Author: Joe Gresh

ExhaustNotes Space Plane Review: Richard Branson’s Unity

About a mile west of New Mexico’s Spaceport is a newly paved road, A013. The road runs south from Armendaris Ranch in Engle to Interstate 25. A013 is about 40 miles long and while the paving is sort of new the road roughly follows The Camino Real, a route from Old Mexico to Santa Fe that has been in use since 1598. There are marked areas where you can hike along the very same ancient road the Spaniards retreated back to Mexico on during the Pueblo Revolt. A013 does not sound nearly as cool as The Camino Real. At 420 years old, The Royal Road deserves something better than A013.

Railroad tracks closely parallel the west side of A013 and in the narrow area between the railroad tracks and the highway hundreds of cars and people have gathered near the blocked entrance that leads to Spaceport. We’re all here to watch the very first space tourism rocket blast into the sky and it’s as close as we can get to the action. Who is the first space tourist on Virgin Galactic? Astronaut 001, Richard Branson.

Spaceport from our vantage point between the railroad tracks and barbed wire. Normally you can get much closer.

In a huge public relations mix up, none of the staff at ExhaustNotes were invited along for the ride into space. It’s like Virgin Galactic has been talking with Harley-Davidson or something. No matter, you know how we operate here at ExhaustNotes: We review anything, even things we know nothing about. There were plenty of other celebrity types in attendance like Elon Musk. Also some music industry, TV and TicToc stars I have never heard of. Lots of vindicated-feeling bigwigs from New Mexico’s government were in attendance as Spaceport has been a political football since Day One.

CT and I situated our Space Watch Compound along the fence line with our cooler full of iced tea and La Croix fizzy drinks, folding chairs, hats and a large, porous ground cloth. We were the most organized people in the scrum. The sky was early-morning New Mexican: A pale blue color that washes away into the bright sun leaving you hopelessly in love with the place. Last night a storm came through the area making everything seem to sparkle. Temperature in the Chihuahuan Desert was in the low 80s and it was still only 7:00 am.

We had fairly good cell phone coverage so CT pulled up the live feed. There were several sources all seeming to use the same video. Oddly, Steven Colbert hosted the launch coverage. I like Colbert okay but I wouldn’t have used him in this situation. It kind of made the event more like a joke instead of the historic, high technology, dangerous business that it actually is. The TicToc chick surprised me in that she did a pretty good job with the fluff pieces. Hell, what am I saying, all of it was fluff pieces.

The nearly two-generation gap between Musk and Branson was obvious when it came to social media. Even with all the advancements in video and audio technology Branson’s feed was poorly done. The video and audio looked pretty bad when you’re used to counting the screw heads holding the display panels to the command module in a SpaceX launch. Most of the stuff was 2 to 3 minutes delayed and unwatchable. The moon landing in 1969 had clearer shots and audio. I swear, my iPhone would have done better. If I had known it was going to be so bad I would have handed my phone to Branson before he went up. Maybe the recorded stuff came out better.

Heavy lifting appears to flex Eve’s wings on the way up.

None of that mattered once Eve lifted off the runway with Unity strapped firmly between its dual fuselages. A loud roar of cheers went up from all of us along the fence line. The big dually flew northwest towards Albuquerque and climbed to 45,000 feet. We could see the exact moment the Unity dropped and lit off its rocket engine. A white contrail of rocket exhaust went straight up and out of sight. On Virgin’s feed TicToc chick was saying they were going to release Unity in 2 minutes, 30 seconds.

More cheering followed Unity’s escape into space. People were shaking hands and whistling. We were glad the launch went well and nobody was bitching about rich people not using their money to feed the poor. Branson was the first billionaire in space and it had been a 17-year quest for him.

Pretty much nothing happened for a while. We expected the mother ship to come down and land but it stayed aloft. I’m guessing with only one runway at Spaceport you wouldn’t want anything landing until the powerless Unity glided back down to earth. The mother ship can go land somewhere else if need be.

Finally we caught sight of Unity coming home. It flew right over our cheap seats, circled east, then north and came in for a perfect landing, heading 340, Runway 1. The sounds of cars starting and cheering mixed with the dust from exiting spectators. I was thinking where are they going? The mother ship is still up there!

Where is it? I kept asking CT. It’s right there, she told me. I can’t see it. I guess my other eye needs a rebuild now. The mother ship spiraled down using the same counterclockwise pattern Unity used. She flew directly overhead, her barren space-socket exposed.

And then it was over. We looked around. There was only one other car still parked between the fence and the railroad. Billions of dollars and nearly two decades of work by thousands of people were on display today. It all worked perfectly. That stuff is amazing to me. Soon you’ll be able to buy your own ride into space for the price of a couple well-appointed diesel pickup trucks. $250,000 is not that much money nowadays.

