Author: Joe Gresh

Mentors: Virgil B. Patterson

Once upon a time I wanted to be a boat mechanic. When I met Virgil B. Patterson I got the chance. Everyone called him Virgil B. The Patterson part rarely came up. I met him at Admiralty Marine down on Shelter Island in San Diego where I had been hired to install bonding systems in boats.

Bonding entails electrically connecting all the underwater metal components of a boat. Stuff like rudders, props and shafts, thru-hull fittings for water intakes or transducers for electronics. These components may be bronze, stainless steel or any amalgam of metals the manufacturer used when they built the part but they are never pure anything. Bonding connects these blended combinations of atoms to a zinc or magnesium sacrificial anode. If you dip the whole mess into salt water you have a nice .75-volt battery. The zinc, being a less noble metal would slowly lose mass as a slight electrical current passed between the zinc and all the rest of the metals. By sacrificing itself the zinc protected any more-noble metals in the circuit .

There’s a lot more to bonding but the rest of it was just as boring as that last paragraph. At first I liked the job. I crawled around boats connecting things with one long, continuous piece of #10 gauge solid copper wire. We used one piece of wire to eliminate the possibility of a bad connection at one fitting causing a disconnect down the line. The wire looped back to the beginning, forming a circle so that if the bonding was cut once everything was still protected. The last thing you want is a bunch of dissimilar metals electrically connected without a chunk of zinc in the circuit. It would be better to leave the boat un-bonded and let each part corrode at its own metallurgical pace.

My initial enthusiasm waned. Bonding became a tedious and thankless task. I could work on a boat for 60 hours and it would look exactly the same as when I started. Nothing on the boat worked better or, for that matter, worse. Unless something goes very wrong electrolysis is a slow process. It took months or even years to see if you actually accomplished anything electrolysis-wise. The worst of it was that it always seemed like the customer didn’t really know why you were there.

When I wasn’t bonding boats Virgil B. would take me along on engine or transmission jobs. Virgil B. was a Marine and tough as nails but he was getting on in years and he needed a young back to help with the heavy stuff. My job was to lift the heavy stuff, carry his toolbox down the docks, run to get parts and drive him home at night after we got hammered on Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor. Mickey’s were unique in that they came in little green-glass hand grenades. We loved the things.

Getting hammered on Mickey’s Big Mouth malt liquor was our way of winding down after a hard day’s work. We put in a lot of time at Admiralty Marine. It was a busy shop. 60-hour weeks were normal. One week I clocked 90 hours. I was making $3.25 an hour so I needed all the time I could get. It was 6 or 7 pm when we quit and drove to the store for some Mickey’s. Virgil B. drove a 1973 Ford Ranchero Squire. The one with wood trim. At that time it was a fairly new car.

Some nights, and I never figured out why, Virgil B. wanted me to drive his car home and drop him off, then I would go to my house to sleep and pick him up in the morning. He was no more hammered than I but who knows? I tell you what, that Ranchero hood looked about 70 feet long after 4 malt liquors.

Virgil B. taught me to be the end of the line. The buck stopped with us: If we couldn’t fix the problem then we damn sure figured out how to fix it. There was no quit in Virgil B. and we never failed. The man was relentless. Lowering a 200-pound Paragon transmission (with a reduction gear!) deep into the bowels of a sail boat while Virgil B. held my legs to keep me from sliding into the hole gave me the confidence to complete any task. I was taught that there is no one else coming along and that the job was all on me, on us.

I got real busy with bonding systems so Admiralty Marine hired a full-time helper for Virgil B. He was a young Marine fresh out of the military. I’ll call him Eric because he resembled Eric Estrada. The son-of-a-bitch looked like a movie star. Virgil B. picked Eric from the other applicants because he was big, strong, a Marine and he was beautiful.

Virgil glowed with the pride of ownership. Standing Eric next to me was comical: Eric towered 6-feet 3-inches, I was 5-foot 7-inches. It was like Pee Wee Herman next to Charles Atlas. Eric was well into the lower 200-pound range. I had long, scraggly hair and weighed about 130 pounds.

But the pride of ownership soon faded. Eric and Virgil B. were sent out on jobs and kept coming back with problems. This wouldn’t come loose or that was heavy. Even simple things stalled Eric. He was just lazy, was the problem. Virgil B. took me aside one day and said “I don’t know what happened to the Marine Corps but Eric wouldn’t have been a Marine in my day.”

The final straw was a diesel Ford Lehman cylinder head Eric was to bring in for a valve job. The Lehman is a mid-sized diesel and the head is one big ass chunk of iron covering 6 cylinders. Eric came back to the shop empty handed and told Virgil B. that it was stuck. The frustration welled up and in disgust Virgil B. turned to me and said, “Joe, go get that god-damn cylinder head.”

There was no way in hell I was going to let Virgil B. down. I would have died if that’s what it took. The buck stopped with me. I broke ratchets and sockets. In the cramped engine room I strained lifting the cylinder head off the block and carrying it up from the engine room, down the docks and into the truck. It really should have been a two-man job but I brought Virgil B. that Lehman cylinder head. At the shop I dropped the pickup’s tailgate revealing the cylinder head. The look Virgil B. gave Eric was worth every single BTU of energy I had expended. If couldn’t be pretty or tall at least I could be relentless like Virgil B.

