The World's Craziest Scooter! Yambretta RD350 2 Stroke

We are always on the search for the world's weirdest, wildest and most interesting two-stroke motorcycles, and we've traveled down to Wiltshire today to find the ultimate crotch rocket, and I think it might be coming right now. What the hell was that? Let's find out. Evidently, this bike isn't quite what it seems. It might look like a vintage Lambretta, but that's the legendary Yamaha RD350 YPVS motor. This might just be the ultimate wolf in sheep's clothing. So here on 999 Laser, we love two things more than most. That's rare and different two-stroke motorcycles and really good stories, and I think today we found both. This is the Lambretta RD350 owned by Jed Thompson. To the untrained eye, it's an unsuspecting scooter, but to those in the know, it's a true hell-raiser. So let's meet Jed and learn more about this awesome motorcycle and its very special story. Okay, so here we are with Jed Thompson, the proud owner of this beautiful, ridiculous, very special Yamretta RD350. That's what we call it, right? Yeah. Obviously, our channel is a dirt bike-focused channel, but we love anything two-stroke, and we saw this on Facebook and we just had to come and meet Jed, see the bike in person. But there is a bit of a motocross link there, right, Jed? You rode motocross when you were a kid? Yeah, I had an RM250, the very first one with the disc brake on the front. That was back in 1986, maybe. So me and my brother, we used to race. He had a KX125. I also had an RM125, and then we moved on to YZs, and then we obviously couldn't afford to do any more. So we both left school, got jobs, and that was it, really. So motocross ended there, but however, we did have two-stroke bikes on the road. Talk about this, Jed. First off, before we go into the details of the bike, why did you build this bike? So unfortunately, I lost my brother three years ago. That's Jamie. Yeah, Jamie, yeah. So he left me a bit of money, and I thought instead of sort of wasting it, let's build something in memory of him to keep him going, really. So this is it. It's called the Envious Git, because he was a git, and obviously the Envious comes from the rear reg, which is obviously EVY, and that's it, really. So this was produced, the Envious Git. In memory of your mate brother. Talk us through what we're actually looking at here. To the untrained eye, it might just look like an unsuspecting scooter, right? But if you're in the know, you'll look at these parts and think, well, something's not adding up here. So just tell us about this bike, how you got it done, and what it is. So it started its life off as a Jet 200, and I bought it from Hull. So I travelled from Wiltshire to Hull to pick the bike up, which was, had a, it was just a frame and panels and a V5. So a rolling chassis. Rolling chassis, no engine, no engine, no front wheels, no forks. So not a rolling chassis, then? No, no, just a loop, as they call it, just the loop. So I then took it to Coventry, to a good friend of mine now, a bloke called Gary Hancocks. The wizard. The wizard. He is a wizard. He owns GWH Scooters, and he's been building these things since the 80s. So I turned up there with the frame, gave it to Gary, wanted it to be done by the August, so if the August was done, so therefore I could actually ride it on the road, tax and MOT exempt, which we all like. He then, did you have the motor at that point? No engine, just the frame, which was took to him after lots of conversations on telephones in Coventry, and that was that. So he would put any engine. So you turned up to his with your frame, your loop? And then left it with him. He then got in touch with me in July. Right Jed, we need to work out a colour. So the colour scheme was, I wanted a duck head green. Don't know why, but I was one way, and this is an actual Lambretta colour from the 60s. He then did a lot of work, as in the cutouts on the panel work here, that's on a GP Lambretta, they're stickers, so they're all vents now, you need to get the air out of the thing, obviously when it's in an RD it's open isn't it? When did you decide that you wanted to do the RD350 motor? It was always a plan to put a 350 in it, whether it was going to be a YPVS or not, we didn't know at the time. So then we managed to get a frame, an RD350 frame from America, that came over, he had the engine built, he then cut there, that's Lambretta, that's RD350, then welded it all together via lasers and all sorts of wizardry, a bit of magic, and then that was it. So the bike, the RD engine was in, the cradle was in, the swinging arm was shortened, the front brake was put on, that's a racing front brake on there from racing Lambrettas. We had troubles getting the pipes, so we had to go to Italy and got the pipes put on. We then got it dynoed, it's dynoed at 60bhp and 130mph. So what does that feel like when you're in a scoop position, what does that feel like, obviously on a closed road of course, what does 120mph feel like? Yeah a bit sketchy, it has a bit of a shape on it, but I've only ever done it once, I've only done 120 on it once and I don't want to do it again. I've thought about putting a steering damper on it, you can't, where are you going to put it, put it across here, then you're going to lose all your dials. So just talk us through some of the special parts that you said Gary had managed to do himself there. So on the right hand side there, that's the temperature gauge, on the left hand side that's the fuel gauge, the top is the rev counter and in the middle there is the speedo. We've also got in the front is the radiator, which is hidden, hence why there are vents in the front to get the air coming through. So as the air pushes