St Louis CL,

Not Kaw, but cool anyway:
stlouis.craigslist.org/mcy/550006049.html

yeah they are neat,but that seems like a lot of money to me without titles;)

seems like alot of power without a disc brake

Hey flht, I notice you have RD350 on your list of bikes. A frind of mine had one way back when, and he let me borrow it for a few days. What a little screamer it was! Handled great too.
Are those bikes in the ad the forerunners to the RD's?

They are the forerunner to the RD. I believe the main difference is that they had no reed valves. I think that means the piston and internal port timing is different. It's been almost 10 years since I worked on one, and my memory is hazy. But I do remember the thing had too much power for it's size. It would easily wheelie, as I found out once while riding it without a clutch cable. I think the reed valves made the RD's more controllable and predictable. My buddy rode the crap out of it until it holed a piston.

what Lou said. when the RD came along they put in reed valves and called it "torque induction" the R stuff was a very similar machine just not quite as refined as the later RD's and then the liquid cooled RZ's
my very first street bike was a rd250 when i was 15. i thought that thing was a guided missile, with the brakes to match. the oil injection pump promply seized resulting in me puhing the bike home. i then replaced the 250 engine with a junkyard 350 motor and about every three or four years i will get it out and fart around for awhile.
i have too many bikes to keep up with them all. but RD's are right up there as one of my most favorite machine, plus THAT SOUND!!!