Eric was fired. I overheard Virgil B. telling Admiralty’s owner “He just doesn’t have it.” After the Eric debacle, Virgil B. took me along for all the hard jobs. The jobs that nobody wanted to do. We drank malt liquor and worked late. We rebuilt Perkins and Chevys, Toroflows and Atomic-4s. It was a wonderful time in my life and the methodical trouble-shooting lessons I learned from Virgil B. have served me well. But the most important lessons Virgil B. taught me were that if I never quit I can never fail and that the buck stops here.

Tie Back Action!

Tinfiny Ranch is a steep and rutted place. Located in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains we get a lot of runoff. When it rains water flows through the joint with alarming speed carrying off soil as fast as I can put it back. After living here only 4 years we lost 18 inches of dirt and the house’s foundation was laid bare. The solution to handling intermittent, mass quantities of water is terracing and concrete. I built a long retaining wall and back filled it with dirt but I wanted a bit more tip resistance than just the extended foundation and concrete slab top would provide. The new grade is much gentler slowing the speed of the water and directing it away from the house.

Enter the tieback. The tieback is a belt and suspenders type of thing. In my case I bent a loop on pieces of 5/8” rebar, ground the ends as round as I could by free hand (If I only had a lathe!) and threaded the bar for 5/8 coupling nuts.

The nuts spin on to the threaded rebar until tight, but seeing as how the threads were kind of ragged on the rebar I decided to give them a lick of weld to ensure the bar won’t pull out of the nut. I used an Oxy-Acetylene welder because it’s the only type of welding I can still see.

After welding the tieback I dug a T-shaped hole for concrete. In this setup the concrete is mostly there to protect the rebar from rusting. Any tipping force on the wall tries to stretch the rebar and pull the cross piece through the dirt.

The rebar connects to a 5/8” threaded rod cast into the poured concrete columns. These poured columns tie each 8-foot section of wall together and have a L-shaped foot protruding on the fill side. The L-foot column is yet another tool to prevent tipping.

Once poured, the tie back is buried and the dirt compacted. About 6-feet long with a 24-inch cross bar, one of these tiebacks anchors each 8-foot section. The idea being the wall would have to move a lot of compacted, dry dirt to fall over.

The wall has 3/8” rebar every few cells of the block sections. This rebar is poured into the foundation of the wall and all the block cells are filled with concrete. The 3/8” rebar stands proud of the final slab elevation.

Capping all this monkey-motion, the protruding 3/8” rebar is bent over below the finished grade of the slab and tied to more steel. Another rebar runs parallel along the wall to emulate a cap. Then the slab is poured making a nice beer drinking or steak grilling patio.

Obviously if you’ve read this far you’ll realize I’m not an engineer so all this may be excessive or futile but to tip the retaining wall you’ll have to lever the foundation L-feet, pull the tie backs through the dirt and drag a 30-foot long by 10-feet wide patio across the ground. It’s not impossible given enough ground saturation but the wall is only 4-feet tall at its highest and I’m hoping the slab keeps the dirt beneath dry.

If this wall fails I’ll just leave it for fill and start another wall a few feet away from the wreckage. It’s been a fun project and I plan to extend the retaining wall another 30 feet after this year’s monsoon season is over.

South by South Bend: Part 1

As much as I enjoy concrete work I need to take a break now and then. I ran out of mud for the back patio (164 bags, missed it by 10 bags!) so I decided to get my old South Bend 6’ lathe up and running.

My Pop bought the South Bend way back in the late 1960’s. I was just a kid but I remember riding in Pop’s Chevy ¾ ton, picking up the machine and unloading it at our house. It was and still is the heaviest thing I ever want to move. We were lucky in that the South Bend came with a crap load of attachments: a full set of collets, three steady rests, a 3-jaw and 4-jaw chuck and hundreds of tool bits were thrown in with the lathe.

Pops gave me the lathe 14 years ago. He said he was never going to use it again and he needed more room. I took the lathe down to The Florida Keys, where we lived at the time, and it went under water several times due to hurricanes. The motor was mounted lower on the lathe frame so it was lost to the elements. The rest of the lathe sat higher and was ok. All I did in The Keys was work so the South Bend sat for many years and I dragged it out to New Mexico in The Big Haul Ryder truck.

With the Covid, stay-at-home orders I decided now is the time to get the old machine running again. Back when we first got the lathe I asked my dad, “What does it do?” He told me “Everything”. He said, “You can make another lathe with a lathe!” Pops was a good machinist and he showed me the basics of operation. I was cutting threads on the South Bend within a few weeks.

The South Bend came with a hokey, home-made motor/pulley setup that we were going to change 50 years ago but never got around to it. The pulley set up is ugly but it works and that’s probably why it stayed. This go-round I’m leaving it as is. The next guy can come up with a better system. Because with lathes there is always a next guy: they don’t wear out.

The old motor had a wider mounting bolt footprint and one hole of the 4 mounting holes was used for an adjuster bolt. I re-drilled the plate to suit the new motor and tapped the holes for 5/16” bolts.

For the adjusting bolt I used the existing motor mount holes but made a bar to go underneath. The new bar extends past the motor plate to line up with the adjuster bolt. It looks a little better than the previous setup. I need a few parts to finish the new motor installation so that will have to wait.

The South Bend is a 6” lathe but at some point in the past it was jacked up to an 8” lathe (swing over V-ways).  The 1” spacer blocks look so well made they may be factory parts. I’m leaving them.

One of the nice things about this lathe is that it has not been abused. The thing is probably 70 years old and V-ways are smooth and unscarred from work falling out of the chuck and smacking into them. This means that a good machinist ran the thing.

