Joe Gresh

No More, No Motus

The shocking news is that they lasted 10 years. Motus Motorcycles announced they were shutting down and I mean right now. Which is a shame because I liked the looks of their sport tourer and it apparently had a great engine. Legendary moto-journalist Jack Lewis said he liked the bike and that’s good enough for me. The Motus sold for around 30,000 dollars. That undercut some other American-made motorcycles in the rarified cruiser category but was still a hefty chunk of change for a sport tourer.

I saw Motus at Daytona long time ago, before the production motorcycles were available. There were a couple of good-natured models standing around the bike. Closer to the ground and less aloof than the Ducati models, the girls wore short black skirts and belly-exposing, Motus logoed crop-top T-shirts. I joked around with them and they let me pose for for a photograph with one on each arm. The girls really didn’t know anything about the Motus but they were packing in the crowds. I thought it was damn good marketing.

Good natured and good looking, Joe Gresh is.

I never got to ride a Motus. I never asked the company for a loaner. They were getting plenty of coverage in the moto-press and I am not very ambitious. The V-four engine attracts a lot of attention because of its small size and torque. Loosely based on a Scat style engine, I predict a bright future selling the Motus engine as a stand-alone unit.

Old British sports car owners, guys tired of being run over in 4-cylinder Jeeps, perhaps racers in a spec-engine mini, sprint-car series are all potential customers for a reorganized Motus. Call the new company Motus Power Systems and sell bolt-in kits to repower various lightweight 4-wheelers.

Could taller, more aloof models have saved Motus? Hard to say. My advice to Motus is to forget about motorcycles. There are so many fantastic bikes available we don’t need another. The entire United States motorcycle industry would fit inside the tackle box of the recreational fishing industry. Motorcycles are such a tiny fraction, a statistical rounding error really, of the greater automotive economy that it’s not worth Motus’ trouble.

Hell, if you sold every motorcycle rider in America a Motus you’d still need to borrow money from me to get Uber fare home. The money simply isn’t there. So start work on the Jeep/Motus repower kit, boys. I’ll be first in line to mooch a test fitting in Brumby the YJ. I’ll even let you guys hire models to pose next to the old Jeep.

Dirty Secret

If I were forced to live in a large city I probably wouldn’t ride motorcycles. Connected technology has brought us all closer together, so close that none of us really like what we see from our fellow man. This ubiquitous-connectedness has created a disconnect in a huge quantity of automobile drivers. Proximity sensors that auto-apply braking and lane-holding algorithms are responses to a driving populace that grows ever more disinterested in what is happening on the other side of the windshield. Self driving cars can’t get here soon enough for me.

Public roads are dangerous for motorcycles, no two ways about it, but there is a better place to ride. It’s a place where youthful hijinks don’t end in an expensive traffic citations or death by obliviousness. This place can be found everywhere, mere inches below the civilized world. This place is called The Dirt.

The Dirt. It’s awesome. There are no drivers on their cell phones.

The Dirt is the true and holy Mother Road, unlike The Street, which relies completely on and has to be built on top of The Dirt. The Dirt stands on its own merits needing neither creation nor sustenance. Dirt will still be here long after the last human on Earth has crashed the last Volvo on Earth into the last telephone pole on Earth while sending the last text ever sent…on Earth.

The Dirt encompasses a wide variety of surfaces from graded county roads to nearly impassable paths more suitable to mountain goats. And you can ride a motorcycle over all of it. True, it’s getting harder to find places to ride near population centers. So pull up stakes and move to the less tony parts of the USA where there are miles and miles of dirt roads to explore.

Motorcyclists who start out in the dirt are simply better riders than those that don’t. Finding the limit on pavement is risky, expensive and painful. Those same limits can be exceeded and re-exceeded many times while riding in the dirt, sometimes without any input from the rider. Hell, sometimes the rider is tangled in a bush with a sprained thumb while the motorcycle explores the limits on its own. Crashing in The Dirt is less damaging to both body and bike. I’m not saying you can’t get killed dirt riding but it takes a determined effort to accomplish on your own what a drunken car driver will do for free.