through, obviously there's a vent at the bottom that goes into this vent as well and then forces the hot air out. You need to get rid of the air, we've also put an airplane type fuel tap on it, sorry cap on it. In the back end of it, it's got a lot going on there, we've got a Banshee 350 head on it, so it's called a cool head from America, just to keep it cold. You've got two water pumps, if it gets too hot I take out a fuse to cut one of the water pumps out to get the coolant going slowly to cool it to age for cooling and obviously the pipes which are from Italy. Obviously it's got six gears, I like the idea, so you've got one up, sorry, one up, the rest down on the gears and obviously that's your rear disc for the brake. That was made by a very good friend of mine called Paul Hunter, who's affiliated to the marines now, so I was a Royal Marine for 22 years. He made me that, which has got my brother's name on, that is the Royal Marines crest and that sign is my brother's date of birth. I handmade the headlight grill, which has got the Yamaha forks on, but I put them upside down just to be different, to wind people up I suppose. The seat is of my original first Lambretta I ever had, the GP125, so I kept the seat. So yeah, it's just like a living memory of my brother, that's his ashes, his ashes are in there and my wife gave me that on my wedding day, always by my side. Yeah, he was a git, he was a git. So there's a lot of Jamie on it and the only thing I ever saw in the build was the rear number plate, so he actually sent me a photo of the rear number plate and the blue, that's all I saw in six months. So you dropped the loop off with Gary and then you didn't see it until it was finished, so when you arrived it was a Coventry right? Yeah. When you went to Coventry and he revealed it to you, what was that moment like? Unbelievable, yeah, very cool, sorry, very, very cool. Yeah, it's just a memory of my brother. When you're riding it out in the streets, in the wild here in Wiltshire, does it annoy people? Does it put smiles on people's faces when you're up to the lights and you look over, old matey boy there on his Ninja or something and he looks at you like, yeah I'll smoke you mate and then you're off the line. They love it, they love it. People, it's a proper wolf, so it's elite Harley's, Harley's are nothing to that. There's a bike meet and I play with Harley Davidsons a lot. I've also ridden with Hell's Angels, I've went past them, they've all stopped, I've been chasing you for four miles mate, can't catch you, no they can't. It turns heads, there's a place in Swindon called Moto Cave which is owned by another Royal Marine, he loves it, I take it up there every now and again, they love it, it's just so different. So you take this to the Scooter Club, exit 17. So here's the Scooter Club, it's just a bunch of blokes, there's no club hours, there's no funds, there's no fees, it's just a bunch of blokes who ride scooters. Our club is such a massive spectrum of bikes from 1947 right up to 1980s. One lad's got Harley's as well but we all ride scooters, we all go together to rallies. This one wins a lot, it's won seven, sorry nine, it's won nine trophies at the minute for engineering and stupidness I suppose and they all sit at 50 mile an hour. So the lads, we sit at 50 mile an hour, I sit at 50 on this until I find a bike going past and I like to chase it, race him as you do but then they always catch me up because I'm filling up with fuel again. It does drink fuel especially when you hit the main jets. This is kind of the next in the video that Dale's here on his 1964 Lambretta, that was just to show the difference between a wolf and a sheep. That's awesome, absolutely beautiful specimen, something different which we love, let's go ride it shall we? Yeah. So before we hit the road on this thing I just need to say a big thank you to our sponsors Pewterline for helping us make videos just like this one. Pewterline have a range of products to lubricate and protect and clean your bike so check them out. They've got an awesome feature on the website where if you're not sure what product you need for your bike like an RD350 you can go onto the website just type in your bike model into the search bar and it'll come up with all the products that you need for your bike. Once again a big thank you to Pewterline for supporting the channel, let's go ride it. So to demonstrate the true insanity of the Lambretta, Jed's got his friend Dale involved today who's on a 1964 just standard regular Lambretta and they'll go out together now and demonstrate the difference between these two bikes so take it away boys. So here we have Dale on his 1964 Lambretta just getting things up to speed he'll be fully tapped any moment now but here in the distance we see the wolf the Lambretta on the hump. Jed's gonna let it rip any second now here he goes on the gas leaving the Lambretta in his wake in his dust absolutely nothing that the old Lambretta can do about the RD350 Lambretta there off into the distance that parallel twin two-stroke with the Yamaha power valve system is just too much to handle for the little Lambretta and one more for luck here Jed just ripping past Dale once again for the final time in this little experiment he's obviously having some fun. So that's the story of Jed's Lambretta RD350 and as you guys know whether it's road or dirt we just simply love two-stroke motorbikes so if you've got something interesting that you think we should feature drop me a message on Instagram at one minute moto. As always guys my name's Max this has been 999 Laser. I want to say a big thanks to Jed for letting us come and check out his pride and joy here until next time I'll see you at the track.