That is, it was unscarred until I got my teen-age meat hooks on it. That gouge in the carriage was put there in the early 1970s by yours truly. I was cutting threads on a shaft, or maybe it was a taper, and the carriage self-fed into the chuck making a loud banging sound. I was confused; Pops was not happy and reamed me out. I never ran the carriage into the chuck again.

The forward/reverse switch is shot so I am replacing it with a toggle. Only because I have a 4-pole, double throw, center off toggle in stock. I’ve wanted to use that oddball switch forever. I’m also relocating the switch and wiring the motor 240-volt so that the 6000-watt solar-powered inverter can start the motor easier. With the old set up you had to reach over and between the spinning belts and pulleys to access the switch. It was sure a thing to keep you on your toes. Front mounting the switch will be mildly safer.

A lathe is one of the handiest machine tools you can own. The old ones are slightly clunkier to operate and I’ve forgotten most of what I knew about operating one. I’m sure YouTube is full of how-to lathe videos so I’ll brush up before I start making scrap metal.

While I wait for parts I’ll start cleaning the beast. Part 2 will cover the motor mounting, belts and wiring.

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Zed: Miles of Smiles

During this Covid-19 lockdown I’ve been racking up the miles of Zed. I fill the tank before I leave home and gas up once mid-ride making sure to rinse my hands with gasoline to kill any virus remnants left on the bowser keypad or handle. For those of you who are concerned about my crashing the bike and adding to the overwhelmed medical staff, fear not: I am riding easy like Easy Rider. Also Southern New Mexico is at the very beginning of the infection curve so the hospitals have plenty of room.

Since the last oil leak was stopped Zed has done 650 miles and she’s dry as a bone. I checked the oil level and it has not dropped. I feel confident that zed’s engine will take me anywhere. It feels like the bike is running a wee bit too rich but my riding area goes from 4500 feet elevation to 9000 feet. The jetting is stock in Zed’s carbs so if I chose to ride only in New Mexico I’d re-jet the thing. As it is I get a fairly steady 40 miles per gallon, mostly highway miles @ 70 to 80 miles per hour.

But I’m not going to stay around here. Berk and me are going to ride down to Mexico when this thing is all over. We’re going all the way to the end of the road, man. We’ll pick up Big John on the way. We’ll drink Modelo beer in the evening and eat Mexican food until we burst. Berk has a new 650 Royal Enfield that will get enough miles per gallon for both of us. I’ll bring my syphon hose. Orlando has a Texas Hill Country ride planned and I’d like to get down there. I’ll be interested to see if Zed’s fuel mileage improves at lower levels. I tried the magic gas treatment on Zed but unlike the 10 MPG improvement I see on the fuel-injected Husqvarna the magic sauce doesn’t seem to do anything for the carbureted Z1. Maybe there are just too many carbs.

Riders today think all bikes handled badly before they came on the scene. The Z1 was reputed to be ill handling, not as bad as the two stroke triples but still deadly. I’m not feeling it. At sane speeds the bike is steady and it corners with a delightful, easy steering. The bike does not show its 500 pounds. Winding it up to 110 MPH reveals no wobbles. Hitting a bump mid-corner induces a tiny wiggle but it’s no worse than other bikes I’ve ridden and quite a lot better than some late-model heavy weights. Maybe modern bias-ply tires are better than they were in the early 1970’s.

The front brake squeals at slow speed. The aftermarket pucks did not have the threaded hole to screw the thin, anti-vibration shim to. I thought I could get away with leaving it out. Looks like I’ll have to try some of that disc pad backing goop.  Or, once all other options are exhausted, get the correct pads.

I’ve tried to social distance on my rides but in the Carrizozo Park my perimeter was compromised by a scraggly looking dude walking two scraggly dogs. “Nice day for a ride!’ he exhaled a dense stream of almost pure Covid 19 virus across the picnic table. I staggered to stay upright, it was a water main gusher. My to-go hamburger was glowing with a faint greenish light. Covid dripped through the expanded metal tabletop peeling the paint from the metal as it went. “Yep, It doesn’t get any better” I said scooting farther down the bench. “What ya riding? A 200?” the wind was at a better angle now, the covid pooled by the dog with one front paw in a sling, who sniffed at the greenish mass with nothing like enthusiasm.

“No, it’s a 900cc.” I said. Scraggly squinted at the bike. “That’s a small bike, 900 you say?” He didn’t believe me and I didn’t want to prove it with a tear down and bore inspection. “I’m a Vietnam vet!” He said. “I’m crazy but it’s not my fault.” He had one bad eye and used it to glare at me. “It’s the stuff they made me do, and now the VA won’t help me!” I said I thought the VA was supposed to be getting more money. He laughed; a chunk of grey, spongy lung flew out of his mouth. “That’s all a lie! That money is going in their pockets.” He stuck his right hand in his pocket for emphasis.

“This town sucks, there’s no prostitutes!” he shouted. I looked around and had to agree that this section of town did not have any working the street. “I hate it here. I’d like to go back to Vietnam and kill people!” I was beginning to suspect Scraggly might really be crazy. I quickly ate my burger and stood up. I told Scraggly, “Well, I’ve got to hit the road.”

“Okay, I’m leaving in 28 days, going to Georgia.” We shook hands; at that point I was already covered in Covid. Back at the bike, I stuck a paper towel inside Zed’s gas tank and used the cool gasoline to wash my hands and face. Then I cleaned my arms and then lit a match and set the whole shebang on fire.