Branson’s space plane may not go as high as the Space Station but I bet it uses 10% of the fuel a normal rocket launch does. Human beings are pretty impressive when they stop being jerks. Many people get angry at rich people for not saving the world with their money and then when a rich guy tries, like Gates, we suspect them of implanting tracking chips for a reason no one sane can articulate. The thing is, we are so clueless, so in the dark, we can’t guess the real world innovations that will come with space travel.

A man and his dog started packing up. He had one of those 10-foot sunshades. I asked him if he needed a hand folding it up. He said no that it was easy to do. The space show was over. The dust from all the spectator cars settled back to the Chihuahuan Desert. A guy named Kamaz, I think after the Russian Truck company, was giving a concert over at Spaceport for the VIPs.  Maybe you’ll be able to find it on video.

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ExhaustNotes Product Review: Cooper 2 Lightweight Tent

Camping on a motorcycle has never been near the top of my Fun Things To Do list. Like it or not, it seems I end up camping on a motorcycle more than is needed for strong bones and healthy fingernails. Street bike camping is tolerable because you can pile junk sky high but trail riding with a load of camping gear is a chore. Off-road, small lightweight equipment is the way to go. I’ll never admit it but it’s possible to go too small and too lightweight. My tent is an example of going overboard.

I’ve been using an old-style pup tent, like the Boy Scouts use, and when folded correctly the thing is admirably small. The pup tent reduces to the size of a bag of Batdorf & Bronson coffee and weighs next to nothing.

The problem with the pup is the ceiling height and the square footage. There’s no way to sit up in the thing, you have to crawl in and out. Once you’ve stored all your gear inside finding space for you body is a challenge. If you toss and turn throughout the night like I do your arms will be hitting the walls and roof. It’s a tight squeeze.

Unless you buy brand name equipment camping gear is really cheap, like me. I found a larger tent; the Cooper 2 (no relation to the road racing legend) for $28 on Amazon and shipping was included.

The Cooper 2 is easy to set up as it has only two fiberglass poles crossing in the middle. You fit the ends into the corners of the floor and bowing the poles raises the tent. Nearly 50-inches high at the center and with 49 square feet of floor space the Cooper 2 was huge. I could stuff all my gear inside and still have room for my sleeping bag. I could easily change into my Space Patrol pajamas with the privacy those pajamas demand. You know how it is.

The Cooper 2 is vented at the top, which kept condensation to a minimum. I didn’t get to test it in the rain but I suppose it will do as well as any other 28-dollar tent. I set up my sleeping bag towards the back of the tent and had plenty of room to throw elbows and kick out from under the covers. It was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a tent. Which is to say I woke up cotton-mouthed, fingers bleeding and a dead raccoon next to me.

All that luxury comes at a price, however. Folded up, the Cooper 2 is nearly twice as large as the pup tent and weighs 4 pounds 9 ounces compared to the pup’s 3 pounds 4 ounces. Still, the extra tonnage is worth it to me. I’ll just have to get rid of some other gear to compensate for the Cooper 2 tent, like maybe the handlebars or the front wheel of the Husqvarna.

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ExNotes Medical Review: Southwestern Eye Center Cataract Surgery Part 2

I’m typing this while looking through a brand new lens on my left eye. The result of my cataract surgery was a dramatic improvement but not the eagle-eyed sharpness I was hoping for. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After my first office visit where all manner of tests were performed and measurements taken I was sent home with several days worth of drops in a small vial. The drops were a cocktail of three drugs designed to get my eye ready for the trauma it would soon be subjected to during surgery. I put the drops in four times a day for three days and stopped putting them in on the day of surgery.

I get panicked over any kind of medical procedure; even drawing blood from my arm may see me faint to the floor in a cold sweat. The thought of someone cutting into my eye while I was awake was freaking me right out. Everyone kept telling me it would be no problem. Sure, no problem for them, I muttered to myself.

After the routine check in stuff the admitting nurse asked me which eye they were doing. I told her the left one and she put an X over the left eye with a marker and strapped a fluorescent green plastic bracelet on my left wrist. Then I walked into the pre-operation room.

The pre-op room was about 50 feet wide by 30 feet deep and beds were arraigned along the walls. Between the beds were metal racks with curtains that when closed allowed each bed to be sort of private. A jovial 80-something geezer that used a walker and an oxygen tank occupied the bed next to me. I could hear him cracking jokes with the nurses and generally being the life of the pre-op party. I sat in my bed thinking, “Don’t freak out…don’t freak out…don’t freak out.” Of course that kind of thinking just makes you freak out.

