The basic idea for this arose during a long drive back from a race meeting. At the meeting we realised that to go any faster we needed more power than we could safely get from our XS.
The class we compete in at most meetings has limitations on engines year of manufacture, wheel size, brakes and suspension. Basically the engine must be in production before 1973. Unless used on the production bike flat slide carbs, monoshock, floating discs and brake callipers with more than two pistons are prohibited.
The easy way would be to go the BMW route as Norton’s and Triumphs require too much money to get going fast and tend towards being fragile. However we are Yamaha fans.
Combining two Yamaha 350 motors together in a sidecar was done pretty early on in Australia. I read in an Issue of Old Bike Australia about the man Alex Campbell who did it. It also said that engineers from Japan travelled to Aussie to view the machine all this was before the TZ 700 was released. For those of you who want to read the article it is in Old Bike Australaisia issue number 62.
An RD 700 outfit was also built and raced in New Zealand (I think in the 1970’s) by Garry and Clive Watson.