The brakes on the Z1 are not awe-inspiring. It takes 4 fingers to get the front tire to break traction. The rear is pretty good but who uses rear brakes? The front suspension clatters as it tops out over bumps but after a few cycles they quiet down. The back shocks are original and I assume 45 years old but they keep the tire from hitting the fender and that’s all I can ask from shock absorbers.

Me and my riding buddy Mike took a long, 280 mile ride. The Z1 ran perfectly. Mike was on his Fatboy Harley. The Zed hits reserve kind of early. Like 100-110 miles. I still have a lot of gas so I may shorten the pick up tube a bit. I don’t like drawing from the bottom of the tank if I don’t have to. The 104 cubic-inch Harley gets 50 miles to a gallon! Zed is a thirsty beast.

Next up is an oil and filter change on Zed as soon as my oil arrives from Amazon. I’ll be checking the spooge closely for any odd bits of metal. That is, assuming I’m not on a ventilator by then.

Read the story of Zed’s resurrection here!

Time To Split: An Open Letter to Car Drivers

Jack Lewis and I platooned in Motorcyclist magazine for many years. How Jack managed to avoid writing about concrete in all that time I’ll never know. Here’s a bit on lane splitting for America.

Dear automobilists – you, in the shiny red pickup and that girl in the flashy BMW and yes, even you in the dented Subaru with the sticker-patched Yakima box up top and dog slobber lathering your windows – please don’t misunderstand us.

When we rip along the dotted lines, zipping between door handles in a manner that must look crazy-dangerous to you, we’re not actually trying to rub your noses in the hell of stop-and-go traffic. We’re not trying to cheat you out of your transportative birthright, nor play some weird Russian roulette with spit cups and trailer mirrors.

Motorcycle lane splitting is legal in California — and it works. © Eric Schmuttenmaer

We’re just trying to get out alive.

See, while you may perceive motorcyclists mostly through GoPro silliness and X-Games heroics, a lot of riders actually give real thought to which measures might bring us through our riding day intact, arrayed as we are with nothing but a bit of thick foam and thin plastic between our squishable bodies and your 3,500 lbs. of moving steel.

Still, I get what it’s like to be startled, whilst sitting in my car, by a motorcycle howling past in a sudden rush. It’s a little spooky, and I always feel like I should have been paying better attention.
That’s how you feel, right? Like you should have been paying better attention?

Sure ya do! Just before you wonder out loud why anyone let those irresponsible dingbats loose on their murdercycles in the first place. How dare they discompose you, let alone proceed at a pace slightly faster than the turgid sloth of gridlock?

Being stuck in traffic is ugly for everyone. On a motorcycle, it’s worse. Yes, your kids may be fighting in the back seat, but they were gonna do that, anyway. The biker is juggling variables that include overheating, keeping his bike upright, clutch wear, where to put his feet (Pegs? Ground? Pegs? Ground?), and the friction-free contact patches ensured by the overflowing coolant of pissed-off cars.

Motorcycles are built to go, and they’re built elementally light. While your car does its engineered best to trade off its BTUs to the surrounding atmosphere on a hot day, and swaddles you in a full metal jacket against winter rain and snow, that rider tap dancing along the Botts’ dots either needs continuous air flowing over her engine to keep both it and her body from overheating, or would very much like to get home and take Mom’s advice to get out of those wet things. Hypothermia is a risk they cover in basic riding classes.

Serves those fools right, you say? Fine, but remember: if the motorcycle breaks down and has to be pushed out between the choked lines of traffic to meet a tow truck, that ain’t exactly gonna speed you up.

If the driver behind a stuck rider gets distracted by the radio or her kids or a super-important tweet, she may roll up into the rider who obediently parks between cars, virtually disappearing in a long line of tail lights. Or some other driver may spot a “hole” in the next lane, yank over and park on our hapless moto-jockey. Aside from the bloody consequences for some poor dumb motorcyclist, that accident holds up traffic even longer while EMTs slowly wail their way up the breakdown lane.

But isn’t it dangerous for those guys to go between the cars, where nobody can see them coming? Well, if you actually use your mirrors, you can see bikes much better when they’re moving between the lanes. Our eyes are designed to notice movement and anomalies.

Moreover, in any accident occurring between your car and a motorcycle, it won’t matter one bit how the lawfully the rider was behaving, or how badly you screwed up. All you have to say is “I never saw him,” or, “He came out of nowhere!” Once you’ve articulated those magic words, your police report will reliably read “DRIVER NOT CITED” — even if you blew a red light, made a left against traffic, or ran him down from behind. Tuck that knowledge away for later use, because it. Is. Awesome.

It’s even kind of true. Even with decades of motorcycling under my (continuously expanding) belt, I’ve overlooked motorcycles from behind the wheel. No one can see bikes as well as cars. You can’t judge their distance effectively whether they’re coming (only one headlight) or going (only one taillight). At night, they’re practically invisible and during the day, they may as well be.

Cars and trucks grow logarithmically in your vision as they approach, while bikes are always just… small. Your brain doesn’t process them as a real vehicle, and the courts know that. Killing a motorcyclist is kinda like hitting someone’s beloved terrier: the family may be broken up about it, but everybody else understands that it wasn’t really your fault.

We implore you not to use this powerful knowledge to hit the next rider you see, though, as it will definitely slow down your commute. We’re talking efficiency here.

