Motorcycles, Scooters, Guns, Adventures, Opinions, and More
Doug Turnbull Restorations is a cool company specializing in firearm restorations and new firearms treated with classic color case hardening. This video showed up in an email this morning…
Here’s another one that’s interesting…the restoration of an old axe. The video is well done and the finished products (both the axe and the video) are impressive…
I think ol’ Gresh is on to something with his Dream Bike concept, or as I call these features, the Ones That Got Away. We all have at least one…a bike we lusted after but didn’t buy.
Well, as it turns out, my good buddy and riding compadre Tom had a dream bike, too, but he did something (a big something) about his dream. He made it come true, and then some. Tom wrote and asked if he could contribute to the ExNotes blog, and the answer, of course, was a resounding yes. Read on, my friends…this is a great story.
Over to you, Tom!
Hello, Tom here. By way of a quick bio, I have been riding for 56 years. My first motorcycle in high school was a “motorcycle,” not a scooter, from Sears Roebuck. My current bikes are a well-used Triumph 1050 Tiger and a well-equipped Honda XR650L dual sport.
In 1975 I was riding a 1969 Honda CB 750 four. I rode it everywhere including numerous runs at the local Irwindale drag strip on Wednesday night. Straight line performance was the only thing I was interested in.
My riding partner bought a new Kawasaki Z900 and all of a sudden I was seeing more of his taillight than I was used to. It was time for more horsepower.
I had previously owned two Triumph twins, a T100 500cc and a T120 650. I always loved the Triumphs so I went looking for a new Triumph T150 750cc pushrod triple. My riding partner and I went to the two Triumph dealers in the area. We ended up at Ed Kretz Triumph in Monterey Park, California. It was well into 1975 and they only had 1974 models.
The boys at Kretz had no idea when the ‘75s would arrive. The magazines said the new 750 triples had 5 speed transmissions and disc brakes front and rear, plus electric starters. The ‘74 only had 4 speeds and the ugliest single iron disc front brake I ever saw. The electric starter was of no interest at the time but the 5 speed could have been the deal breaker. But deep in my gut, this bike had “something” that no stinking Honda had.
The next day, two of my buddies and I went back to the dealer to look again. They both were totally against the Triumph. They pointed out the huge, cast, oversized hand controls (they were about twice the size of those on the Honda or Kawi). The front brake reservoir (crudely marked with “Girling”) looked like the boys in metal shop sandcast it for a high school project. I listened to my friends and walked away from a bike I would always admire, Lucas electrics and all. For me, this was the one that got away.
I bought a new Honda CB 750 from Dick & Walt’s Honda-BMW on Whittier Blvd in Montebello, California for $1648, which was about $900 cheaper than the Triumph. Remember my trips to Irwindale drag strip with the old ’69 750 Honda? It ran about 14 seconds flat in the quarter. I had to put more than $500 into the 1975 CB 750 to equal those times. The red line on the tach was 8500 rpm. It took me about three or four trips to the strip to figure out it ran out of steam at 7000 rpm. It was a pig compared to my 1969. I kept it about a year.
Epilogue
On September 14, 2011 my good friend and riding buddy Joe and I drove up the 99 to Lodi, California. We dug out a 1974 Triumph Trident 750cc pushrod triple from behind a 1936 rear-engined Allis Chalmers tractor. They were in a white wood barn.
Yes, that Triumph was a real barn find. It was in terrible shape but it did run. I happily paid $2500 for a rusted relic, and I smiled all the way home. I converted that bike into a Land Speed Racer and raced at the El Mirage dry lake for three seasons.
And, as I mentioned earlier, I still ride a Triumph today.
That’s an awesome story, Tom. Thanks very much for sharing it with us!
So, how about the rest of you guys and gals? Do you have a dream bike, one that you let get away? Hey, tell us about it. Send your story to info@ExhaustNotes.us, and we’ll publish it!
Wanna see the rest of our Dream Bikes?