The anesthesiologist stopped by and I told him that I was going to have a hard time being awake for the surgery. Don’t worry, he said, I’ll be there the whole time, just put this pill under your tongue, don’t swallow it. The pill tasted horrible, like health food or something. A nurse kept stopping by and putting in eye drops. She asked me which eye they were doing and I told her the left one. This went on for several sessions of drops.

I wasn’t feeling any effect from the pill. I asked the nurse if it was supposed to get me high and that I didn’t feel anything. She said that it was just to relax me and that I wouldn’t get high from it. In my mind this did not bode well. I was expecting to get wiped out and not remember a thing. The damn pill was taking forever to melt. My mouth had a bitter taste. I wanted water but could not have any since two hours before the surgery.

My surgeon stopped by and told me everything was going to be fine and did I prefer dirty jokes or clean jokes while he was working on the eye. I asked for dirty jokes but not too funny as I didn’t want to move my head and cause problems. The nurse piped in and said I needn’t worry about the jokes being too funny. I found that funny.

The nurse, surgeon and anesthesiologist wheeled me into the operating room and it seemed like everything got bright and loud in that instant. My head was angled left and clamped between two bolsters. The surgeon asked me which eye he was doing and I told him the left eye. “This will only take about 8 minutes,” he said.

A rubbery-plastic shield with a sticky back was placed over my left eye and once secured the nurse peeled the center out exposing my eye. Some kind of clamping apparatus was attached to my upper and lower eyelid making blinking impossible.

It was hard to see what was going on because the room was so bright. There were two bright, square-shaped red lights side by side. Underneath the red lights was a single bright white light. These three lights were in the upper left hand side of my vision but the background was all dazzling light.

The surgeon was asking for this tool or that tool and I asked him when did I get the dirty jokes. He said that they were too dirty for public consumption and that I’d have to call him later for the joke. I could feel him tugging at the eye and at one point a crazed clear sheet slid away to my left, like a thin layer of dirty ice moving across a puddle of water. I assumed that was the cataract being removed. I thought it was strange that all this was going on and I wasn’t freaking out. I didn’t seem to care at all.  If they removed my leg and I would have calmly watched them do it.

Besides the cataract I had cornea Map-Dystrophy and floaters. My left eye was in pretty bad shape, almost useless really. There were strands from the pupil attached to the lens (or something) and the surgeon wanted a pupil expander tool. The nurse went looking for one and I chatted with the surgeon while we waited. They were taking too long so the surgeon used some other tool and managed to get the new lens in and everything buttoned up. It seemed like forever but the total time I spent in the operating room was 10 minutes.

The recovery area was in the same room as the pre-op beds except no curtains. The surgeon came by and asked how I felt and explained that my pupil wasn’t working quite right. I knew my pupil was messed up from a severe bout of conjunctivitis 40 years ago. It never expanded or contracted very well afterwards. Recovery only lasted 10 minutes and the nurse had me on my feet walking out the door. I was a little tipsy but managed to get in CT’s Jeep for the ride home.

The next day we had a follow up visit at the location where the first tests were done. The doctor examining my eye sad there were some loose strands floating around and that my eye was slightly swollen under the lens. My eye test went from 20-200 to 20-60, not what I had hoped for but a huge improvement over the old, yellowed smudge-vision I had before. When I went in the first day I couldn’t see the first big E on the chart and now I could see down to line 6. Before, reading my phone required the screen to be inches away, I can read the phone a foot away now.

The pressure in my eye had gone up so he gave me some drops for that and the pressure went back down in a few minutes. The doctor said my vision might improve as the eye healed but it’s been a few days and it looks about the same so I’ll probably still need glasses. I’ll withhold judgment on the final outcome as I’m still squirting medications in my eye four times a day.

Southwestern Eye Center’s customer service was stellar throughout this procedure. As far as my vision, every eye is different. My result may be as good as it can be considering the beat up eye they started with. Things seem a lot cleaner with the new lens. I drove my car with out glasses the other day and I could see pretty well. In a month or so when my eye has settled down I’ll get a new prescription and new glasses.

I think I’ll leave the right cataract alone for a year or maybe forever. It’s not nearly as bad as the left one. I sure could use some more of those relaxing pills though. I could be brave, like a hero or something.

Part I of the cataract story is here.

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ExNotes Medical Review: Southwestern Eye Center’s Cataract Surgery

I’ll be blunt about it: the staff here at ExhaustNotes is getting a bit long in the tooth. Oh, we still ride motorcycles and punch holes in paper. We still pour concrete like we pour gin & tonics but we are falling apart gracefully. Luckily, decrepit old men are perfectly matched to the motorcycle consumer demographic.

My eyes have never been all that good and the last ten or so years have seen (or more accurately, not seen) degradation in my left eye. What the hell, we have two eyes, right? I adapted by curtailing my night driving and learned to accept a less precise representation of the world around me. I kind of knew what everything looked like anyway so my mind could fill in the details.