You can’t see them, but they can see you. Lane splitters keep an eye on your movement the way mice watch owls, and they won’t carelessly ding your car. Think about it: catching a handlebar end means they go face down on the freeway. Nobody volunteers for that.

Lane-splitting motorcyclists tend to be well-trained, fit, decently equipped riders, and they’re statistically safer than riders who never split lanes.
Kinda flies in the face of common sense, dunnit? But then, so does motorcycling. Not everyone wishes to be common, or sensible.
We know it seems like cheating for them to weave through the blocked ranks of Good Suburban Taxpaying Folk – and it is. If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.

That’s why you get to do what bikers can’t: control your climate with dashboard switches, sip the beverages nesting in your cup holders, flip through the FM dial for Sigalerts, call your sweetie through the rear view mirror (that you never glance at) with a dinnertime update, and scroll GPS maps for the clearest route. If you’re unwilling to give up your car full of traffic hacks and blissful comforts, why should riders sacrifice their ability to proceed elegantly through smaller spaces?

As second-class traffic citizens, speed, wariness, and maneuverability are the only tactical advantages motorcyclists possess. Don’t think of them as a safety threat to your armored carapace. They’re more like furry little rodents, juking between the footfalls of mighty dinosaurs.

“Fair” is a utopian concept and you can’t get to Utopia from here. What you can get is home a little faster, every time a rider splits lanes. Think this through with me: when a rider lane-splits, he transcends the traffic jam, flowing through it with mercurial ease while you sit there, stymied and cursing your ugly luck. Advantage: rider. Kinda gets your goat, doesn’t it? They shouldn’t be able to do that!

But wait… she also removes one vehicle from the impacted sludge of traffic. Advantage: EVERYBODY. Will you receive a benefit equal to the rider’s? Nope. She assumes more risk, makes less ecological impact, trades comfort for freedom and burns less fuel. Seems only fair that she should get through the fastest. Let ‘er go, mate. Don’t swing that door out!

When two percent of vehicles slip out of the traffic stream and split lanes, that’s two percent fewer vehicles getting in your way, threatening your family’s safety, and farting their carbon monoxide straight through your cabin filter and into the soft, vulnerable fat of your cerebral cortex. Can you imagine if it were 15, 20, or as much as 50 percent of traffic that was bled off by those dynamic pressure relief valves? Lane splitting makes riding more attractive, increasing the number of people willing to deal with the disadvantages.

We all know what causes traffic jams: too many vehicles occupying the same road space at the same time. One social engineering tool to purge that clog is HOV lanes allowing more efficient transport – e.g. buses, motorcycles, and carpools – to move faster. Studies show that such lanes also speed up main lines of traffic. Still, it’s danged annoying to watch privileged eco-prudes whiz by in their Teslas, and we all know it costs tens of millions of your dollars to build those lanes that you usually can’t use.

When interstate flyers shine on the dotted line, though, three or four de facto diamond lanes spring up at no cost — but offer benefits to every vehicle’s progress, from buses to Jeeps to Peterbilts.

And in town, when scooters and motos slip between cars and filter up to the front of an intersection, they’re not ripping you off. When the light changes they’ll accelerate celeritously, maneuvering between late-walking pedestrians without risk. Then they’re gone and out of your way, cutting down both on your total sum of obstacles and on the safety variables you have to reconcile.

Filtering to the front helps everyone. © Roland Dobbins

Poof! They just vanish, right off your cloud. You won’t have to navigate cautiously around their wobbling butts the way you do with bicycles. Also (unlike those free-loading pedalers), motorcyclists pay disproportionately high license tag fees to help maintain your roads.

No one is harmed, and everybody wins. Ever wish a whole bunch of drivers would just get off your damn road? Yeah. It’s like that.

Traffic works better when we all work together. No man is an island, entire of itself. Therefore, ask not for whom the rider lane-splits; she splits for thee. Next time you’re asked, vote to allow lane-splitting in your state for the benefit of every driver… and the true safety of every rider.

If you still think all lane-splitting does is give a huge advantage to motorcycles, why not ride one yourself? Nothing prevents you from stepping out of your big, safe box, swinging your leg over a bike, and winging it through traffic in swift, sexy, highly maneuverable freedom.

Do it for yourself. Do it for society. All you have to fear is fear itself — plus, of course, the savage vindictiveness of unenlightened drivers (no, don’t be that guy; nobody likes that guy).

So come on over the dark side. We throw the best parties – and you’ll get there fast, looking fly on your bad motor scooter.

Everybody wins.

If you’d like to see more Jack Lewis, you can do so here on his blog.

Zed: Better Living Through Silicone

Every time I tinker with Zed it leaks a little less. This session I tackled the alternator wire oil leak. Zed’s alternator runs wet, a popular thing to do way back when motorcycles were made of steel and riders were flesh and blood. Where the wire harness exits the stator housing a rubber grommet is supposed to keep oil from seeping out. Someone had stuffed electrical tape down in there and Zed’s grommet wasn’t doing its job because the harness dripped oil.

The problem with replacing the grommet is that the stator harness plug needs to be dismantled to get the wire ends through the grommet. Dismantling the 45 year old stator plug is an iffy proposition. You’ll break the brittle plastic for sure. I guess you could eliminate the plug, cut the wire ends off and butt splice the mess back together. It would probably be better from an electrical standpoint.

