RD 350 FunBike

Moto Exotica is based on the legendary Yamaha RD350. We caught up with Eight’s creator and Moto Exotica’s founder Arjun Raina to know more.

Bike Name: Eight

Story behind the name: This is Arjun’s eight bike

Type of bike: Scrambler

Engine: Yamaha RD350. Two-stroke. Crankcase tweaking.

Headlamps: Custom

“These lights are porn.”

Chassis: The engine bay is from RD350. Rest of it is custom tailored to suit the modifications.

Powerband: Starts from 2500 and pulls you cleanly till 9000 rpm. Mild peak at 9200 approx.

Top speed: 200 kmph. On a Scrambler so top speed is not as important as the mid-range. Arjun has a similar configuration on a Café Racer and it does 184 kmph. This is lighter and Arjun expects it to do 200 kmph.

Suspension: Front-end from a KTM 200. It’s re-valved and has been made a little softer for better ride quality on gravel and dirt. Rear-suspension is also from KTM 200. But the angle is slightly changed in order to enable a little more travel while off-roading.

Swingarm: It’s 100% custom-made because the bike required it to be a little longer. This is 6 inches longer than the normal RD350 because once you start increasing the power, the front-end lifts and you start doing wheelies; to compensate, you drop the gas and reduce the power. So, in order to keep both the wheels on the tarmac, they lengthened the bike by adding this very strong and long swingarm.

So, if you make the swingarm slightly longer, you can even do the hill climb without tweaking the engine.

Seat and Tank: They are shaped in such a way that you can glide from seat to tank easily to give better traction to the front end when the need arise. Especially while taking the tight corners.

Dry weight: 95 kgs.

Power-to-weight: Nearly 700 bhp-per-tonne

Tyres:

TKC 80s Continental. They’re dual tyres – can run on tarmac as well as off-road.

Life of Tyres: About 7000-8000 kms.

Brakes: 

They’re upgraded. At the front, there is a 4-pot caliper with rotor from a CBR 250 which is mod-ed and reshaped. Ditto for the rear wheel. Bibram is sister-concern of Brembo in India, for cheaper manufacturing.

Exhuast: 

There are two exhaust pipes and each of them is hand built from 45 different sections.

“This is not mild-steel, this is stainless steel and it’s even more difficult to work with. We get limited by the processes that are used to work with it. This is TIG weld and there is only a certain way in which you can finish them. The upside is that this is much stronger. Some people say that performance wise, stainless steel is poor; but whatever we’ve done so far, in our experience, we’ve always had superior performance with stainless steel.”

full Article on Redbull.com