The most interesting, less-picked-over sites are accessible only by dirt roads. Fencing and authorities are few and far between. If you see an abandoned mine shaft that needs falling into or a rusty car that needs a few more bullet holes you can fall or shoot with complete freedom.

Listen, don’t let street riding scares put you off motorcycles. Pick up an old dual purpose bike for a thousand or two and start finding your groove out where it’s safe to do the things you like to do.

Dream Bike: Kawasaki 350cc A7 Avenger

The stuff dreams are made of…in this case, a Kawi 350cc Avenger!

Kawasaki’s A7 is high on my motorcycle lust-list. The styling of the Gen 2 models is as perfect as a motorcycle can be. Decals and graphics, a Kawasaki strong suit in the 1970’s, gave the bike a speedy, eager look that shouts, “Let the good times roll!” And roll they did, Big Daddy: long before the Yamaha RD series, Kawasaki was hazing the streets and smoking tires with its 350cc, twin-cylinder, disc-valve two-stroke.

I don’t believe the manufacturer-claimed 42 horsepower, but then I’ve never ridden one so maybe it does crank out that much. Large displacement (over 125cc) twin-cylinder, disc-valve motors have always been relatively rare in the motorcycle world. That’s probably due to the excessive crankcase width mandated by two carburetors sticking out past the ends of the crankshaft-mounted, induction timing discs. Crankcase width aside and freed from the symmetrical intake timing of a piston-port engine, a disc valver usually makes more and better power (I’ve been told).

The Avenger, along with its less-attractive, low-pipe sister was also a pioneer in electronic ignition. It was a great system when it worked, but 50-years-on may not be so hot. The addition of oil injection made the Avenger about as maintenance-free as a 1970’s bike could get. The package as a whole looks 50 years ahead of the British and American offerings from the same era.

Prices on A7’s haven’t reached silly RD350 heights yet. The bike in these photos that I stole from Smart Cycle Guide is listed at $3600, the high end of the range. Here’s the link: www.smartcycleguide/L49224558. If you spend a few minutes you can find clean, running examples for $1500 on the Internet.

For me, the only knock on the A7 is that it may be too well made. I’m at the stage in my life where I don’t need a reliable motorcycle. New bikes are darn near perfect and perfection is boring. I search for the ever-elusive soul ride: Motorcycles that drip. The best motorcycles are the ones that leave you stranded; they turn any ride into a grand adventure. Besides, quirky flaws and secret handshakes appeal to my need to be special.

The thing with dreams is that you don’t want to over-analyze them. I can’t say why I like the A7 so much. I’ve never seen one running. I guess it’s the optimism of the design. The A7 is from an era when anything was possible and the future was a burning arrow pointing straight into the sky. If I ever hit the lottery I’ll have one, along with a bunch of other motorcycles to be discussed later here on the ExNotes blog.

Check out our other Dream Bikes!

Product Review: Harbor Freight 3-1/2 Cubic Foot Concrete Mixer

I remember hot summer days mixing concrete with my father. I remember the two-holed hoe oozing mud like Play-Doh through a Fun Factory press. Back and forth you shoved the concrete with each hard pass plasticizing a frustratingly minor amount. The demand never ceased, more concrete was required all the time until the sun and the humidity and the sweat burning your eyes (combined with the resistance of the aggregate) lulled your body into a Zen state of denial. The only way to push on was to pretend it wasn’t happening. “I am not really here,” I’d tell myself.

“More mud!” Dumping another 80-pound bag of concrete into the wheel-buggy I quietly promised that I would never, ever, under any circumstances, become a concrete finisher.

Harbor Freight. Cement mixers. Life is good.