The job also requires removing the stator housing to gain access to the grommet. That means a new cover gasket and more work. Instead, I took ExhaustNotes.us reader, Honda 919’s advice: After removing the tape and gunk in the grommet area I flushed the void with carb cleaner and mopped it out with a rag. Once I got the void nice and clean I packed in black, RTV silicone until it was flush with the stator housing. Then I let it dry over night. No more stator leak…at least for now.

The black rubber, half-circle cam end plugs were the next problem. Oil seeped out of these with the engine running and at high speeds the oil would blow back onto the plug wire and whatever pants you happened to be wearing that day. The plugs are more than just rubber though, they have an aluminum core to help hold their shape. Zed’s were dry and hard from years of service so I bought new ones.

The old cam plugs were glued in with silicone. I’m not sure it’s a factory process but I used a tiny bit of RTV black on the head semi-circle to help seal the plugs. All went well until I started tightening the valve cover and the rubber plugs started to squirt out the side of the head. Maybe the silicone was making the plugs slippery. I used a rubber mallet to tap the rubber plugs back into the head but when I did that the valve cover gasket pulled in towards the head.

I decided to let the silicone set up and walked away. The next day I loosened the valve cover, set the valve cover gasket back into position and buttoned the thing up. Hopefully for good.

Somewhere in all these road tests the high/low beam knob fell off leaving a broken bit of plastic stalk to control the lights. The parts to fix the high/low switch cost nearly as much as an entire new switch cluster! Having had about enough parts ordering I heated and curved a bit of black plastic, drilled a hole in the thing and RTV silicone glued it onto the protruding bit of the switch stalk. It looks horrible but at least it’s ugly.

I set an ambitious goal for Zed’s 4th test run: 200 miles across the Sacramento Mountains to eastern New Mexico and back. I was only 15 miles into the test run when I smelled oil. The damn valve cover was leaking. Still! The two forward cam ends had a light sheen of oil so I aborted the big ride and took a shorter route. After 36 miles of riding the oil leak seemed to be gone. After 60 miles of riding the cams were nice and dry and there was no oil smell. After 90 miles of riding, not a drop of oil anywhere: the engine was dry. Maybe the earlier oil leak was pre-existing oil blowing around the front of the engine? Back home I checked Zed and could not find any leaks.

I believe the test runs are over for Zed. It runs great and it doesn’t leak. There will be more repairs in Zed’s future but I feel pretty confident in the old motorcycle getting me where I need to go. That is, if the gas tank doesn’t leak.

More Zed’s Not Dead here!

Another Day, Another Leak

I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. It sounds like I’m having lots of trouble getting Zed back on the road but it’s really more a function of my resurrection approach. I tried to spend the minimum amount required to get the 1975 Kawasaki Z1 operational because I didn’t know if the engine was shot or if the transmission slipped out of gear under load. Having done that, and proven to myself that this 900cc mill is a sweet one I can invest more money into some age-related issues.

On my first 30-mile road test I had a two copious oil leaks and I resolved those in a previous story. Zed was ready for a more ambitious undertaking. I laid out an 80-mile round trip to the Three Rivers, Santa Nino De Atocha church. The Santa Nino is off the beaten path but is still in use. Next door to the church is an interesting graveyard that I planned to commune with the spirits in while I sipped my thermos of Batdorf & Bronson® coffee. Hanging out with dead people is a great way to avoid catching the corona virus.

Zed ran strong and we made it out to church in fine tune. I parked the bike, pulled out my thermos and prepared for the séance. Then I noticed the gas leak. A panic set in: how long has it been leaking? Will I have enough fuel to get home? Won’t I look pretty stupid after hating on tank sealer for so long?

I took a big slug of coffee in case the situation spun out of control and I had no time later. Popping the seat I could see a thin stream of fuel shooting from the left rear seam directly into the air box inlet screen. It was strong, pretty thin and 3-inches long…Ahem…

I never go anywhere on a motorcycle without tools so I had vise grips in my bag (that was strapped to the much-hated luggage rack) and managed to crimp the seam slowing the pinhole leak. Fuel was still seeping but at least it wasn’t spraying out. I took one more slug of coffee for the road and reloaded the bike. Since the leak was using fuel faster than I was burning it I cruised back at a brisk 80 miles per hour. I had less than a gallon left when I got home, a 20-mpg average.

This next part will require so many disclaimers that the blog would crash under the weight of them. Listen, if you don’t know how or are even slightly worried about welding a fuel tank then don’t do it. If you choose to weld on a fuel tank don’t come crying to me pointing at bits of sheet metal stuck in your eye.

After draining the tank I blew it out with a grass blower to dry out any residue. Next I shot a heat gun into the filler neck to warm up the tank, hoping to evaporate any remaining fuel. Then I blew it out again and gave it the heat gun treatment again. This all took about ½ hour.

My finely calibrated nose told me that the fuel/air ratio inside the tank had dropped to safe levels. You can’t teach this skill; it’s like wine tasting. You have to blow up a few gas tanks to get the knack. I took the tank outside where there was plenty of room to explode and stuck a lighted propane torch nozzle inside the tank. The tank did not kill me. I was ready to weld.

I knew where the pinhole leak was but I brazed a wide area on either side in case other leaks were concealed by the main leak. I use brazing rod instead of welding the tank because the metal was so thin I would burn through trying to cover the amount of tank I wanted to cover. Once I thought that I had piled on enough material I reinstalled the fuel tap, filled the tank and waited to see if it would leak.

