Motorcycles, Scooters, Guns, Adventures, Opinions, and More
One of the coolest parts of visiting Tinfiny Ranch was seeing Joe Gresh’s motorcycles. He sure has interesting toys and great project work lined up. My favorites are his 360 Yamaha and the Z900 Kawi. Joe tells the story better than I can, so here you go…
Wow, we are enjoying our travels here in the Land of Enchantment. Every where we’ve been, the roads have been awesome and the photo ops have been amazing.
Yesterday we were up near the Colorado border in the little town of Aztec, New Mexico, and we came across a National Park Service Native American ruins site. I never heard of Aztec, I certainly never heard of the ruins there, and the roads were amazing. We stopped for a few photos, and then it was on to Colorado.
Mesa Verde is coming up next, but that’s a topic for another blog.
More cool stuff…it seems my friend Dan the K is planning a trip to the northwest territories on his 250cc RX3, I invited myself along, and Dan told me that’s great. It looks like Gresh may ride with us for at least part of the run, too. All adventure motorcycle tours are great; I believe the ones on 250cc bikes are even more so. We’ll include you in the planning for this ride, and you’ll be able to read all about it on the ExhaustNotes.us blog.
Stay tuned!
Tinfiny Acres came completely furnished with a junkyard. There were motorhomes, cars, boats and motorcycles lying about the place, all in a shocked state of disbelief. When the previous owner died it was like a plug had been pulled, freezing the many projects in situ. I’ve been cleaning up for a few years now yet still the twisted piles of scrap metal and softly rotting sheets of oriented strand board found on Tinfiny’s extensive grounds yield surprise and enchantment.
I was working on a two-Harbor-Freight-trailer-load of broken fiberglass garage doors that had been squatted by a company of freeloading pack rats when I first uncovered the Merry Tiller. Previously, I had seen parts of the thing, the handlebars, maybe a transport wheel and had caught a flash of chrome between the thicket of brush that had found much success around this particular pile of trash. But now the full tiller was exposed to daylight.
And what a tiller it was. The first thing I thought was, “That’s a nice chaincase.” Long and thin with an oil filler hole two-thirds the way up the case there was no comparison to the clunky, surface-floating drives found on lesser tillers. No, this chaincase was made to knife through plowed earth like a long board skeg grooving down a mountainous wave. This chaincase has soul, my brothers.
The Merry Tiller is configured engine-over which places the fulcrum directly over the digging tines. This set up allows minor weight shifts at the controls to precisely control forward motion. Sporting a 5-horsepower Briggs & Stratton powerplant this tiller should be able to plow granite, slowed only by the drag bar’s deep bite into the soil.
The engine is a real Briggs & Stratton, the one with the straight carburetor and the diaphragm, crankcase-pressure-operated mini-dip tank inside the gas tank. On the left side is a huge reduction pulley and belt-tension clutch assembly. The frame consists of two heavy angle iron sections bolted together at fortuitous locations.
Having said the above, I’ve never actually started the Merry Tiller. I’ve got a bit more debris to move in order to wheel the tiller out into the open The thing is a classic and might be worth more money in its barn-find trash pile. Maybe I could hire a few archeologists to remove the ground surrounding the Merry Tiller and ship it complete to the new owner.
Who am I kidding? Unconsciously I have shouldered Tinfiny Ranch’s legacy to the world. His projects have become intermixed with my projects. I can’t tell which project belongs to whom. I’ll never sell the Merry Tiller. It’s like a vintage Barbie doll in her original, unmolested packaging, except this one is gas-powered.
This is the stuff of dreams, and it would make for a great project….
It’s one of many treasures in the Land of Enchantment. Gresh certainly has a lot of cool toys!
We made it to the Tinfiny Ranch today, where Sue and I had a great visit with world-famous motojournalist Joe Gresh…
The China ride we referred to in the above video was a hoot. Here’s Joe’s vide0 on it…
Good times. I love road trips. More to come.