With the $180 purchase of Harbor Freight’s 3-1/2 cubic foot concrete mixer I broke that promise made so long ago. I got mine at one of Harbor Freight’s closeouts. Or maybe it was a parking lot sale. Come to think of it, could it have been one of the 4357 tool disposals that brought my attention to the mixer? These events are held almost daily at Harbor Freight and if you ever pay full price at that store you’re no friend of mine. The mixer came out of the box in a million pieces and it took the better part of three hours to assemble the thing because I am not genetically disposed to look at directions.

I mixed about 400, 50-pound bags of concrete before the key in the larger of the two pulleys fell out. The parts landed inside the motor box so I stuck the key back onto the pinion shaft and swabbed a bit of lock tight onto the screw holding the key. I’ve since mixed another 800 bags with no further problems. In total, about 15 cubic yards of concrete have been run through the little mixer to date.

Gears. Lube. Like the innards of a Rolex, but on a grander scale…

Industrial grade. Good stuff, Harbor Freight is.

Maintenance on the HF mixer consists of lubing the drum pivots, greasing the large stamped ring gear and oiling the sealed drum bearing with whatever dregs of slippery stuff I have laying about the shed. I do all these things before each use whether I’m mixing 3 bags or 100.

The drum is sized for 150 pounds of concrete mix. Any more and the tilt angle becomes too vertical and the mixing action slows to a crawl. Depending on which size bag of pre-mix concrete is cheapest, I have mixed as high as 180 pounds in the thing but mixing performance suffered with each additional pound. These are nitpicks. I spent less than a week’s rental to own the HF mixer. I give it high marks.

High tech tilt angle control. Who needs instructions?

Warnings? I don’t need no stinkin’ warnings!

It’s funny how life works out. I enjoy mixing and finishing concrete now. I love the smells and textures and the sound of a steel trowel scraping across a smooth burnished surface. These are simple motions that bring back sweet muscle-memories of working with my father and those hot summers when I was young and strong.

Product Review: Duluth Flex Fire Hose Work Pants

Tough gear for tough jobs…the Duluth Flex Fire pants are great!

I didn’t know about Duluth’s cargo work pants 40 years ago. That’s how long I have crawled around in the bilges of boats and after many thousands of patella-miles my knees are shot. Towards the end it got so I’d have to work on my side, putting weight on my hips because my knees hurt pretty much all the time.

Sure, I tried kneepads. Every brand or style of pad cut the circulation to my legs or if they didn’t restrict blood flow they’d fall to my ankles as soon as I stood up. The best solution I could come up with was a chunk of packing foam and I kneeled on that sucker whenever I could remember to drag it into the bowels of the boat I was working on. Unfortunately, memory was the second thing to go in the boat-fixing business.

Duluth makes many styles of pants but the ones that caught my eye are the Ultimate Cargo Work Pants with kneepad inserts. By the simple act of sewing on a hook-and-loop-pocket large enough to hold a foam pad Duluth solved both the sore knee and the blood circulation problems in one fell stoop. The pants run $59 and you’ll need the pads (Not included? Why the hell not?) at $10. 70 bucks was a lot of money 20 years ago. Today, it’s the going rate for any heavy-duty work pants.

The things aren’t perfect. The pad pocket may slide off to one side or the other when you kneel down but it’s not a problem to re-situate them. The material is a stretchy, hot blend that will have you sweating in temps over 75 degrees. Still, it was a revelation to kneel down without pain. The pants put a spring in my knee and I had a newfound confidence in my ability to connect with floors and low-slung mechanical contraptions on a deeper, more meaningful level.

Duluth Flex Fire work pants…good for work and good for riding.

The Duluth pants would work great as knock-about motorcycle riding wear and I plan on using them for just that purpose as soon as it gets a bit cooler. If you are a tradesman or tradeswoman that must work from your knees don’t wait 40 years like I did. Let Duluth’s built-in pads cushion (and save) your knees and extend your career. If I had used these pants from the get-go I could have been one of the lucky ones who kept working on boats until their backs gave out.