During the summer of 2016, your blogmeisters (Arjiu and Dajiu) rode RX3 motorcycles 6000 miles across China. Tracy was our translator and he was funny as hell.
Our good friend Tracy is an up and comer in the Zongshen organization. He sent an email to us recently, along with the above photo. Tracy is being reassigned to the Zongshen team in Mexico, and Gresh and I may take a ride down there once Tracy is in country. You can bet the beer will flow freely when that happens!
If you’d like to read the story of our ride across China, you can do so here. It was a great ride and an amazing adventure.
Or maybe the title of this one should be: Go West, Young Man! That’s what Ernie did, and that’s what I did, too.
My good buddy Ernie and I go back. Way back. As in kindergarten back. Hell, that was 62 years ago. That’s how long I’ve known Ernie. Elementary school, junior high school, high school, and beyond. Whoooeee!
Anyway, we’re coming up on our 50th year high school reunion back in the Garden State, and Ernie has been posting stories (along with a few other folks) about what’s gone on his life over the last five decades. Ernie’s stuff is good, and it sure hit home for me. I asked Ernie if I could run one of his stories here on the blog, and he agreed. You’ll like this…I know I sure did.
And those photos above? They are, as you probably guessed, from our school yearbooks. Yep, I still have them.
Ernie, over to you, my friend…
*************************************
Thanks, everybody, and especially you, Joe. I enjoy your tales on the trail. I have a few tales that you might enjoy, too.
In 1979 when our daughter Stephanie was born, we made one of our good friends Jim her Godfather. Jim was really cool. He and his brother were on a road trip with Jim’s wife Bonnie, and I was lucky enough to have met them and made friends with them, when I decided to get out of NJ and try my hand at the West.
I had been to Salt lake City about a half year before with two of my buddies. We had a few weeks where the 35-man shop was a bit slow due to the economy, so the three of us did a scouting expedition points West. We left in late October, and as luck would have it, we hit a bad snow storm in Pennsylvania.
After we made it through that, we pushed on across Ohio, Indiana and into Illinois. It was around midnight and as it has happened before to me since then, I-80 had construction and we made a wrong turn and were headed straight into the windy city. It was hell getting back on track and on 80 west again. We wasted a good hour. The highway around the area is a lot like the famed city. It blows, too.
Well, on we went. it was dark out when we were in western Nebraska and entering Wyoming. We stopped in a bar and my friend Paul, all he could talk about was Coors beer all the way from NJ, so we needed this break and to our delight guess what they had on tap. Well, it was pitcher time. All we heard was Paul’s mouth flapping happy about that ice-cold Coors.
When we got back on the road, and into Wyoming as luck would have it, a herd of mule deer were about to run out in front of us, but our headlights persuaded them not to. A while later we saw our first Western state’s snow. We stopped at a rest area and spent a good half hour throwing snowballs at one another. Finally, we rolled into Utah, and the sign said Port of Entry. The hell with the port, we wanted more Coors. Then we experienced our first big downhill run. Parley’s Canyon. 14 miles downhill at a 6% grade, winding through the Rockies.
We saw our first major “run-away truck lane.” If I was a semi, I would want to run away too. Then we saw a big opening and soon…ta dah…the Salt Lake Valley loomed in front of us. We intersected with I-15 and off to our left we spotted Dryer’s Harley Davidson. We decided that was going to be our first stop. Good thing too, because right next to it was a tavern. Well I can go on and on about this trip because we had some great experiences throughout Utah, which we circled, and some cool adventures on the way home with 25 cases of Coors beer. And we got stuck in a snowbank in Kansas, and a state trooper helped get us out. And, as luck again would have it, the exit we took led us to the hotel that they used in that movie Paper Moon. We stayed there. Yahoo!
So that scouting trip was the deciding factor that Chris and I were going to move to Salt Lake City. Months later my Dad and I took off in my Dodge van and drove across country to Salt Lake. I got the biggest kick out of my Dad, all the way across he was wide awake and thrilled at all the sights he saw. He stayed with me a few days till I found a good place to camp to look for an apartment. It was sad. It was the first and only time I saw my Dad tear up.