This is an interesting thing to do…a comparison of two electric motorcycles, the Zero SR and the CSC City Slicker. Some of you might think I’m nuts for even attempting it. After all, the Zero costs $16,990, and the Slicker is $2,495. And that’s before you put all of the fees, taxes, and other stuff on either bike. You might predict I’m going to say one is overpriced and the other is cheap Chinese junk, but I’m not. These motorcycles are different tools intended to meet different needs for different riders. The good news is they’re both fun. A lot of fun, actually.
You might ask: Why just these two motorcycles? Aren’t there other e-bikes out there?
Well, yes and no. But that’s a subject for another blog and I’ll come back to that question later. I included only the City Slicker and the Zero because I had access to both. I have a relationship with CSC (I used to write the CSC blog and I’ve literally been all over the world on their bikes) and my good friend Art Guilfoil owns a Zero dealership (Douglas Motorcycles, in San Bernardino).
Zero has been around for a few years, and the SR is one of their latest models. It’s a refined design, and it is the state of the art in electric motorcycles. To cut to the chase, I was impressed (more on that in a bit).
The CSC City Slicker is new. I first rode one in China during a visit to Zongshen, and I recommended to CSC that they bring the City Slicker to North America. It’s working well; the City Slicker has received tremendous press here in the US and CSC sales of this new electric motorcycle are brisk.
I’m going to compare Slick and Zero from performance, price, and product perspectives. There’s too much going on to cover it all these topics in a single blog entry, so this comparison will be presented in several blogs. This first one is on two aspects of performance: Acceleration and top speed. There are other performance parameters, including range, recharge time, braking, and handling. I’ll cover those in a future blogs.
Acceleration
For starters, if you’re looking for 0-60 or ¼-mile times, read no further. I didn’t do any of that. The City Slicker won’t go 60 mph, and I didn’t take either bike to Irwindale. My comments on acceleration are subjective. With that caveat, let’s dive in to this topic.
I rode the Zero at Douglas Motorcycles in San Bernardino and I was impressed. I like it when a motorcycle accelerates so hard it scares the hell out of me, and the Zero did that. I’ve owned fast bikes before (a Suzuki TL1000S, and a Triumph Daytona and a Speed Triple). Those bikes had a direct connection from their throttles to the gland that releases adrenalin. The Zero, however, is in another league altogether. In the Sport Mode, the SR has a punch in the pants that is downright terrifying. Bottom line: I thought that was very cool. I liked it. A lot.
The City Slicker? The first time you ride one, it has a tendency to feel like it’s going to squirt out from under you, but you get used to it quickly. That’s what happened to me in China. Slick’s acceleration is more manageable. Slick had no problem keeping up with city traffic when the light turned green. It was a little weird accelerating in total silence. I could hear every sound from the cars and other bikes around me. It was different.
They tell me the torque is instantaneous off zero rpm with electric bikes. What that translates into is a punch the instant you twist the throttle. On the City Slicker, it’s there, but it’s not intimidating. It’s maybe a notch into the “wow” range the first time you ride the bike, and then it just becomes part of the experience. On the Zero, it’s simultaneously awesome, exciting, and terrifying. Folks, the Zero is one hard-accelerating motorcycle.
I mentioned the Sport mode on the Zero, so let me get into that now. Both bikes have rider-selectable operating modes. I’m an older guy and I always thought the idea of a “mode” was a silly thing when it first appeared on internal combustion bikes. In fact, a kid at one of the motorcycle shows once visited the CSC booth after spending time with the Ducati people and he wanted to know how many modes the CSC 250cc bikes had. At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about, and then I got it.
“Two,” I said. “On, and Off.”
That was then, and this is now. On electric bikes, these modes are good ideas. You need them to maximize range (the subject of a future blog), and in the case of the Zero, to keep the bike from getting away from you.
Zero has three modes: Eco, Sport, and Custom. The Eco mode dials down the bike’s acceleration and maximizes range. The Custom mode lets you use your smartphone to manage the bike’s power output, and you can dial in whatever you want between the bike’s Eco and Sport settings. The Sport mode is for balls out, no holds barred, raw power. It’s wicked.