Fear Masquerading as Wisdom

NOTGNOTT? (None of the gear, none of the time.)

As our generation ages off this mortal coil there seems to be a strong conservative trend among motorcyclists. By conservative I don’t mean politically, although most of my rowdy friends have settled on the putative conservative party. I mean in their actions and words.

Post a video of kids popping wheelies or burning up motorcycles and the comment section rapidly fills with sour, tsk-tsk and rote complaints about using proper riding gear, safe riding practices or endangering others. Quite a few commenters will wish death upon anyone not head-to-toe in safety gear. Organ Donors, an insult once used by straight citizens to describe motorcyclists in general, has been co-opted by ourselves and liberally used to describe riders not wearing hi-vis green, stifling gloves, helmets, boots and one of those silver blood-type/medication allergy bracelets sold in high schools throughout the mid-1970’s.

Realizing that the depressing safety-crats were doing the exact same wheelies when they were under 100 years old you have to wonder what changed. Responsibility to the group, to all road users or the prospect of injuring an innocent bystander is regularly trotted out by safety mongers. They sound like lower case communists instead of riders living free like it says on their belt buckles and t-shirts.

So is it fear or wisdom? With death imminent, I suspect fear. Our motorcycles are becoming sodden with anti-lock braking systems, rev limiters (God forbid we blow an engine!), traction control and power management systems. The price we are willing to pay for a motorcycle less inclined to kill us is in the tens of thousands of dollars. If we are so concerned about staying alive to drag down future economies with our failing bodies why not forgo motorcycles and drive a truck?

Our generation believes, as have previous generations, that we know best for the next guys. A do-as-I-say, not-as-I-did type of thing that must drive the young ones insane. We think a motorcycle with less than 100 horsepower is unrideable yet we expect others tap into maybe 50% of that power. If they actually twist the throttle then they become the irresponsible ones.

We are, in a nutshell, full of baloney. We rode without helmets, we rode in shorts and t-shirts, we popped wheelies on public roads, we drank and took drugs and then got on our motorcycles and crashed. We died and we were injured. We cost society money way beyond our true dollar value. And now like bit players in the song “Cats in the Cradle,” we sit behind our screens scolding others for being just like we were.

Exhaust Notes Review: Harbor Freight 700-watt Generator

Smell is the main reason I bought Harbor Freight’s 700-watt 120-VAC Tailgator generator. Mixing oil and gas for the 63cc prime mover and then burning that gas in the Tailgator is an olfactory Garden of Eden. For motorcyclists of a certain age or anyone who has owned an early 20th century gas-powered clothes washer the Tailgator’s smokey aroma triggers long dormant pleasure centers.

And it’s not a bad generator either. 700-watts isn’t a lot of power but it will run my normal shed load of 11, 4-foot long LED light fixtures with enough power left over to charge 2 Ryobi 18-volt lithium batteries at the same time. If you’re thinking of arc welding or running an air conditioner with the Tailgator disabuse yourself of that idea toot sweet.

The Tailgator is supported by a lively YouTube community and naturally I did some of the modifications the gang recommended. I swapped the standard Torch brand sparkplug for an NGK and replaced the OEM spark plug cap with a much better made NGK cap. I also relocated the foam air filter within the air box to achieve a better seal. After a few weeks I added a digital hour meter to log the run time per tank.

With 140 hours on the Tailgator she’s been stone-ax reliable. Two gentle pulls on the delicate starter rope and the beast settles into a staccato 62 hz, no load. Under the full 900-watt load the rpm’s will drop to a smooth 58 hz but who’s counting?

The gas tank holds one gallon the first time you fill it but only around ¾ gallon from then on. Some you tubers modify the fuel pickup to access that last ¼ gallon. Unmodified, a tank will run 4 hours at 400-watt load so I leave it alone.