Time marched on and I could no longer use corrective lenses on the left eye due to the blurring: The eye wasn’t out of focus it was clouded. Things look yellower in the left eye compared to the right. It’s not a big deal. I can see fairly well in the daytime. The left eye still contributed to stereovision. Driving in the daytime is pretty easy. I can read signs and move about well.

Due to light refraction through the cataract driving at night is a harrowing experience with each point of light replicated five times. One oncoming motorcycle looks like a ring of five oncoming motorcycles and as the gang gets closer the lights combine into one. You can imagine the scene at a busy intersection with multiple lanes and traffic signals. A double yellow line looks like four yellow lines that merge in front of the bike. It’s more than I care to deal with.

But I like riding at night. I finally decided to do something about the problem last year but then Covid hit and everything was put on hold. Things are getting better covid-wise so CT decided we need to move on the cataract before I start running into walls while carrying scissors.

Southwestern Eye Clinic is located in Las Cruces, New Mexico and is a hotbed of retirees. The oldsters come for the sunshine and mild winters. The whole damn town is set up for end care, if you get my drift, so cataract surgery is routine here. At least as routine as any surgery can be.

The whole thing is so fast! I went in for an exam and found out the right eye has a smaller cataract also. The team at Southwestern ran a battery of tests (12-volt, deep cycle) and electronically measured my eyeball for the lens needed. I had the option of seeing far or up close and one other choice: A multi focus Panoptix lens that supposedly works like bifocals.

You know how I feel about new technology so the bifocal was out. You only get one chance at this and I didn’t want an eye that was constantly messing with my head. I’ve always been nearsighted so I opted for distance vision. My right eye has actually gotten better at distance over the years so I figured two distance eyes would match up better. I’ll probably still need glasses anyway. It’s ok, I’ve worn them since first grade.

The next step is surgery. I have some eye drops I’m supposed to start putting in four days before the operation. The surgery itself is out patient. You come and go the same day. After that I go back the next day to have the job checked over and then again a week later. It’s all so amazing and not that much more than an expensive pair of glasses.

I’ll file an ExhaustNotes follow up report after the surgery is completed and my eye has had time to heal. One downside is I have to rest for a while afterwards. I have a hard time resting. That means no lifting bags of concrete until the doctor gives the eye an all clear.

More Joe Gresh?  Or more Joe Berk?

Pan America Adventure Motorcycle: The World’s First No-Compromise Harley-Davidson

What does that even mean, no compromise?

Hear me out. Like you I’ve read all the reviews on Harley’s new Pan America Adventure-Glide and they have been uniformly positive. Surprising is the word most frequently used by the tattered remnants of the moto-press when describing the Pan America. And it is surprising.

I’m not likely to ever test ride a Pan America. I offer Harley-Davidson nothing but suffering and heartache. Why would Harley loan me a bike in a category I pretty much despise? I can’t stand big Adventure bikes. I don’t like them one little bit. I think they are dangerous off road. Anyone who sends me one to test ride is a fool and Harley-Davidson’s marketing department is not populated by fools. Luckily I don’t need to ride one because Kevin Duke, the hardest working man in motorcycle journalism, says the Pan America is a good bike and that’s all you really need to know.

The no compromise hook in this story is the most impressive part of the new Pan America. It’s the first Harley (since the late 1960s) that competes head to head with the best the world has to offer and does it at a competitive price. In all areas the new bike is acceptable, meets expectations and is even, dare I say, good.

Most all the high-end, heavy, dangerously inadequate offroad Adventure bikes clock in at around 20,000 US dollars retail and they all weigh nearly the same ground-crushing 600 pounds. It must be a class requirement. Check out the manufacturer-provided spec sheets on a GS BMW, Ducati Multi Service, and KTM Breakdown. All of the numbers are within spitting distance of each other.

And that’s the amazing part. Harley-frigging-Davidson has made a competent motorcycle for the same price as everyone else. There’s no brand penalty. Harley-Davidson has made a motorcycle that the owner isn’t required to look through leather-fringed, nostalgia-tinted lenses to justify. No more having to tell non-Harley riders that they don’t get it when their questions turn pointed. Like all cults, the Harley cult requires actively looking the other way when hard facts and performance figures per dollar are bandied about.

With the Pan America there’s no need to believe in the Harley mystique. There’s no need to defend anemic performance by waving an American flag. The Pan America stands on its own merits as a motorcycle, nothing more. Is it as good as the other big Adventure bikes? I can’t say but the fact that it’s spoken of in the same breath and held up in comparison to the world’s best Adventure bikes is a stunning turnaround for a company that seemed hopelessly stuck in neutral by its mad marketing genius.

As much as I hate big Adventure bikes, I love the new Harley-Davidson Pan America.