Zero advertises that their bike will out-accelerate a Porsche 911. I didn’t have a chance to check that out, but I’ll take their word for it. I tried the Sport mode when I rode the Zero, and it is seriously fast. I was scared I would lose control of the rear wheel (the Zero has ABS but not traction control; they tell me that may change next year). Not much scares me; accelerating on a Zero in the Sport mode did. I like being scared. You probably will, too.
The City Slicker has two modes: Eco and Power. The Eco mode limits the bike’s top end to 36 mph, and it gives the bike a longer range. The Power mode removes the output limit, and lets the bike accelerate up to an indicated 46-47 mph. What’s cool is you can switch between modes on the move. If you’re rolling along at 35 mph in the Eco mode and you flip the right handlebar switch to the Power mode, it’s like kicking in the afterburners. You get an immediate burst of acceleration up to a new top speed of 46.6 mph. It’s cool. It’s not exhilarating or frightening like the Zero, but it’s still cool.
I can tell you that I spent a lot of time riding the City Slicker around town, in the Eco mode, and I never felt like I needed more acceleration or top end. Even with the Eco mode’s 36-mph limit, I had enough for mixing it up in town. And I still had Slick’s Power mode afterburners in reserve.
Top Speed
Zero states that their SR’s top speed is just north of 100 mph (they also say that top speed is a function of riding style and motorcycle configuration, which I took as hedging their bets a little). I didn’t attempt to run the Zero to its top speed; all of my riding on that bike was in urban San Bernardino. I can tell you this: The Zero is one seriously fast motorcycle, and if they say it will do 102 mph, I have no reason to doubt that number.
CSC says the City Slicker will hit 46.6 mph. It will, but it’s an indicated 46-47 mph on the bike’s digital dash, and my testing shows that the speedo is about 10% optimistic. That means the City Slicker’s real top speed is more like 42-43 mph.
The bottom line: From the perspectives of top speed and acceleration, the Zero is the clear winner. The real question, though, is this: Do you need or want that much top end?
You and I already know the answer to the “want” part of the question, so let’s turn to the “need.” Hey, what you think you need is your call. The City Slicker wasn’t engineered to be a drag racer, nor was it designed to run on the freeways. The City Slicker, as the name states, is an urban commuter. The Zero can run on the freeways, the City Slicker cannot. The Zero is faster. If you’re looking to argue that point, you need to look elsewhere.
But the performance the Zero delivers comes with a price. Let me go back to what I mentioned at the start of this blog. The Zero costs $16,990 plus fees and the City Slicker costs $2495 plus fees (and Slick’s fees will be a lot less than the Zero’s). Stated differently, you could buy seven or eight City Slickers for the cost of one Zero. Yeah, the Zero is faster. But wow, the price differential…
And don’t delude yourself into thinking you can see the price differential in the build quality of the two bikes. They are both well made. Fit and finish on both bikes is world class. If you want to argue that the City Slicker is a cheap Chinese piece of junk, you have my permission to demonstrate your ignorance on an Internet forum or in the Disqus comments on any of the many articles recently written on the City Slicker. There are a lot of stupid and uninhibited people posting nonsense on the Internet, and if you want to join them, go for it. But you’d be dead wrong.
What would I buy? It depends on what I was trying to do, and how much money I wanted to spend. If I wanted to be green and I had a commute at city speeds, I’d be all over the City Slicker. If I wanted a cool bike to add to my collection and I didn’t need it to ride cross country, score one for the City Slicker. If I wanted a bike that could run with IC bikes (for shorter distances, anyway; neither of these bikes are all day rides), I’d go for the Zero. But I’d only do that if I had $20K laying around I didn’t need (that’s about what the Zero’s purchase price would be after tax, licensing, registration, and all the rest that goes with buying a bike). The bottom line here? It’s your money and your call. In my opinion, both bikes are a lot of fun. You wouldn’t be making a mistake with either one.
