Yamaha Vintage Motorcycles

As we push further into summer we’re seeing more and more interesting motorcycles get rolled out of garages and listed for sale on eBay, we found a number of track-only racing bikes for sale this week along with a couple of old-timers in need of some patience and hard work.

First up we have a Ducati 250 from the mid-1960s, it’s one of the early Bevel Head designs from the Italian company – which always appeals to the collectors. Ducati’s Bevel Head was a simple gearing system to mechanically operate the overhead cam shaft – they switched to belt-driven cams in the early 80s but many purists prefer the bevel gears.

A little further down you’ll find a running but rough Harley-Davidson WLA from the Second World War, these bikes were produced en masse throughout the war and there is a huge community surrounding the model now providing parts and expertise.

There’s nothing quite so brave as taking a 2-stroke motorcycle to the race track, and the RD400 in 3rd place this week would require someone with lightning fast reactions to keep it under control. It’s recently had a magazine feature and looks to be an extremely well-built race bike.

Next in line is a Simplex restoration project, the seller lists it as being either a ’49 or ’50 model and mentions that the engine turns freely – but won’t start till it’s had a full rebuild. It could be an excellent little project bike for an enthusiast, and the completed bike would get astonishingly good fuel mileage.

Last but not least this week we have an original Greeves 250 from the late ’60s, this small British company built some of the best trials bikes in the world in their time and they recently relaunched with an all new 250 model not dissimilar to the one you see here.