The YouTube consensus is that the Tailgator part number ending in #24 is slightly better built than the one ending in #25. I bought a #24 and ran it 5 hours a day for a week to expose any weaknesses while the thing was still under warranty. Nothing went wrong.

Reasonably quiet and very dependable power, and inexpensive. Harbor Freight rules!

The Tailgator is not quiet but it’s not all that loud. From 13 feet away I got 60 decibels on my Cateater App. The sound of a two-stroke engine is energetic and endearing so I don’t mind the racket; it’s a plus in my book. The Tailgator responds poorly to ham-fisted treatment. You’ve got to treat the thing like the finely crafted musical instrument it is. For only 89 dollars with a HF coupon the Tailgator is a fantastic bargain.

The Merry Tiller

Tinfiny Acres came completely furnished with a junkyard. There were motorhomes, cars, boats and motorcycles lying about the place, all in a shocked state of disbelief. When the previous owner died it was like a plug had been pulled, freezing the many projects in situ. I’ve been cleaning up for a few years now yet still the twisted piles of scrap metal and softly rotting sheets of oriented strand board found on Tinfiny’s extensive grounds yield surprise and enchantment.

I was working on a two-Harbor-Freight-trailer-load of broken fiberglass garage doors that had been squatted by a company of freeloading pack rats when I first uncovered the Merry Tiller. Previously, I had seen parts of the thing, the handlebars, maybe a transport wheel and had caught a flash of chrome between the thicket of brush that had found much success around this particular pile of trash. But now the full tiller was exposed to daylight.

And what a tiller it was. The first thing I thought was, “That’s a nice chaincase.” Long and thin with an oil filler hole two-thirds the way up the case there was no comparison to the clunky, surface-floating drives found on lesser tillers. No, this chaincase was made to knife through plowed earth like a long board skeg grooving down a mountainous wave. This chaincase has soul, my brothers.

The Merry Tiller is configured engine-over which places the fulcrum directly over the digging tines. This set up allows minor weight shifts at the controls to precisely control forward motion. Sporting a 5-horsepower Briggs & Stratton powerplant this tiller should be able to plow granite, slowed only by the drag bar’s deep bite into the soil.

The engine is a real Briggs & Stratton, the one with the straight carburetor and the diaphragm, crankcase-pressure-operated mini-dip tank inside the gas tank. On the left side is a huge reduction pulley and belt-tension clutch assembly. The frame consists of two heavy angle iron sections bolted together at fortuitous locations.

My Merry Tiller…a mechanical masterpiece!

Having said the above, I’ve never actually started the Merry Tiller. I’ve got a bit more debris to move in order to wheel the tiller out into the open The thing is a classic and might be worth more money in its barn-find trash pile. Maybe I could hire a few archeologists to remove the ground surrounding the Merry Tiller and ship it complete to the new owner.

Who am I kidding? Unconsciously I have shouldered Tinfiny Ranch’s legacy to the world. His projects have become intermixed with my projects. I can’t tell which project belongs to whom. I’ll never sell the Merry Tiller. It’s like a vintage Barbie doll in her original, unmolested packaging, except this one is gas-powered.

Wild Conjecture: The Harley-Davidson Livewire

I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings but us oldsters are through. Our time has passed. No one cares if we like electric motorcycles or have range anxiety or just don’t like the silence. They don’t care. Bemoan the new kids all you want but we are dead-generation walking and the future always bats last.

Harley-Davidson, having had their finger on the pulse of the American motorcyclist for more than 100 years, can feel that pulse weakening. They get that Easy Rider means a mobility chair to anyone under age 50. With the Livewire H-D is busting out of the leather-fringed, concho-ed cage they so carefully crafted for themselves and it’s about time.

Electric motorcycles just make more sense than electric cars: City-centric, short range, narrow and easy to park. E-bikes comfortably fit into the existing technology envelope as it stands today. While always appreciated there’s no need for advancements in battery technology. E-motorcycles work right now, man.