I camped out at the KOA on I-80. That’s where I met Jim, Bonnie, and Tom. They were on a bike road trip, and the cool thing about it was both Jim and Tom worked at the Harley-Davidson factory in Milwaukee. They both worked in engines and transmissions. Later Jim became a factory test rider. His job each night was to log in 250 miles on the test bikes (what a job, what a job!). They even sent him to Harley’s test track in Texas to race their bikes. We were at the big car show back in February and Harley had a big van there with all their new models. I entered a contest and got to talking to one of their staff. It turned out he knew Jim and Tom well. Jim still works there.
I went back to NJ to pick up my 1974 74 cubic inch dresser from my parents’ house. On the way out of NJ, I was pulled over by a state trooper who noticed my bike in the back of my van. I had shoulder length hair then and a beard and all, and I looked the part, I guess. Well ha, ha, ha. I whipped out my registration and bill of sale and foiled that trooper’s ideas.
I did lots and lots of riding while living in Utah with and without Chris. So, back to the main objective of the story, Joe. When our daughter was born we invited Jim and Bonnie to Stephanie’s christening. A few days later (this is now in Gresham, Oregon) I wanted to escort Jim and Bonnie out of town. It ended up I drove all the way to the California border with them, via the mountain pass at Eugene to Highway 101. Here is the part you may find fascinating, Joe. The Harley I had at the time was a stock 1965 Electra Glide. The problem was the front brake was out all the way down. The real issue was, the rear brake went out just when I started home from leaving Jim and Bonnie. I drove that bike up 101, through the hairy mountain pass and around that damn grooved circle they used to have in Eugene (you know how it makes your front tire wobble, Joe), then the 120 miles up I-5 in heavy traffic on the I-205 (which at the time was not completed) and on back roads to Gresham. It was challenging as hell, but a real thrill ride.
The other story is one of my best friends named John, who was a factory-sponsored, award-winning motorcycle racer for Harley-Davidson. He once rode a Harley from Seattle all the way to Portland on old highway 99 with tons of stop lights and through many small towns without a clutch, and never stopped or stalled the bike. He also hill climbed the widow maker between Salt Lake and Provo canyons, and get this, he took his Harley up to the top of Beacon Rock on Highway 14 (you know where it is, Joe), and he almost made it to the very top of Mt. Hood. The sun melted the snow and prevented him from making the last few yards.
Joe, this man was a legend. He built my 1947 Knucklehead from a basket case. The man knew every nut and bolt on just about anything that rolled sailed or flew. I was privileged to have known him.
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Good stuff, Ernie, and thanks for allowing me to share it with our friends over here on the ExhaustNotes blog. We’re looking forward to seeing you next summer, Dude…we have a lot of catching up to do!
And for our great blog followers, you may be wondering how well the last 50 years have treated us.
Well, wonder no more, my friends…
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If you’re headed into Baja, you need to have Mexican insurance on your car, truck, motorcycle, or motor scooter. Your regular US motor vehicle insurance won’t be recognized as meeting this requirement in Mexico. It’s that simple.
At the risk of being challenged by a keyboard commando telling me that you don’t have to have insurance in Mexico, I’ll say at the outset that what you need is proof of financial responsibility for liability incurred as the result of a motor vehicle accident. Yeah, there are other ways of getting around this. You can arrange a bond in advance with a Mexican bank (not very practical), you can carry enough cash to meet Mexico’s upper liability limits (just bring $333,000 in cash with you to show to the officer if you are stopped) or you can get Mexican insurance. Door No. 3 is the obvious answer.
You might be tempted to just blow off the requirement for Mexican insurance, and you might get away with it. Then again, you might not. If you are stopped (or worse, you have an accident) and you can’t produce proof of Mexican insurance, you are going to be spending a lot more time in Mexico (and the accommodations will dramatically different) than what you originally planned. Trust me on this. It’s just not worth the risk.