I hope it’s a harbinger of change. I hope it succeeds beyond Harley’s wildest dreams and ushers in a new era of 150-horsepower Sportsters that handle, stop and are as fast as any other guy’s bikes. The late 1960s was the last time Sportsters were hot. That’s a long, long time to rest on your laurels. Let’s hope the Pan American gives stodgy old Harley-Davidson new life and a desire to be measured against the very best. Listen, if there’s any way you can afford to go out and buy one, go out and buy one. Tell Harley I sent you. Maybe they’ll even let me take one for a ride.

Berk, on right, telling Gresh to go back to Starbucks and fetch a Pumpkin Spice Latte for him.

ExNotes Product Test: TR Industrial Demolition Hammer

Whenever I’m not riding motorcycles I like to break things into smaller pieces. It makes life just that bit less tiresome and one of the best ways to break stuff is with a jackhammer. A real jackhammer weighs 90 pounds and is pneumatic, also called air-operated. I used to run one when I worked in construction. A 90-pound hammer is a wonderful tool, and the weight is not a burden since you don’t really lift the thing often. I’ve found laying the hammer on your leg and pivoting the 90 to relocate the chisel is easiest. It seems like the heavier a hammer is the less vibration is transmitted to you hands. Less vibration means fewer blisters and less hand-bleeding. Properly handled you can run a 90-pound machine all day long as your pants slowly become covered in compressor oil blown from the hammer’s exhaust port.

As fine a proposition as a 90-pound hammer is, for most homeowners the large, engine-driven compressor required to supply enough air is a deal killer. For more refined destruction and with a nod to apartment dwellers look to the many 35-pound electric jackhammers sold everywhere.

I bought this TR Industrial 35-pound jackhammer several years ago for a concrete spalling repair job. The job required a lot of work on a scaffold so I didn’t want a big, heavy hammer to lift. The TR worked great and when the job was done I put it away in the included storage case.

Fast-forward three house moves and I had forgotten all about the TR hammer. It wasn’t until I was almost finished with the shed footing project that I remembered the thing and dragged it out to break up the hard, rocky ground the shed sits on. What an improvement over the pickaxe! The TR cut my digging time and was less tiring to use. It felt like I was cheating.

The TR jackhammer came with two tool bits: a flat chisel and a pointed bit. The flat chisel is great for breaking rocks and concrete. Remember, don’t start in the middle, you have to work from the edge when breaking concrete so that the broken piece has somewhere to go. If you’ve used a 90-pound air hammer don’t expect the blows from an electric 35-pounder to have the same effect. Everything will take longer.

I haven’t used this point bit yet but then I haven’t done everything yet either. It may come in handy on extra hard or thick concrete. Maybe I’ll split logs with it.

I recently bought a clay spade for the TR hammer and it is perfect for the ground conditions at Tinfiny Ranch. You wouldn’t use a clay spade on concrete but for rocky soil it plows right through. When lightly excavating an area to be formed, say you need to remove 2 inches of fill; the wide paddle makes it easy to eyeball grade and loosen just the top layer while not unduly disturbing the ground underneath.

Not all hammer bits are the same. The TR takes this hex style but note the impact end is round. Some bits are hex all the way, some are fluted, and little ones have a mushroom shape. Bits for the TR are plentiful and easy to order online.

To change the bit you pull this little spring-loaded widget out and rotate it.  Insert the bit with the cutaway facing the widget and reverse the operation. Bit changing takes seconds and the bits stay put.

All jackhammers are oily but the electric ones are less so. There is an oil reservoir built into the TR hammer. Regular motor oil is recommended. To fill the hammer you unscrew the sight glass and dump whatever slippery stuff you have inside. If you ran the hammer for 8 hours you might need to refill the reservoir but for my sporadic use a fill lasts months. Note that oil will leak out of the machine even if you’re not using it, so plan accordingly.

One of the things I don’t like on the TR jackhammer is the side handle. It looks flimsy as hell and no amount of tightening will keep it in place. I thought about wrapping duct tape around the hammer to make the handle fit tighter but decided the tape would just wear off in a few minutes. Since you don’t really push on the hammer I leave the thing as-is with the floppy handle. The floppy handle is convenient in tight quarters, swapping sides is easy.

The TR hammer is probably cloned from a well-known brand and there are quite a few hammers that look exactly like the TR on eBay and Amazon. The design seems to be open source now and I can’t comment on the quality of those other clones. I will say that which factory a tool or motorcycle engine comes from is important. There’s a lot of variation in things that look the same.

I give the TR Industrial version high marks and can recommend it if you like to break things. My hammer is an older version no longer produced but the one in the link is an updated machine with better electrical isolation for the operator. This might be important if you work in wet areas.