The tank stayed nice and dry. It was time for another test run, this one 140 miles in duration. Zed passed with flying colors. This bike runs smooth at 4800 RPM and 70-ish miles per hour. Hills and headwinds don’t bother the thing and I had plenty of both on the third test run. I averaged 40 miles per gallon running 70 most of the trip.

The half-circle cam-end rubbers leaked oil but I knew they were leaking and I have new ones on order. The alternator wire harness leaks a few drops where it exits the stator housing. That will require a new grommet. The speedometer is jumpy above 60 miles per hour. I’ll try a new cable but I suspect the grease has dried out inside the gauge. Low beam blew out in the headlight. That may be due to the 14.8-volt charge rate or the old bulb that came in the headlight was ready to go. I’ll install another bulb and if it blows I’ll knock down the voltage to the headlight. Otherwise nothing really bad happened.

Zed has proven to be an excellent runner so there are a few more things I want to do to the carburetors. New needles and seats, enrichener plunger seals, bowl gaskets and free up the stuck bowl drain screws. Kind of tighten up the carbs as it were.

Now we come to the elephant in the room: the fuel tank. Zed’s tank was very rusty before I cleaned it out. That rust has eaten deep into the seams of the gas tank. I don’t believe my patch job is a permanent fix. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday another thin spot on the seam will give way and start spewing gasoline. Zed’s patina is cool and all but I plan on taking some long, lonely motorcycle rides and that gas tank worries me. I know I could pour that devil’s brew tank liner crap inside and buy a few years of service. A new Z1 aftermarket tank in grey primer is $300. Or I could use Trump’s stimulus check on a whole new set of Z1 Enterprise’s red bodywork (tank, fender, side covers) beautifully painted in the original Kawasaki style for $1300.

I’m cheap but that Z1E bodywork would make old Zed look like a new motorcycle. I have no bias against a nice looking motorcycle. I don’t need to ride a ratty bike, you know? Any suggestions?

Check out the compleat Z1 resurrection here!

Product Test: British Motorcycle Gear Rapido Gloves

I have managed to use British Motorcycle Gear’s Rapido gloves in temperatures ranging from the low 40s to the mid-90s and they have worked well across that range. All in, I’ve done about 600 miles wearing these gloves. Despite the wide temperature variations the gloves were never uncomfortably hot on my rides around muggy, warm Daytona last month.

The Rapidos are fairly stiff when you first put them on. Normally stiff is an attribute men aspire to but getting the Rapidos on and off was a bit of a struggle the first day. By day 4 the gloves had loosened up quite a bit and I no longer thought about the process.

Another reason I had trouble getting in the Rapidos was because they come with triple hook and loop straps, two on the gauntlet and one on the wrist. I didn’t realize the wrist strap adjusted and so was forcing them on willy-nilly. Loosening all the straps made it easier.

One benefit to all those straps is security: once tightened down this glove is not going to fly off in a crash unless your hand is still inside it. More security is provided by the thick rubber finger guards on the leading edge of the glove. If you’ve done much off-roading with faster buddies you know how painful a rock tossed into your hand can be. I wish I had these on a few months ago when Mike kicked up a boulder into my finger. It felt like the thing was broken. Three of the finger guards have little vents built into them, kind of like little hood scoops. The vents don’t pass much air but if you hold your hand out fingers forward you can feel the air coming in.

Yet more security comes in the form of a carbon fiber looking knuckle plate attached to the glove. BMG calls it Carbon Leather, I think. I haven’t managed to test this bit because I don’t want to hurt myself but if your hand became pinned beneath the bike and the pavement (never let go of the bike!) I imagine it would buy a few hundred feet of abrasion before you started to lose any knuckle. Amazingly, all that armor does not restrict hand movement much and once the gloves are broken in you can make a fist easily.

The Rapidos have a fairly long gauntlet and with the straps disconnected the mouth opens wide to fit big jacket sleeves. There’s a decent range of adjustment on the gauntlet. I was able to snug them down while riding in just a T-shirt and a G-string. The Rapido’s palm area has a lot of activity going on what with extra pads and stitches but none of it seemed to cause blisters. The Rapidos are heavier duty gloves than I’m used to wearing. They feel like they might actually protect your hands in a wipeout. I usually wear long white opera gloves or Harbor freight Nitrile gloves when riding motorcycles.

My red Rapido glove’s appearance is not exactly conservative; in fact they’re downright flashy. When I put them on I get a strange urge to crash The Avengers from the Marvel movie series. If you’re an under-the-radar guy get the black Rapidos. At $79 list price the Rapidos are not cheap but my regular work gloves run 10 or 12 bucks a pair and they don’t have near as many nifty features as the Rapidos.

I’m going to use the Rapidos for the next few years and I’ll be sure to write an Exhaustnotes long term review if the world doesn’t end before the gloves do. Maybe we’ll get lucky and I’ll get to crash test the Rapidos.

The Leaky Wheel Gets The Seal

I’ve been watching Berk’s incredible ExhaustNotes content tsunami from afar. The man is amazing, filing stories at a pace that would take 10 or more standard journalists to match. I, on the other hand, have been sleeping until noon and never change out of my pajamas. I managed to avoid getting Covid-19 so far and for a lot of Americans that would be considered success. I’m not most Americans. I want it all so I tore into Zed hoping to stop a few nagging oil leaks that are messing up my nice new concrete floor.