I’ve been traveling in Baja and other parts of Mexico for close to 30 years, and I’ve tried several different outfits. To cut to the chase, BajaBound is the easiest and best way to insure your vehicle. What I like about it is that it’s all done online, it’s inexpensive, and it’s a quality product. What you need to get insurance is an internet connection, your driver’s license, a credit card, your bike’s registration, and a printer. That’s it.
I always buy my insurance a day or two before I travel to Baja, and I always set it up to start the day I enter Baja (and just to be on the safe side, I insure for one day longer than I plan to be south of the border). If you’re new to BajaBound, you’ll answer a few questions about yourself to set up an account the first time you visit their website, and then you’re ready to start making selections (how many days, how much coverage, etc.). If you’ve insured previously with BajaBound, all you need to do is log in, specify the vehicle you’ll be using (super easy if it’s one you’ve previously insured), specify the dates, and pick the coverage you want. In my case, it typically works out to something south of $20 per day, and that’s a hell of deal. You pay with a credit card, the policy is immediately available, and all you need to do is print the proof of insurance and you’re good to go.
I’ve been lucky. I’ve never needed to use my BajaBound insurance because I never crashed my car or motorcycle in Mexico. On one of the tours I led in Mexico, though, one of the guys I rode with had a bad crash. He got through it okay, but the motorcycle did not. My friend put in a claim and BajaBound paid promptly. This is the real deal, folks. It’s good insurance, it’s easy to get over the Internet, it meets all of Mexico’s legal requirements, and when necessary, they pay promptly. It doesn’t get any better than that. It’s the only insurance I use for my Baja forays.
Would you like to know more about riding in Baja? Hey, it’s the best riding on the planet! Check out our ExhaustNotes Baja page for the best routes, hotels, restaurants, whale watching, cave paintings, and more! Do a search here on the ExhaustNotes blog using the search term “Baja.” Better yet, pick up a copy of Moto Baja, available now on Amazon.com!
If I were forced to live in a large city I probably wouldn’t ride motorcycles. Connected technology has brought us all closer together, so close that none of us really like what we see from our fellow man. This ubiquitous-connectedness has created a disconnect in a huge quantity of automobile drivers. Proximity sensors that auto-apply braking and lane-holding algorithms are responses to a driving populace that grows ever more disinterested in what is happening on the other side of the windshield. Self driving cars can’t get here soon enough for me.
Public roads are dangerous for motorcycles, no two ways about it, but there is a better place to ride. It’s a place where youthful hijinks don’t end in an expensive traffic citations or death by obliviousness. This place can be found everywhere, mere inches below the civilized world. This place is called The Dirt.
The Dirt is the true and holy Mother Road, unlike The Street, which relies completely on and has to be built on top of The Dirt. The Dirt stands on its own merits needing neither creation nor sustenance. Dirt will still be here long after the last human on Earth has crashed the last Volvo on Earth into the last telephone pole on Earth while sending the last text ever sent…on Earth.
The Dirt encompasses a wide variety of surfaces from graded county roads to nearly impassable paths more suitable to mountain goats. And you can ride a motorcycle over all of it. True, it’s getting harder to find places to ride near population centers. So pull up stakes and move to the less tony parts of the USA where there are miles and miles of dirt roads to explore.
Motorcyclists who start out in the dirt are simply better riders than those that don’t. Finding the limit on pavement is risky, expensive and painful. Those same limits can be exceeded and re-exceeded many times while riding in the dirt, sometimes without any input from the rider. Hell, sometimes the rider is tangled in a bush with a sprained thumb while the motorcycle explores the limits on its own. Crashing in The Dirt is less damaging to both body and bike. I’m not saying you can’t get killed dirt riding but it takes a determined effort to accomplish on your own what a drunken car driver will do for free.
The most interesting, less-picked-over sites are accessible only by dirt roads. Fencing and authorities are few and far between. If you see an abandoned mine shaft that needs falling into or a rusty car that needs a few more bullet holes you can fall or shoot with complete freedom.