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ExNotes Product Test: Ocoopa 10,000 mah Hand Warmer

Winter’s bony fingers have released their icy grip so now is not the time to be testing a hand warmer. But we don’t follow the rules or the seasons here at ExhaustNotes. We do what we want, see? The Man and his stifling rules don’t apply to cool kids and the ExhaustNotes staff are cool with a bullet. I did test the Ocoopa hand warmer in cooler weather a few months ago so stock up now while the heat is on and Ocoopa has to give the things away.

The Ocoopa hand warmer is a neat little device that replaces those old fashioned lighter-fluid type that if they didn’t set you on fire would kill you with fumes spilling up from your jacket. How it works is unclear but the unit charges from most any USB wall pig and then you select one of three heat settings and the sucker gets hot.

Pop one in your cell phone pocket of your jacket and cold rides become just that bit more toasty. It’s like having a live kitten in your pocket but without the constant need for feeding and potty breaks.

I’ve found the highest and best use for the Ocoopa hand warmer is camping. Last time I slept inside a polyester house in the woods the temperature was in the mid 30’s at night. I fired up the Ocoopa and tucked in my sleeping bag. The thing was on low, I slept like a six-legged baby atop Chernobyl’s concrete sarcophagus. The Ocoopa was still going strong in the morning so I left it on low to see how long the thing would heat.

Turns out the Ocoopa lasts around 12 hours. You really only need the low setting because medium and high are too hot to put near your body. Maybe a couple layers of thermal underwear could work with medium. High must be used for baking.

When it’s not cold outside the Ocoopa will also charge your phone or whatever plugs into a USB and you can recharge the thing from your motorcycle if the bike has a jack, Jack.

I’m not able to tell you about the lifespan of the machine or if it will catch on fire during the night but I will do a follow up report should events demand one. I’ll go ahead and recommend the thing just for keeping me warm in the polyester house.

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Riding With The Carrizozo Mud Chuckers

Sixty-one miles north of my place in La Luz, New Mexico lies the town of Carrizozo. The seat of Lincoln County, Carrizozo’s streets are laid out at an angle to the intersection of Carrizozo’s two main highways, 380 and 54. There are colorful donkey statues stationed around, a junkyard church on the outskirts of town and the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers motorcycle club.

The Mud Chuckers MC, founded by my riding buddy, Mike, is primarily a dirt-based riding club. The area around Carrizozo has hundreds of graded farm roads and tight mountain trails. It’s an ideal spot for racking up miles on the dirt. I recently joined them on one of their frequent moto-camping rides. The Chuckers shun traditional campgrounds preferring instead to camp anywhere they can find a spot with no people around.

Like all the ‘Chuckers rides I’ve been on the pace was downright leisurely with frequent stops to look at old mine sites, hunt for geodes, gold deposits and old metal objects or just sit in the shade to discuss unimportant things. The ‘Chuckers are in no hurry to get anywhere and that suits me just fine.

On this day we rode west to Socorro, NM and took the Escondida Lake exit to the Back Country Byway. The Byway meanders generally east-west then south with the terrain ranging from desert scrub to medium-high trees. At the speed we operate it’s best to look for a campsite early because ‘Chuckers don’t like stress. We checked out several places but nothing looked appealing. There was either no shade or no firewood or a stinky dead cow rotting nearby so we pushed on.

Eddie dropped his KLR 650 in a sand wash and bent his clutch hand so that it didn’t want to work right. He was doing 45mph so the impact, while soft, still hurt. The ‘Chuckers are not spring chickens. In perfect tune we can hardly swing a leg over the motorcycle. Eddie called it a day. Since we never leave a man behind we short cut the Byway and followed him back to his house in Carrizozo where we had begun this adventure.

With Eddie’s DNF, that left me, Dan and Mike still on the lead lap. By now it was getting late so we abandoned our plan to camp on the Back Country Byway and decided the higher mountains behind White Oaks would be the best option. It was late and we still had a 30-mile ride to the forest.

We found a spot with plenty of firewood and soft ground. We managed to get camp set up just before dark, which is always a good idea. Once they find a place to roost the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers really come on the pipe. The fire was roaring, Mike brought along pork chops and a metal grill to cook with. I don’t know where he stores all that junk on his 390 KTM. Sizzling pork chops, boiling coffee, cookies, beef jerky, Wheat Thins: man, things were hopping at camp this evening. The altitude we were camping was around 7000 feet, it got pretty cold, probably in the 30’s but around the fire it was 75 degrees.

Campfire nights last longer than regular ones and I turned in at midnight. Mike and Dan sat up longer. Flickering lights and murmured shadow conversation played across the inside of my tent. I felt safe knowing the bear would go after them before me. The next morning The Mud Chucker’s were in no hurry to leave. We restarted the fire and had coffee with whatever scraps of food we had left over from last night’s feast. The Mud Chuckers always leave their campsites cleaner than they found them and the way they put out a campfire borders on obsessive.