Generation X, Y, and Z are down with plugging in electronics equipment wherever they go. They grew up watching battery level indicators like we grew up watching fuel gauges. They don’t have the same history or values that we have and they’d be a pretty sorry generation if they couldn’t come up with their own idea of fun.

As usual on Wild Conjecture we have no factual information on the Livewire so the first thing I noticed is that the thing actually looks good. The heavily-finned battery compartment is kind of huge so maybe range will be decent (100-miles would do it for me). Large diameter dual discs means this may be the hardest stopping H-D yet. More than likely the rear disc will be assisted by regenerative braking because it’s fairly easy to do and adds a few miles to the range.

The rear suspension resembles Yamaha’s Monoshock system from 40 years ago except with a much shorter shock absorber. The frame appears to be cast aluminum, a construction method that eliminates costly, complicated robot welding machines and messy human interaction. Forks appear standard and I don’t see any way for the front wheel to charge the battery under braking.

One of the problems I see with electric motorcycles is that they try to be like internal combustion motorcycles. They measure their range against gasoline mileage. They pit their performance against machines that have had 100 years of refinement. For the most part they stack up so-so. E-bikes should embrace a less costly approach; give up a few miles of range and a few miles per hour for a faster charge time. Maybe cheaper, quick-change batteries so commuters could keep one at home, one at the office and one in the motorcycle thereby eliminating the wait time for charging.

The Livewire is an even bigger leap of faith for H-D than their ADV bike (which breaks no new ground) and I’m not sure it will sell out of a traditional motorcycle dealership. Maybe sell them from kiosks at Red Bull events? The Livewire should appeal to a younger audience but it’ll have to be less expensive and carry less emotional baggage than Harley’s oil burners to do it.

You can read about our other Dream Bikes here.

Wild Conjecture: The Harley-Davidson Pan America

Much like when your old granny starts using Instagram or throws down internet slang terms like LOL, Harley-Davidson’s new, Pan America concept motorcycle is a sure sign that the out-sized ADV fad has played itself out. It can’t come a moment too soon for me because these giant dirt motorcycles are the worst idea to come down the pike since Thalidomide. I won’t list the moto-journos that have injured themselves on these bikes but it’s a who’s who of two-wheeled typists. Remember, these are the pros!

H-D has ignored the segment these last twenty years for good reason: It’s simply not their bag. Change comes slowly to The Motor Company. They’ve been very successful building and selling a cruiser lifestyle. People tattoo H-D logos onto their bodies! Who else but a Batdorf and Bronson coffee fanatic would do that?

Back on topic: The Pan America. Harley doesn’t keep me in the loop so I have nothing but a promotional photo to go by but the thing doesn’t look half bad. There’s just a hint of Royal Enfield Himalayan in the styling but that’s not a bad thing. The fairing is kind of goofy, a requirement for ADV bikes. It’s got a decent-looking skidpan and a nice flat seat that looks comfortable.

The engine looks like a restyled version of H-D’s 750cc liquid-cooled Street power plant but with displacement rumors swirling around 1200cc, maybe not. Maybe it’s a V-Rod engine. Anyway I can’t see Harley building a new engine just for the Pan America unless it’s the beta test of a wholly new Sportster power plant. There’s almost no way the thing will weigh less than 600 pounds, again, seemingly not a problem for the chuckleheads who plow these big bikes through the trails.

I haven’t heard of any major reliability issues on the 500cc-750cc Street models or the V-Rod so if it’s either engine the thing should be more reliable than the class-leading GS BMW’s. I’m hoping the thing is chain drive as toothed belts squeak like crazy in the dirt and shaft drives seem to snap in half with alarming frequency.

The rest of the cycle parts look really modern, Japanese even, and the Pan America shows that Harley can build a bike that rivals the Europeans and Asians anytime they feel like it. They just haven’t felt like it. Until now.

Check out our other Dream Bikes here!

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