Listen, don’t let street riding scares put you off motorcycles. Pick up an old dual purpose bike for a thousand or two and start finding your groove out where it’s safe to do the things you like to do.
I liked that Dream Bike piece Gresh did over the weekend about his fantasy bike, the Kawasaki 350cc Avenger. I like the concept: Articles on the ones that got away.
And as is always the case, if Gresh wrote it, I like it.
Can I say that on this blog? You know, Gresh and I do most of the writing, so am I allowed to say that about his stuff? Hey, I don’t care.
I’m guessing if you’re reading this, you have a dream bike. You know, one you didn’t buy but wish you had. We’d like to hear about it. Do a short piece on it with a photo or two and we’ll publish it here.
In the meantime, and because I like “the one that got away” concept so much, I’m going to do a short bit on my dream bike. One of them, anyway. It’s the 1983 Harley XR1000. Yeah, I know, I’m a guy who made his bones writing about small bikes (the CSC RX3, in particular), and the XR1000 is anything but small. But I like it.
The magazines of the era all panned the XR1000, and every once in a while one of them does a retrospective (and they still don’t like it). You know what? I don’t give a rat’s rear end about some magazine weenie’s opinion. I like the look, the concept, and the sound of the XR1000, and one of my few regrets in life is that I didn’t buy one new in ’83.
Not that I didn’t have good reason back then. I had bought a Harley Electra-Glide Classic, new, in 1979. It was the worst vehicle of any type I’d ever owned, and I swore I’d never buy another Harley. That was the principal thing that kept me from pulling the trigger on a new XR1000 in ’83 (I sold the Electra-Glide in ‘82, and the reliability reputation injuries it left hadn’t healed yet). But time heals all wounds (I wish I had that Electra-Glide now), and if I could find a clean XR1000 I’d be on it in a New York minute.
The magazines said the XR1000 vibrated (they actually paid folks to point that out on a Harley?), you could burn your left leg on the exhaust (duh), and the twin Dellortos hit your knee on the right side of the bike (seriously?). Not content with stating the obvious, one of the magazines actually wrote the bike had a predilection for turning left. A bike based on a flat tracker? A predilection for turning left? And folks wonder why the motorcycle magazine business fell on hard times.
Everything the magazines hated about the XR1000 made me want one more. It was a raw, muscular, asymmetric, no passenger, no compromises, in-your-face motorcycle. I still want one.
We spend a lot of time dreaming about motorcycles. See our other Dream Bikes here!
Most of us think of ourselves as creative people. But we’re really not. In fact, some studies show that our creativity peaks when we are in kindergarten, and takes a steady slide south by the time we graduate from high school. I’d argue that it’s even worse for engineers, as most of our focus never gets beyond meeting minimum requirements at the lowest possible cost. It’s a concept that seems to be in force when we see the latest motorcycles from the major manufacturers, often with nothing newer than paint and decals.
I’m an engineer and I feel comfortable saying the above, and I’m not alone in that regard. Many of the engineering managers I’ve known feel their engineers are not particularly creative. So much so, in fact, that I was asked to develop a course on engineering creativity several years ago, and it’s one I’ve since taught in the US and overseas many times. And in order to do that, I wrote a book covering 16 preferred creativity tools…
Unleashing Engineering Creativity includes a collection of quotes I thought I’d share with you…
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
– Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office, 1899
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
– Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927
Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.
– Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895
The horse is here today, but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.
– Michigan Savings president, advising against investing in Ford
Video won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.
– Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on television, 1946
What use could the company make of an electric toy?
– Western Union, when it turned down rights to the telephone, 1878
And my personal favorite, one I’ve heard many times in my life…
We’ve always done it this way…
– Unknown
All this begs the questions:
What’s the next big thing in motorcycle design?
Where it will come from?
Are other businesses or industries are doing things that might make a new motorcycle more fun?
There’s a creativity technique called lateral benchmarking, which involves looking outside your industry for new ideas. Southwest Airlines greatly reduced their turnaround times after studying how NASCAR pit crews worked. Is there something a company not in the motorcycle business is doing that would work well in a new motorcycle?