But that price difference…
There’s a third streetable electric motorcycle out there, and it’s the Alta. My good buddy Danny, with whom I’ve ridden Baja several times (both of us own CSC RX3 and TT250 motorcycles), recently sent this note to me after he read the ExhaustNotes blogs about the City Slicker and Zero motorcycles…
Joe,
Interesting timing; I took this photo yesterday to send to you, taken before I suited up. This is what I rode:
And what a ride. Mode one would smoke my RX3, and probably the Guzzi. Mode two – it was fun. Mode three – OMG, hold on tight. I didn’t try mode four, two was enough.
I was impressed with the performance. The bike itself was not my type. I have been following Red Shift since their early days. Impressive design and engineering.
Dan
Thanks for the photo and the report, Dan. I’ve got to get a ride on an Alta, too. I know what you mean about the acceleration; it was the same thing I experienced on the Zero. It’s almost too much, although I never thought I would ever say that about any motorcycle.
Folks, I’m headed to Tinfiny Ranch later this morning. Watch for the report!
It was another broiler-hot day out of Ajo this morning, but it was an easy run…Arizona 85 south to Arizona 86, stay on 86 for about 100 miles, and a right turn on Arizona 386 for the twisty 14-mile climb up to Kitt Peak National Observatory. The La Luz saga continues. Gobi and me, we got some blogging to do. Maybe a video or two. We’ll see. So will you. And for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, you’ll find out soon enough.
The topic du jour: Kitt Peak National Observatory, a gem of a destination and a seriously cool place. And, it’s a great ride to get there.
Kitt Peak is up on a ridgeline at roughly 6700 feet, about 50 miles southwest of Tucson. On our ride there today, the skies were clear and the visibility was amazing. Once again, it’s best left to the photos to do the talking…
It’s Tucson tonight, and we should make Las Cruces by nightfall tomorrow. I love these road trips. The ride today was awesome, but hey, they all are.
I’m gathering my thoughts on the Zero electric motorcycle. It was a fun day and a fun ride, that day last week at Art’s Douglas Motorcycles dealership. It’s way different than any motorcycle I ever rode, and it’s also way different than CSC’s City Slicker. They’re both good bikes, I loved riding both, and they both have their strengths and weaknesses. The differences are driven by what each company designed their bike to do. Different missions, like we used to say in the Army.
Watch for the Slick vs. Zero blog. It’s coming. I’ve been thinking deep thoughts about both bikes, and sometimes when I think really deep thoughts on any topic, I can’t think for days afterward. I’m in that mode now, so I’m simply enjoying the trek to Tinfiny. La Luz, Gobi, Tinfiny…I know it’s confusing and I’ll explain what it all means soon enough.
Stay tuned!
You ask Why. I ask Why not?
Whoa, it’s toasty…as in 112 degrees Fahrenheit. The folks out here are complaining about the humidity, but it feels dry as a bone to me. Certainly less humidity than we’re getting in So Cal, and way, way less than in other parts of the US. The drill today was Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Ajo, and Why, Arizona (Ajo means garlic in Spanish, in case you were wondering, but I didn’t see a single one).
We were right on the border in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and we opted for the 21-mile dirt road loop into the Ajo Mountains.
After the ride through Organ Pipe, we settled into Ajo for the evening. It’s a cool place, even though it’s still 109 outside.
And that’s it for tonight. I noticed there were a couple of questions and comments on the ebikes (thanks very much for posting those). I’ll do my best to get answers for you.
I had a good look at a Zero motorcycle last week at my good buddy Art’s dealership, Douglas Motorcycles in San Bernardino, California. There’s more info coming, folks, but check out this cool photo of yours truly on an arm-stretching Zero…
My wife took that shot, and I processed it in Photoshop to convert the background to black and white. I like it. And I liked the Zero. It was scary fast. But that’s a story for a future blog. Keep an eye on the ExhaustNotes blog, because that story is coming!