When I got back home it felt like I had been away a month instead of only two days. Camping on a motorcycle seems to distort time and distance. Changing your observation point really does have a profound effect.

Mike and Eddie want to start a motorcycle tour business. Their plan is to buy a few TW200 Yamahas and run all inclusive, guided camping tours around New Mexico. It sounds like a pain in the butt to me. Why ruin a nice motorcycle ride with business?

I’ll let you know if the tour company idea works out. Maybe a full ExhaustNotes.us tour review or something. Get the ‘Chuckers to kick in a free tour as an ExhaustNotes subscriber gimmick?

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Zed Plays Dead: 1975 Kawasaki Z1 Woes

To really understand the cloud of confusion surrounding my brain you’ll have to go back to the very beginning. Back when Zed was left for dead. We don’t have time for that now so I’ll cut to the chase: Zed ran fine for 3000 miles and then the carbs started puking gas from the overflow tubes. The bike was running rich and fluffy as hell. Idle was hit and miss.

My natural assumption was that the old float needles had worn a groove into the sealing surface preventing the cone-shaped needle tip from seating. I purchased a cheap but shoddy set of needles/seats on eBay and with my deft touch soon had them fitted into Zed’s 4 carburetors.

And one of the carbs still puked fuel. If you’ve followed this saga online you’ll know that the brass seat was punched with some tiny, elfin numbers. This punching deformed the seat so that the fuel kept leaking into the float bowl and then overflowed onto the ground. I replaced the new seat with the best looking seat out of the old batch.

This cured the fuel leaking issue. I could leave the petcock in the “on” position and the bike stayed nice and dry.

Yet Zed was still running poorly, cylinders would cut out randomly and the idle was inconsistent. Further investigation revealed that the rubber, year-old vacuum port plugs had dry rotted allowing air to seep past and upsetting the tenuous air/fuel ratio. I ordered new vacuum plugs and was sure the running problems would go away.

They didn’t. In fact, fixing the air leak seemed to make things worse. The bike would run on 3 cylinders and then 4 as your road speed increased. It seemed the longer it ran the worse it ran. I checked the ignition points. They were the original points that came with Zed and had served me well but now they were pitted badly. I filed the points back to good smooth contacts and now the filed points were so thin I couldn’t rotate the mounting plate enough to set the timing correctly.

And so it continued. I ordered new points and reset everything. I had fat, blue spark. The Kawasaki ran terrible. I checked battery voltage, changed fuel filters and nothing worked. In my befuddled state I hit on the float level as a potential cause of the problem and ordered the cool little bowl drain fitting and clear tube tool used to set the float levels.

The float levels were all high. I reset the float levels to spec and now I was truly sure I had the bike problems licked. It ran worse each test ride. I could go about 10 miles before the bike would start missing. It seemed like cylinder 1 was the most likely culprit as removing the plug wire on #1 had no effect on the engine. Pulling the #1 sparkplug revealed a flooded cylinder. Cylinder #4 was also sort of weak, not exactly shouldering the load if you know what I mean and I think you do.

I checked coil resistance and coil 1&4 were exactly the same as coil 2&3. Must be the condensers, I told myself. Condensers are typically replaced along with points: they come as a set. I didn’t buy them that way because in my entire life I’ve only found one bad condenser. Anyway, the way reproduction parts are made you want to keep the original stuff if it still works.

My frustration was growing. Instead of nickel and diming my way through the ignition system I bought new coils and an entire ignition backing plate with new points, condensers and fresh screws the heads of which were not stripped out. It was a whole new ignition system. I was sure something was heating up and fouling the plugs.

My $114 dollar ignition system bought me nothing but clarity. But it was a glorious clarity. The bike ran worse than ever. I didn’t get out of the shed before the #1 cylinder fouled. I was smiling; the odds were narrowing rapidly and in my favor. What are the chances of two completely different ignition systems having the exact same fault? Nearly zero, my brothers. You’ll not hear me complaining about blowing $114 on an ignition system I didn’t need because I was sure then that the problem was carburation. I re-checked the float level in the #1 carburetor. It was fine but I knew now that the only thing I had changed in that carburetor was that damn needle and seat.

I picked through the old needles and seats and selected the best looking set. I removed the eBay needle and seat and reinstalled the old ones. That was it. Zed ran on all four cylinders. I took the bike out for a test ride keeping my fingers crossed at the dreaded 10-mile mark but the bike kept running. I lugged the motor in high gear. The motor pulled cleanly without missing.

