent the carbs were plugged it only ran on 2 cylinders. Cleaned the carbs, checked compression (100 on all 4) put air in tires and rode it around the block a few times. I find it very peaky, not much happens until it hits 6000. I had an RZ350 for many many years and it seems to me that the RZ350 worked much better at sub 6K than this bike does. Once it hits 6K it has a pretty good hit, seat of the pants I would say a bit better than the departed 350, which had DG pipes, larger jets and Boyesen reeds but was otherwise stock.

My question is, is this right? I woulda thought that the RZ500 would be at least as good at lower revs as the 350. It pulls from 2k but won't respond to throttle, even at 4k I still have to pull in the clutch and get the revs up if I want to outrun the neighborhood dogs. It behaves very much like a highly tuned TZ or some such, which is cool, but I woulda thought that Yamaha would have tried a little harder to make it more street friendly. Any opinions?

Oh yeah, the power valves make their screech screech sound on start up, but I have not confirmed if they are actually working. If they are not, the way the bike works would be as if they were stuck in the open (high RPM) position.

I am considering selling the bike BTW, at 61 yrs old it appears that my inner racer boy juvenile delinquent has finally left me. Bike and rider are in Edmonton Canada. If I decide to sell I will use ebay. No probs with crating the bike for shipping anywhere so long as the buyer arranges the shipping and deals with the brokerage-customs issues. I have done this before, so can be of assistance. I posted a few pics on picasa -
https://picasaweb.google.com/1168079533 ... 2944/RZ500

And finally thanks to this club for the shop manual and parts files!

[everiman]

Gonna answer my own question. No ES, your RZ500 should be much stronger than a 350, even below 6k, and when it hits 6K it will make your old 350 seem like a moped, so keep plugging away and get it running right.

Gosh thanks ES! I did what you said, and sure enough this thing is an absolute beast! Ferget what I said about selling it, I may have found my lost inner racer boy JD self. See ya on the road.

[hybrid]

See there you go ES... this website works. You got your question answered in a day!

And yeah - your RZ500 should be a fair bit faster than the 350.
If you haven't already, check out http://www.rzrd500.com