The biggest leak on Zed was the tach drive. And on that part the hardened, dry O-ring was the major source of oil. I dismantled the thing anyway and replaced the shaft seal with a new one from an EBay seal kit. I went EBay for the seals even though my favorite store Z1 Enterprises was cheaper. It was the shipping. The EBay kit was only a $1 more but included free shipping, which made the seal, kit $10 less. Yes, I’m that cheap.

The O-ring had to be gently cut off and it broke into two pieces as the razor knife dug in. For the internal seal I inserted a small screwdriver at an angle and using a small pin punch, tapped the screwdriver until the seal popped out. It wasn’t that tight. Reassembly was a breeze.

While the leak from the tach drive was dependent on the engine running, a constant drip from the very bottom of the engine was not. It leaked all the time. I traced that leak to the shifter shaft seal. This seal is submerged in oil, hence the steady if unspectacular leak. This leak wasn’t the end of the world as a week’s worth added up to a dime-sized puddle. I figured I had the seal so why not change it?

To do the shifter seal right you really need to remove the countershaft sprocket and the shift ratchet housing. I’m way too lazy to mess with all that, Besides, I didn’t have a gasket for the shifter casting and I didn’t want to create more work. Instead, I used two thin strips of metal and bent short hooks on the ends. The hooks were small enough to fit between the shifter shaft and the outer metal ring of the seal. After jiggling them into place I clamped the ends together with vise grips and used a long paddle bit to lever the seal out of its housing.

It worked so well it caught me off guard. Oil poured out of the shift seal housing onto my nice, new concrete. I rushed around looking for something to catch the mess. Nothing was low enough to fit under Zed’s 4-into-1 headers. Ultimately I cut down an empty kitty litter jug and shoved the plastic tray under Zed. What a mess.

Oil was still dribbling out when I managed to get the seal somewhat started using a short piece of ½” CPVC pipe as a driver. The CPVC pipe wasn’t quite thick enough to make a good, flat push so I drilled a ½” galvanized nut to slip over the shifter shaft and then pounded the nut with the CPVC. That combination made a satisfying thunk when the seal quit moving and the new seal looks seated about the same as the old seal depth wise.

I lost a quart of oil in the shifter shaft mess so I topped up the Kawasaki and after cleaning the floor, ran the bike 5 minutes with out seeing any major leaks. This is good news. The seal changing kit has been taped together and labeled so that when I die anyone going through my tools will know what it’s for.

Time to take Zed out on a run to see what else leaks. I still don’t have a tag because the tag places are closed here in New Mexico. I should have insurance soon. I’m going to bring along the title in my name, proof of insurance and a line of BS for when I get stopped due to my tag being expired 17 years.

There are a few other seals that I’m going to change because they are old. They’re not leaking yet but I plan on taking Zed on some long rides. I figure 45 years is long enough for a seal to last.

Hasty Conclusions: First Test of The British Motorcycle Gear Mercury Jacket

Here at Exhaustnotes.us we don’t have to wait until we know what we are talking about to give you our impressions of new gear sent to us for review. No, we can do whatever, whenever we want and right now I want to tell you about this swell jacket. You’ll get a longer-term review after Daytona Bike week.

BMG’s Mercury jacket is warm. The thing comes with a liner made of something like plutonium or krypton. The (only) day I tried the jacket temperatures ranged from 45 degrees to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. My base layer was a cotton T-shirt, no logo. At 45 degrees I was a bit cold but nothing unbearable. As the temps got into the high 60’s low 70’s the jacket became warm. It was fine as long as your speeds were above 40-50 miles per hour.

I could have taken several steps as the weather warmed up. I could have taken the liner out. I could have opened the vents (which I did later on) but I’m lazy and just put up with the heat.

The collar on the BMG Mercury jacket is designed well. I can lock it in solid and it doesn’t chafe on my helmet when I rotate my head to preen. Some jackets catch helmet parts and make cleaning tail feathers a less rider-friendly operation.

The sleeves have both a zipper and hook-and-loop fasteners strips to seal off your wrists. This is great for me because I ride without gloves when I am operating a camera or getting on and off the bike frequently. Using the two closing methods you can achieve an airtight wrap and stop the cold from entering your arm area.

Closing the jacket is also a multi-level affair; a zipper, hook-and-loop strips then snaps should pretty much keep the coat from opening up in a crash. The jacket has light shoulder/elbow armor that doesn’t intrude on comfort. Which is fine by me, I don’t like heavily armored motorcycle gear.

There are two front and two rear vents that are not huge but when open make the jacket noticeably cooler. After getting a bit hot on slower trails I ran them open until around 5pm when New Mexico’s February temps start dropping. I closed the vents and had a snug, evening ride home, arriving back at Tinfiny Ranch around 55 degrees, the perfect temperature for using the Mercury fully deployed.

The Mercury comes with a lot of adjustable straps to control the shape of the thing. I didn’t mess with them because it was fine with the liner installed. I imagine in hot weather I’ll have to take the liner out and then those extra snaps and straps will help prevent flutter.

The British Motorcycle Gear Mercury Jacket really works well for New Mexico’s daily 40-degree temperature swings. I think if I combined it with a t-shirt and my electric vest I would be good down to the mid-30 degree range. Available from BritishMotorcycleGear.com at a list price of $250 the jacket is not outrageously expensive and appears well made. I’m taking it with me to Daytona’s Bike Week where I hope to gather more information on the Mercury’s rain proofing and function without the liner.

More great gear reviews are here!