G'DAY
IF LAST issue was our six-cylinder special – we ran two, a Honda CBX1000 and Kawasaki Z1300 – then let’s dedicate this one to the mighty two-stroke. These days mostly confined to chainsaws and the like, two-stroke engines were a mainstay of motorcycle propulsion for the best part of a century before falling foul of environmental legislation in the new millennium. “Two-strokes were a mainstay of motorcycling for a century” At first glance, Phil Rowe’s Yamaha RZ on page 64 and Sammy Miller’s Maico Taifun on page 84 could not be more different, but both are powered by 350cc two-stroke vertical twins. The liquid-cooled 1985 Yamaha is the quintessential boy racer, the air-cooled 1957 Maico a luxurious gentleman’s tourer. At the birth of internal combustion engines, the four-stroke was first…