Kano modeling is another creativity technique in which you identify and assess potential cool features not expressed by the customer, but once experienced by a potential customer cinch the sale. I bought a Corvette in 2004 when I saw its Heads Up Display.
I would have never imagined I needed such a thing, but I worked on the F-16 HUD back in the ’70s, and when I saw it in the Z06 I knew I had to have that car. What’s out there that’s supercool and might be incorporated in the next cool motorcycle?
Hey, do you have any motorcycle ideas? Let us know about them, and we’ll toss them up here on the ExNotes blog for comment.
One of the pages on the ExhaustNotes.us site lists the books we’re written. Surprisingly, since we’ve launched the site, Unleashing Engineering Creativity has enjoyed a nice sales spike. I guess there are a lot of engineers following ExNotes. That’s cool, and thanks very much, folks!
Let’s wrap this one up with two thoughts. First, please add your email address to our subscribers list (it’s the widget in the top right corner of this page). You’ll find out the instant we post a new blog, and we’ll never provide your email address to anyone else. And second…what are your ideas on new features that might entice you to buy a new motorcycle? Let us know!
Kawasaki’s A7 is high on my motorcycle lust-list. The styling of the Gen 2 models is as perfect as a motorcycle can be. Decals and graphics, a Kawasaki strong suit in the 1970’s, gave the bike a speedy, eager look that shouts, “Let the good times roll!” And roll they did, Big Daddy: long before the Yamaha RD series, Kawasaki was hazing the streets and smoking tires with its 350cc, twin-cylinder, disc-valve two-stroke.
I don’t believe the manufacturer-claimed 42 horsepower, but then I’ve never ridden one so maybe it does crank out that much. Large displacement (over 125cc) twin-cylinder, disc-valve motors have always been relatively rare in the motorcycle world. That’s probably due to the excessive crankcase width mandated by two carburetors sticking out past the ends of the crankshaft-mounted, induction timing discs. Crankcase width aside and freed from the symmetrical intake timing of a piston-port engine, a disc valver usually makes more and better power (I’ve been told).
The Avenger, along with its less-attractive, low-pipe sister was also a pioneer in electronic ignition. It was a great system when it worked, but 50-years-on may not be so hot. The addition of oil injection made the Avenger about as maintenance-free as a 1970’s bike could get. The package as a whole looks 50 years ahead of the British and American offerings from the same era.
Prices on A7’s haven’t reached silly RD350 heights yet. The bike in these photos that I stole from Smart Cycle Guide is listed at $3600, the high end of the range. Here’s the link: www.smartcycleguide/L49224558. If you spend a few minutes you can find clean, running examples for $1500 on the Internet.
For me, the only knock on the A7 is that it may be too well made. I’m at the stage in my life where I don’t need a reliable motorcycle. New bikes are darn near perfect and perfection is boring. I search for the ever-elusive soul ride: Motorcycles that drip. The best motorcycles are the ones that leave you stranded; they turn any ride into a grand adventure. Besides, quirky flaws and secret handshakes appeal to my need to be special.
The thing with dreams is that you don’t want to over-analyze them. I can’t say why I like the A7 so much. I’ve never seen one running. I guess it’s the optimism of the design. The A7 is from an era when anything was possible and the future was a burning arrow pointing straight into the sky. If I ever hit the lottery I’ll have one, along with a bunch of other motorcycles to be discussed later here on the ExNotes blog.
Check out our other Dream Bikes!
Our good buddy Dan from Colorado (the other Dan from Colorado; we know two of them) sent an email to me last night with a link to a very cool blog (the Maple Fiesta) about five guys who all bought new TT250s when they were first offered by CSC. They had a plan…they all bought the bikes to ride the Continental Divide Trail from Mexico to Canada.
Yeah, they had a few problems, but that’s what adventure riding is all about. They fixed the problems and trucked on, and they all made it. It’s a hell of story and it’s worth a read!