I know better than to assume anything was fixed without putting a few miles on the bike so I did a loop to Capitan, out to Roswell and then through Ruidoso to home, a trip right at 300 miles. At my first gas stop in Capitan I was astounded at the fuel mileage. Previously Zed was a steady 40 miles per gallon bike. That first fill-up netted 50 miles per gallon.

From Capitan to Roswell was a nice, winding, 4000 rpm tootle enjoying the breeze and the smooth running Kawasaki. I filled up again and the old Z1 returned 59 miles per gallon. Almost a 50% increase in fuel mileage.

In Roswell’s hot, stop-and-go road construction traffic Zed started to stumble. Crap, I was 100 miles from home and the problem had returned. One cylinder started dropping out and then another. The bike was dying in the middle of the road. Out of instinct I reached down and found the fuel petcock in the off position. Zed ran all the way home on 4 cylinders.

I can’t explain why it took so long to figure out the problem. There were so many distractions on the way to that moment of clarity. I’ll be looking for some OEM Mikuni needles and seats. They say the cheap man pays the most but I’ve found that value is very subjective. For example, what would I be writing about if I bought the correct parts the first time around?

Hey, you need to read the complete Kawasaki Z1 resurrection story!

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Exhaustnotes Product Review: Gdrasuya 80-amp Battery Charger

You win some and you lose some on Amazon and with the Gdrasuya 80-amp battery charger I lost some. One of the few issues I have with my off-grid shed is snow. Here at normally sunny Tinfiny Ranch snow is infrequent which is not to say “never.” It does snow a few times each winter at 6000 feet and those times are when my solar panels get covered up and my batteries slowly lose power. Coincidently, when its cold and snowy I run pipe heaters to keep the shed’s PVC water pipes from freezing and splitting in the un-insulated space. It’s a double whammy: no power from the panels and a constant drain from the pipe heaters.

The system can go a few days like this but eventually the inverter shuts off and my pipes are left to live or die in New Mexico. To combat this I run a small 24-volt battery charger off my Harbor Freight Tailgator generator during the day to help resupply the batteries with precious electrons. I have an old Dayton 24-volt charger that puts out around 5 amps. With 12 batteries to charge it takes quite a while to bump them up.

Enter the Gdrasuya 80-amp charger. The Gdrasuya is 6v-12v-24v selectable and I assumed the 80-amp output was at 6 volts. That would mean the 12-volt setting would put out 40 amps and the 24-volt setting 20 amps. 20 amps charging is 4 times faster than the Dayton! I liked what I saw.

The charger arrived neatly packed and undamaged. The machine looked well made with beautiful glossy yellow paint and everything written in Chinese. No matter, battery chargers are easy to operate.

The first thing that gave me pause was the small diameter charge leads. The clamps looked pretty robust but no way was that small wire going to tote 80 amps without getting warm.

The small wires led me to investigate the inside of the charger to see how difficult it would be to install heavier wires. Once open I realized I didn’t need heavier wires because no way were these internals going to output 80 amps at any voltage.

The Gdrasuya uses a doughnut shaped transformer with various taps taken off the windings to select current to the battery. The wires are just a wee bit bigger than a human hair and the switching is very lightweight. Ok, I thought maybe they meant 8 amps instead of 80.

The main output breaker is rated 15 amps so no matter what you did to the thing 15 amps is all that’s passing through the breaker.

Worse than the misleading advertisement was the 120-volt AC input wiring. The green wire, or ground, from the plug was cut inside leaving the shiny yellow metal box in an ungrounded state. If the metal housing managed to short out to line voltage, a user touching the metal would receive a nasty shock.

Ok, the Gdrasuya 80-amp charger is dangerous and restricted on rated power by a 15- amp output breaker, but how does it work?

Turns out not too well. At 12-volt, max charging rate, the kilowatt showed the charger drawing 1 amp from the outlet, or 120 watts. On the DC charging side things looked bleaker. The Gdrasuya amp meter was reading 50 amps but my inline digital meter said 3.08 amps at a claimed 15 volts, a measly 46 watts. So not only was the Gdrasuya charger weak and dangerous, it was inefficient to boot.

In the description for the charger the 80-amp claim is made again along with a “power for 12V is 10A, for 24-v is 7A.” It does neither.

I haven’t tried it on 24-volts yet but you can figure maybe 2 amps tops or as we like to say in the electrical business, nothing. I was going to fix the ground issue but now that I’ve tested the charger it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the bother. That old Dayton putting out 5 amps looks like a champ in comparison.

It’s odd that someone would go through all this trouble to manufacture a charger that is pretty much useless. The thing consists of quite a few parts the sum of which is almost zero.

My recommendation is don’t buy the Gdrasuya. I’m not going to put an Amazon link in this story because I don’t want you to accidently buy one. I’ll put it back together and try to return the thing to Amazon. It serves no useful purpose in Tinfiny Ranch’s suite of electrical power products.

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